[pierrefar]

The major problem with Brave search is their position about indexing and licensing content against the wishes of the website publisher. Their robot does not identify itself, meaning the publisher cannot use the standard robots.txt to block its crawling if the publisher so wishes. Incidentally, the robots.txt file has been used in court cases litigating if a search engine is legal or not.

Even worse, they state that Brave search won't index a page only if other search engines are not allowed to index it. It is morally not their right to make that call. A publisher should have full control to discriminate which search engine indexes the website's content. That's the very heart of why the Robots Exclusion Protocol exists, and Brave is brazenly ignoring it.

Even worse than that, the Brave search API allows you (for an extra fee) to get the content with a "license" to use the content for AI training? Who allowed them the right to distribute the content that way?

I wrote about all this here:

https://searchengineland.com/crawlers-search-engines-generat...

and more references elsewhere in this thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36989129

Amusingly, while I was writing my article, this got posted to their forums, asking about how to block their crawler:

https://community.brave.com/t/stop-website-being-shown-in-br...

No reply so far.

[yreg]

Hmm, I don't know, it doesn't seem obvious to me that it is unethical to disobey the publisher wishes.

If you post something to the open web, what's it to you who reads it and how? You can block some IPs but that's about it.

I don't know if Brave has a knowledge graph - if they do, I would understand objecting if they filled it in with “stolen” content. But I don't see what's the problem with search.

By the way, isn't everyone's favourite archive.is doing the same thing?

I have no strong opinion on this, curious to hear counter arguments.

[CaptainFever]

I’m just thinking that if website publishers are able to legally allow Googlebot but block other bots, it might contribute to the Google monopoly.

[pierrefar]

That would be bad, and it is already bad that Google and Microsoft control so much of search queries, but the decision about which search engine indexes a website is purely the publisher's.

[onli]

A publisher publishes. Once something is published, once something is public, the control a publisher has over the published thing is limited. For example, a publisher can not choose who reads a book after it is sold, who reads an article after it got printed. It is not a given at all that a publisher should have any say about being indexed. The search engine relies on a public fact - X wrote Y. That's legal (limitations apply).

The position of Brave of not accepting to be blacklisted if not all search engines are blacklisted is a pragmatic one. It works against Google's search monopoly, but still gives them some legal coverage since the robots.txt is not completely ignored, in case that indeed matters somewhere. I think it's an elegant approach well suited for the current state of the web, one that serves the greater good. And Brave, but that's completely fine.

[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.

[user_named]

You are completely wrong. A publisher controls the publication of a work, text or other, including it's duplication and licensing. Other companies cannot xerox a book and sell it. Clear?

[memefrog]

Indexing has clear analogues from before the Internet. It is obviously not copyright infringement. Quoting a small snippet to give context for a search result also obviously isnt copyright infringement.

[onli]

Clear?!

I specifically gave the example of selling it not being covered by what I'm talking about. But other parties can definitely "xerox" a book and read it. Use its content. Talk about what is written in it. Quote it. There are limits to the controlling rights of a publisher.

[cvalka]

No, it's not.

[yreg]

But why do you believe so?

[pierrefar]

I replied in detail elsewhere:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36993739

[jaharios]

This make me want to use Brave search now. When I use a tool I expect it that it serves me, not the material it provides.

> A publisher should have full control to discriminate which search engine indexes the website's content

If you want someone to not see what you publish block him yourself. Also why would you want to do that? Do you want google to own the web or something?

[pierrefar]

There is a a difference between a human being able to access content vs a search engine indexing it (and in the case of Brave, "licensing" it on).

I share your concern about Google having this much power, and I'd add that Microsoft Bing is equally bad but gets away with it because they're smaller. Still, the final decision about which search engine indexes a website is purely the publisher's.

[memefrog]

There is a difference between Americans and Chinese people but that doesnt mean discriminating on racial lines is justified. Just saying "there is a difference" isnt an argument. Indexing a website isnt the same as reading it, but it is a form of consumption and I see no reason why they should be treated differently.

And to use that analogy even further, if you want to block Chinese visitors you block Chinese IPs. You do not add a file called "countries.txt" containing "China block" and then expect Chinese users to see it and voluntarily cease to use it, and threaten to sue them if they don't.

Repeatedly asserting that "the final decision is with the publisher" is stupid. That is the point you seem to want to defend. Defend it! Give us a reason. Just saying the same thing over and over again doesnt make it true.

[Grimburger]

> There is a a difference between a human being able to access content vs a search engine indexing it

Much of the problem with search today arises from websites showing googlebot what it wants to see and showing real users. I have to manually remove entire domains from google search as they often appear 1st yet don't show any content without me signing up for an account. Clearly that's not what they are showing to google.

There should be no differentiation between a crawler and a human being with regards to what is being served.

[waithuh]

If the website owner wants google to own the web, they should be able to restrict their website. Nothing wrong with that.

[bastawhiz]

Let's say I pay for Kagi. Kagi is a tool that I'm using to avoid doing hard work manually. With relatively few exceptions, I can probably accomplish what I use a search engine for manually, but with much more time and effort. So I'm paying for a tool to assist me with my use of the web. A "user agent", you might even say.

It simply doesn't sound right to say which tool a user can use. It's literally the same as arguing that you should be able to block Firefox from accessing your website and it's Mozilla's fault that they don't respect your wishes as a webmaster to block Firefox exclusively. Or that a VPN doesn't publish its IP addresses so that you can block it. Or a screen reader that processes the text to speech in a way that you disagree with.

