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New York Times sues maker of Brave web browser (www.reuters.com)
submitted 4 days ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 58 points 4 days ago* (10 children)

The court filing is linked in the first paragraph and worth a read. The article is a bit vague because the claims in the filing are pretty sweeping, but to list some highlights:

  • Brave started selling copyrighted scraped articles in bulk from their search index to AI companies
  • Brave built explicit and targeted functionality into their browser to circumvent newspaper paywalls
  • Brave repeats long, verbatim sections of NYT & other papers’ material on request through their AI web search feature

I’m neither an attorney nor a huge fan of IP rights writ large, but in my reading, the newspapers are making a pretty strong case that Brave is consciously stealing and reselling copyrighted material in unaltered form for monetary gain.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 days ago (3 children)

    IP rights are pretty awesome for a lot of engineers, writers and artists.

    Regardless, anyone who's paywall can be defeated by a little JS switcheroo has dogshit for a paywall. If I have apple trees in my yard, and my fence is made of 7 or 8 sticks, when people stop by and snack on an apple, should I be mad at them or myself?

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  • [–] 2 points 4 days ago* (2 children)

    Is it possible that Brave is accessing NYT through NYT subscribers using their browser?

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  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago (1 child)

    Sure, but it might be hard for NYT to make the case for that. All the browser fingerprint would say is "Chrome" and have spoofed data after that.

    I expect they did some trial and error to demonstrate what's happening before filling a lawsuit over it.

    That being said, NYT just told everyone how to get free NYT. Best advertising Brave ever had.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago

    Also, I think the NYT made it easy to bypass so they can pick up the non-savvy or richer readers who otherwise wouldn't pay for something that is literally free, while still not limitting access and thereby reach. It might not be incompetence.

    It's a hard balance to strike, because the best advertising for your paper is articles people send to each other. If nobody can read them, then nobody will become intrigued by a subscription, but if they are totally free nobody will bother subscribing.

    That's why some sites have a certain number of free articles a month.

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  • [–] -1 points 4 days ago (3 children)

    Thank you for the summary. Ironically, this makes me want to try Brave again, ha.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    I would love for someone to correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t brave one of the ones who would block the ads of a website just to see newer their own? So not only are you not supporting the website, you still see ads.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 days ago

    Yeah, they’re shady, no doubt, I won’t really try them again. I’ll keep using Firefox and Librewolf and I use Kagi for search and like their AI summaries. I do like tools for accessing gated news when I need it, though, which was what piqued my interest.

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