New York Times lawsuit accuses privacy-focused Brave of exploiting publishers' journalism while selling scraped content to AI companies.

The New York Times is suing the makers of Brave Browser for unauthorized copying of journalism and copyright infringement for allegedly scraping publisher content to sell to AI companies and enabling customers to bypass its paywall. Although Brave positions itself as a white company that benefits consumers, the lawsuit paints a picture of a black hat company that exploits the work of publishers.

Brave Browser and Brave Search enjoy a reputation as a white hat, privacy-first company that’s an alternative to companies like Google, Anthropic, and ChatGPT. The New York Times’ complaint shows that not only is Brave scraping and monetizing publisher content, but it’s also selling it to AI companies, painting a picture of a company that is more black hat, at least to publishers.

Brave Browser and Brave Search positions themselves as the “good guys” on the Internet by casting themselves as the solution to an Internet that’s broken by surveillance capitalism. It positions itself as the antidote to Google’s aggressive monetization of its own users.

Brave Search’s unique selling points are that it uses its own independent search index, it protects user’s privacy, and it does not track them across the Internet the way Google does. All of that is true.

The New York Times’ copyright infringement lawsuit against the makers of Brave Browser and Search Engine reveals a darker reality behind the gleaming “user-first” stance in which Brave is alleged to exploit the work of journalists without compensation.

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