[pierrefar]

A search engine index is an economic exchange between the website and the publisher.

To massively (over)simplify the argument to its essence (and ignore other important points): the publisher goes through the trouble and expense of creating the content The publisher then allows its content to be copied by a search engine only because being shown in search results gets it traffic back. The traffic it gets in return has value, and the publisher is happy for this arrangement to continue as long as the value of the traffic is more than the cost of producing and serving the content.

Brave offering a "license", for its own financial benefit, to "allow" others to use the content for LLM training gives zero benefit to the original publisher. This is why I use words like "sleazy" to describe Brave's position.

This argument applies to Google and Microsoft. Right now both are failing at citing sources in their generative AI search results. That is terrible and I hope it's fixed soon, as otherwise they're being sleazy scrapers as much as Brave is.

Finally, I wholeheartedly disagree they what Brave is doing is for the "greater good". The fact they charge extra for the "license" to use the content for LLM training shows that.

[onli]

> A search engine index is an economic exchange between the website and the publisher.

A search engine index is a search engine index. It can have an economic impact, but it can not be an economic exchange, since it is a technical artifact.

Though I think I understand what you are trying to say - this is also a commercial relationship where both sides can profit. You are free to interpret the relationship between publishers and search engines with such a capitalist lense, that does not mean those mechanisms govern the actual rules. That a publisher is happy with what happens here is of no real concern. If any rules apply we are talking copyright, maybe media law, where happy is not a relevant category (ok, that of course can matter, it wouldn't here if the search engine uses a right).

I did not touch the LLM training data in my comment, as I did not read up on what Brave is really doing there. If Brave were really to sell complete texts from others, that would not be legal under copyright laws I'm familiar with, so I kinda doubt they do that.

[GoblinSlayer]

It doesn't look like there's a restriction. The content is publicly available to anyone.