NYT demands Brave shut down its paywall blocker and end deals with AI firms
The New York Times and other newspaper companies sued Brave Software yesterday, alleging that the browser maker illegally bypasses paywalls and sells stolen news content to AI companies.
《纽约时报》及其他报业公司昨日起诉了 Brave Software，指控该浏览器制造商非法绕过付费墙，并将窃取的新闻内容出售给人工智能公司。
“Brave is the supplier, dealer, and distributor of stolen copyrighted content for its own users and many of the most prominent GenAI companies, including Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere,” the NYT alleged in a lawsuit filed in US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
《纽约时报》在向美国纽约南区联邦地区法院提交的诉讼中称：“Brave 是为其自身用户及包括 Anthropic、Perplexity、Mistral、xAI 和 Cohere 在内的多家知名生成式人工智能公司提供、交易和分发被盗版权内容的供应商。”
Citing third-party revenue estimates, the suit claimed that “Brave has made more than $100 million by copying and reselling publishers’ work without consent or permission,” while “publishers have received nothing.”
该诉讼援引第三方收入估算称，“Brave 在未经同意或许可的情况下，通过复制和转售出版商的作品获利超过 1 亿美元”，而“出版商却一无所获”。
The lawsuit said, “AI companies pay Brave to provide them with real-time online content from the Brave search index,” and use content from the Brave index “to train their own AI models” and “to respond to specific user queries.”
诉讼指出，“人工智能公司向 Brave 付费，以获取来自 Brave 搜索索引的实时在线内容”，并利用这些内容“训练其人工智能模型”以及“响应特定的用户查询”。
The NYT lawsuit points to Brave’s website, which says the Brave Search API is “used by some of the biggest names in AI, including Cohere, Mistral, Perplexity, and You.com.”
《纽约时报》的诉讼提到了 Brave 的网站，该网站称 Brave 搜索 API “被一些人工智能领域的大牌公司所使用，包括 Cohere、Mistral、Perplexity 和 You.com”。
The lawsuit accused Brave of all the major types of copyright infringement: direct infringement, contributory infringement, and vicarious infringement.
诉讼指控 Brave 犯有所有主要的版权侵权类型：直接侵权、共同侵权和替代责任侵权。
The lawsuit claims Brave infringes copyrights directly by scraping articles for its search index, for its “Ask Brave” AI search feature, and for the Brave API that “serves as an illicit source of unlicensed copyrighted material, including Times journalism, to other AI companies.”
诉讼声称，Brave 通过抓取文章用于其搜索索引、“Ask Brave”人工智能搜索功能，以及作为“向其他人工智能公司提供未经许可的版权材料（包括《纽约时报》的新闻报道）的非法来源”的 Brave API，直接侵犯了版权。
The NYT accused Brave of being “a contributory and vicarious infringer when it deliberately induces, facilitates, controls, and profits from its users’ and GenAI customers’ copying of the copyrighted content.”
《纽约时报》指控 Brave “在故意诱导、促进、控制其用户及生成式人工智能客户复制版权内容并从中获利时，构成了共同侵权和替代责任侵权”。
Finally, the lawsuit said Brave violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by circumventing technological measures the NYT and other content owners use to restrict access to their articles.
最后，诉讼称 Brave 通过规避《纽约时报》及其他内容所有者用于限制文章访问的技术措施，违反了《数字千年版权法》（DMCA）。
“The Brave Browser includes a default setting that, when activated, causes the browser to go behind website paywalls and provide the paywalled content to the user,” the lawsuit said.
诉讼称：“Brave 浏览器包含一项默认设置，激活后，浏览器会绕过网站付费墙，并将付费内容提供给用户。”
The browser “blocks advertising that would otherwise appear on The Times’s website, and instead shows its own ads, offering its users a cut of the revenue even as it deprives The Times of digital advertising revenue that helps it fund the expensive effort of producing journalism,” the lawsuit said.
诉讼指出，该浏览器“屏蔽了本应出现在《纽约时报》网站上的广告，转而展示其自己的广告，并向用户提供部分收入分成，同时剥夺了《纽约时报》本可用于资助昂贵新闻采编工作的数字广告收入”。
When testing the Brave browser for Mac today, we found that the optional “paywall blocker” feature made it possible to read a paywalled New York Times article. The feature was enabled in the default settings and can be turned off.
