The Washington Post, New York Times, Gannett and 14 other media companies threatened legal action against the owner of browser that blocks ad-networks’ ads and replaces them with its own ads.
“Your plan to use our content to sell your advertising is indistinguishable from a plan to steal our content to publish on your own website,” they wrote, including companies like Journal Media, Tribune and Schurz Communications.
The claim the brave company’s plan constitutes copyright infringement by posting material without the original advertisements.
Brave on Monday fought back, saying the media companies don’t understand how Web standards and browsers work. “Browsers are rather the end-user agent that mediates and combines all the pieces of content, including third-party ads and first-party publisher news stories. … Browsers are free to ignore, rearrange, mash-up and otherwise make use of any content from any source,” says Brave.
Brave says its replacement ads also will be targeted based on users’ browsing history, but that the raw data will not be shared with advertisers or publishers, reports MediaPost.
