It’s no surprise that you’d ignore blatant copyright violation, misrepresentation, and abuse of personal data when you’re a fan of the project.
I would love to hear how you think Ad Blocking is blatant copyright violation, or how linking to content on the internet is misrepresentation.
Every time the status quo has shifted in advertising people have claimed its illegal and a violation of copyright, but the courts have been much more nuanced. Thankfully in this kind of case you can't separate ad blocking and content discovery from what brave is doing, so if someone is going to pick a fight they will be picking the fight with Google, Microsoft and every other tech company out there not just with Brave
You're the bad guys here and you can't see it because you think everyone else is Google and Facebook and tracking people. People want nothing to do with either you or them. But clearly less to do with you.
I'm not surprised that the angle is "sure we're bad but people will have to go for the guys with big pockets first". At least you know you're the bad guys. That's something.
The idea you think I, someone with no affiliation with either Brave, or Google, or Tom, is a bad guy because I want to support content creators is laughable. I think the idea that there is a way users can control their personal information and still support content creators is really upsetting to people who are used to being able to dictate the terms of the internet and get wealthy off the backs of users and creators. I for my part won't let random corporations take my information and sell it to anyone who wants. I know that may make some people want to label me a bad guy and I am ok with that. They can continue to participate in that economy, and creators can block my browser. As long as they allow me to freely obtain their content I will use the systems I find useful to attempt to support an open and fair internet.
Brave apparently does (based on screenshots shared by others; in order to preserve my right to legal action in the future I'm very carefully never going to personally do anything that would require accepting Brave's ToS).
See my other comments in this thread for why A) that's a bad thing and B) if you work at Brave you should quit and hire a lawyer.
Also the idea your in more legal jeopardy working at Brave, then you are working at any other company is silly. There is a distinction in corporate liability between employees and officers of a company ( its why no Thanos employees have been held liable for the fraud there). It makes me wonder what is going on when I see people participating in such strong fearmongering. Especially when you are flat out wrong on some of the basic legal principles you are discussing.
Are you carefully vetting every single entity whose content you show this pop-up on (regardless of what description you choose to use to spin what it is) to make sure none of them have trademarks that could be enforced against you? Because if any of them do, game over. You can hem and haw and deflect and pretend to be helping creators as much as you like, but you don't have the legal right to appropriate someone else's mark to raise money.
And if you are vetting to make sure you don't pop up on anyone who has a trademark, what if that comes out in discovery when someone goes after you, and suddenly you get to answer questions about whether Brave knew that what they were doing might not be legal (as evidenced by the care they took around trademarks), did it anyway, and now it's really over.
And like I said elsewhere: when the shit hits the fan, what's your personal plan for Brave deciding that all your "helpful" comments here weren't authorized and were in fact misrepresenting them, which led to the terrible misunderstandings that provoked the legal action?
I'm trying my best to help you see the ways this can go badly. I'm also very sincere in my advice of "lawyer up". I'm not your attorney and this isn't legal advice, but I think you should have both an attorney and legal advice.
The folks who've run this scheme in the past were mostly small-time, and the worst that happened was they were forced to stop or retool because they weren't worth the effort of going after properly. Brave has attracted enough attention and money to be a lucrative target for someone to eventually turn into a smoking hole in the ground. Please, for your sake, fix this or get out of it ASAP.
You are wrong about this, there is lots of precedent to say this is legal, and even more to say that working at brave is not a legal liability. However I am not your lawyer, nor am I Brave's lawyer, or Tom's Lawyer. I am not at all related to anyone involved in this fight, I am just a lowly internet user who happens to think this is a good model for the future of the internet. Feel free to ignore me and continue to tell people the sky is falling.
If you take all your legal advice from people who repost whole movies onto youtube and put "no copyright intended" in the description as if it's a magic talisman, maybe.
But in the actual world, if you use someone else's trademark to make money, you're gonna have a bad time, and part of that bad time will be learning in excruciating detail what "public domain" and "fair use" actually mean.
"Something is viewable by the public on the internet" is not "public domain". Public domain means copyright has expired on the material, or that the material was for some reason never protected by copyright (such as certain works of the federal government, in the US). "Fair use" is a defense that can be raised to claims of copyright infringement, and uses a multi-factor test. None of the factors are "but it was there on the internet for me to take".
Neither of these involve trademarks, which are a different area entirely. Using someone else's trademark for your profit is very much not "public domain" and not "fair use", and will not end well.
This case was about google getting money while displaying parts of copyrighted material. The court ruled it was fair use. (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/834877-google-books-...)
This case ( still pending ) was about google being able to display parts of news stories without paying the authors ( the initial ruling was it was legal, but Germany was allowed to impose a "tax", current guidance is that even the tax may not be allowed and Google will be able to display the content ) https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/12/13/technology/13reut...
Since you referenced people who had the same idea as Brave and it was found to be illegal, would you care to reference those specific cases ?
You also keep citing copyright cases. You cited a case where the multi-factor test of fair use was met, without explaining why you think Brave would meet that test.
You have not yet provided evidence of a case ruling that all trademarks are "public domain" free for the "fair use" of anyone for any purpose, and therefore that trademarks provide no protection whatsoever. I await your attempt to do so.