今天在测试 Mac 版 Brave 浏览器时，我们发现可选的“付费墙拦截器”功能确实可以阅读《纽约时报》的付费文章。该功能在默认设置中处于开启状态，但可以关闭。
NYT wants Brave profits. The NYT asked for a permanent injunction to stop Brave from continuing the allegedly illegal conduct. The lawsuit seeks statutory damages, actual damages, restitution of profits derived from alleged copyright infringement, and “restitution and disgorgement of all revenue and profits Brave obtained through its ad-substitution scheme.”
《纽约时报》寻求 Brave 的利润。该报要求法院发布永久禁令，禁止 Brave 继续进行所谓的非法行为。诉讼寻求法定赔偿、实际损失赔偿、因涉嫌版权侵权而获得的利润返还，以及“返还并追缴 Brave 通过其广告替换计划获得的所有收入和利润”。
A similar lawsuit was filed against Brave in the same court yesterday by the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and Orlando Sentinel companies.
《纽约每日新闻》、《芝加哥论坛报》和《奥兰多哨兵报》所属公司昨日也在同一法院对 Brave 提起了类似的诉讼。
“AI giants are now desperate to avoid getting caught red-handed stealing news from publishers, so Brave Software is selling them a back door to the journalism they know they have no right to,” said Steven Lieberman, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.
原告律师史蒂文·利伯曼（Steven Lieberman）表示：“人工智能巨头现在不顾一切地想要避免因窃取出版商新闻而被当场抓获，因此 Brave Software 正在向他们出售获取新闻报道的后门，而他们明知自己无权获取这些内容。”
“Buying stolen goods secondhand doesn’t make them legitimate. Brave must be held responsible for laundering pirated reporting for the AI industry.”
“购买二手赃物并不能使其合法化。Brave 必须为其为人工智能行业洗白盗版报道的行为负责。”
We contacted Brave and will update this article if it provides a response.
我们已联系 Brave，如果对方提供回应，我们将更新本文。
Perplexity, which is not a defendant in the Brave lawsuit but is facing a different lawsuit filed by the NYT, accused the news organization of “disinformation” in a statement provided to Ars and other news outlets.
Perplexity 虽然不是 Brave 诉讼案的被告，但正面临《纽约时报》提起的另一起诉讼。该公司在提供给 Ars 及其他新闻媒体的声明中，指责该新闻机构散布“虚假信息”。
Perplexity’s statement did not identify any specific inaccuracies in the lawsuit against Brave. “The New York Times is overpaying its attorneys and underpaying its journalists. (Who could’ve easily identified the disinformation in this suit.),” Perplexity’s statement said.
Perplexity 的声明并未指出针对 Brave 的诉讼中存在任何具体的不准确之处。声明称：“《纽约时报》给律师的报酬过高，而给记者的报酬过低。（他们本可以轻易识别出这起诉讼中的虚假信息。）”
The NYT sued Perplexity in December 2025, alleging that its AI tool gives users “outputs that are identical or substantially similar to” NYT articles, including “verbatim or near-verbatim reproductions, summaries, or abridgements of the original content.”
《纽约时报》于 2025 年 12 月起诉了 Perplexity，指控其人工智能工具向用户提供“与《纽约时报》文章相同或实质相似的输出内容”，包括“对原始内容的逐字或近乎逐字的复制、摘要或删节”。
Perplexity’s response to that lawsuit said its answer engine only fetches content from copyrighted articles in reply to user queries. Perplexity argued that “developing an AI tool that can allegedly automatically fetch and provide specific content in response to user requests based on its pre-configuration and access to materials available on the Internet” is not “volitional conduct.”
Perplexity 在对该诉讼的回应中表示，其答案引擎仅在响应用户查询时从受版权保护的文章中获取内容。Perplexity 辩称，“开发一种据称能够根据预配置和对互联网上可用材料的访问，自动获取并提供特定内容以响应用户请求的人工智能工具”，并不属于“自愿行为”。
The NYT also sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December 2023 in a lawsuit alleging that OpenAI trains its AI with stolen news content. The lawsuit is heading toward a trial, with OpenAI arguing that its use of news articles is fair use under copyright law.
《纽约时报》还曾在 2023 年 12 月起诉 OpenAI 和微软，指控 OpenAI 使用被盗的新闻内容训练其人工智能。该诉讼正走向审判阶段，OpenAI 主张其对新闻文章的使用属于版权法下的“合理使用”。