Philosophically it seems intuitive to say "I should be able to block a third party that is abusing my site" but it's ignoring the broader context of what "open web" and "net neutrality" actually mean.

I run a service for podcasters. There are podcast apps and directories that either ignorantly make unnecessary requests for content or have software bugs that cause redownloads. I could trivially block them, but I don't because doing so penalizes the end user who is ultimately innocent, rather than the badly behaved service operator. The better solution is primitives like rate limiting, which I use liberally. Plus, blocking anyone literally has a direct effect of incentivizing centralization on Apple, Spotify, etc. and making the state of open tech in podcasting even worse.

> the Brave search API allows you (for an extra fee) to get the content with a "license" to use the content for AI training? Who allowed them the right to distribute the content that way?

I don't think there's any court at this point that would back you up that freely published content annotated with full provenance cannot be scraped and published for a fee. Services like this have existed for decades. If you don't want your content scraped, put it behind a login. Especially considering this only applies when you allow other search engines and if you think Google and Bing aren't using your content to train AI, you're off your rocker.

[sangnoir]

> With relatively few exceptions, I can probably accomplish what I use a search engine for manually, but with much more time and effort. So I'm paying for a tool to assist me with my use of the web. A "user agent", you might even say

1. User agents should identify themselves

2. A crawler is not a User agent - it's an agent for Brave

>I don't think there's any court at this point that would back you up that freely published content annotated with full provenance cannot be scraped and published for a fee.

You can't end-run copyright like this: just because something is publicly available doesn't mean anyone can redistribute it. Look at the legal issues & cases relating to Library Genesis.

[bastawhiz]

> User agents should identify themselves

There is no rule that this is true, and many user agents exist _specifically to not be identified_. See Tor and other privacy-centric user agents.

> A crawler is not a User agent - it's an agent for Brave

You know, I thought "what does Wikipedia have to say on this matter?" and sure enough:

> Examples include all common web browsers, such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Safari, as well as some email readers, command-line utilities like cURL, and arguably headless services that power part of a larger application, such as a web crawler.

I can't even make that up.

> just because something is publicly available doesn't mean anyone can redistribute it

You're mistaking reselling content with providing access to it. By your logic, caching proxy servers would be illegal on the grounds of copyright. The physical act of downloading files necessarily creates copies of the data every step of the journey from the source server to you. There's a material difference between paying someone for a copy of some content and paying someone to fetch content for you on your behalf. Nothing about copyright law specifically requires the person physically acquiring the content is the one who ends up consuming it.

[memefrog]

Downloading something isnt redistributing it. It is your website. You provide what is on it to me. I send you an HTTP request. You dont have to respond. You do. I am not copying anything. Copyright simply isnt engaged at any point in this process.

[cvalka]

They are right and you are wrong. If some web page is publicly available, it should be indexed. Scraping neutrality, please.

[waithuh]

Heavily disagree. I own the server, thus the website. I should be able to allow or disallow any type of web crawler/scraper i want. Similar to how you cant easily regulate whats in a website without lawsuits and takedowns, you cant regulate how discoverable a website is.

[ric2b]

> I should be able to allow or disallow any type of web crawler/scraper i want.

You're certainly allowed to try, but I don't see why indexers should be mandated to collaborate with you. They serve their users, not you.

[tympious]

Will their users appreciate that they disregard the intent of the authors of what they index?

I mean, "allow" or "regulate" don't _really_ apply here - there was never any enforcement regime around robots.txt, just a convention based on the general expectation that you don't claim ownership of whatever passes your line of sight.

[tympious]

What if I want what I publish to be known only by word of mouth?

What if I consider (some or any of) my ideas to be un-indexable, not directly suitable to representation in any hierarchy other than those I may set them in?

[Grimburger]

Then you should hide them behind a url that isn't linked elsewhere on your site that you can easily propagate by word of mouth only.

    example.com/correcthorsebatterystaple

If you consider "word of mouth" to be public posts on a forum which millions can read at any time then block googlebot IP's

[jaystraw]

...after decades of what i considered friendship, here you are on hn talking about my horse battery staple

[tympious]

Yes, sorry, it was a rhetorical question in response to previous.

Taking either step you suggest (along with robots.txt or eqiv.), it would seem fair to expect that Brave, Bing, whomever, would not feel it their neutral/natural domain to include in a public index.

[memefrog]

Then dont publish it.

[vGPU]

> The Robots Exclusion Protocol is a mechanism for publishers to discriminate between what users and crawlers are allowed to access, and discriminate between different crawlers (for example, allow Bingbot to crawl but not Googlebot).

To me as a search engine end user, this kind of behavior is undesirable. Why would I want a website to selectively degrade my experience because of my choice in search engine or browser?

Brings back horrible flashbacks of “this website is only compatible with IE6”.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

Curious why cannot selectively block using IP address instead of user-agent string. According to HTTP specification, UA is not a required header. There is certainly no technical requirement for it in order to process HTTP requests. Of course, any website could block requests that lack a UA header. I never send one and it's relatively rare IME to see a site require it, but it's certainly possible.

[pierrefar]

This is explained more in the article I referred to, but briefly: Brave delegates crawling to normal Brave browsers, so it's a huge IP addresses pool, not a single IP address or range.

Also, these search crawls by the browser do not identify themselves beyond the Brave standard UA header, namely a plain Chrome user-agent string.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

According to Brave Privacy Policy, participation in the Web Discovery Project is "opt-in". How many Brave users have opted in to sending data to Brave.

How many Chrome users have opted in to sending data to Google.

Sometimes uninformed consent is not actually consent. These so-called "tech" companies love to toe that line.