New York Times and other outlets sue web browser Brave over alleged content scraping

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Summary

The New York Times and other major outlets sued Brave, alleging it scraped over 30 billion web pages and distributed copyrighted content to AI companies including Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere.

The New York Times is suing privacy-focused web browser company Brave for allegedly scraping the outlet’s copyrighted content and unlawfully distributing it to its own customers, like Anthropic and Perplexity.
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# New York Times and other outlets sue web browser Brave over alleged content scraping | TechCrunch Source: [https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/02/new-york-times-and-other-outlets-sue-web-browser-brave-over-alleged-content-scraping/](https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/02/new-york-times-and-other-outlets-sue-web-browser-brave-over-alleged-content-scraping/) In Brief Posted: 11:19 AM PST · November 2, 2026 ![In this photo illustration, a hand of a person holds a smartphone with a Brave Browser logo displayed in the background.](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/brave-browser.jpg?w=1024)**Image Credits:**Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket / Getty ImagesThe New York Times sued Brave, the 11\-year\-old, privacy\-focused browser company, on Monday, alleging it scraped the outlet’s copyrighted content and unlawfully distributed it to customers the suit names as Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere\. Separately on Monday, the Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and the Orlando Sentinel filed a similar lawsuit\. Both were brought in federal court in Manhattan\. The New York Times, which has also sued OpenAI and Perplexity over similar claims, likens Brave to a “supplier, dealer, and distributor of stolen copyrighted content” for AI companies\. “In this way, Brave acts both like a burglar that misappropriates the content of publishers, and an AI ‘fence’ that sells stolen content to third parties,” the suit reads\. It says Brave built an index of more than 30 billion web pages using an unidentified crawler, leaving publishers unable to block it\. The suit also targets a Brave browser feature that bypasses paywalls and the company’s practice of blocking publishers’ ads while selling its own\. Founded in 2015, Brave has raised roughly[$250 million](https://sacra.com/c/brave/)to date, according to private\-market trackers\. The Times seeks an injunction and damages\. Brave did not immediately respond to a request for comment\. ### Newsletters Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news ## Related ## Latest in AI

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