NMA Files Amicus Brief Supporting Amazon's Legal Action Against Perplexity Over Unauthorized Scraping
Source: https://www.newsmediaalliance.org/news-media-alliance-files-amicus-brief-in-amazon-v-perplexity/
News
News/Media Alliance has filed an amicus brief in Amazon v. Perplexity, supporting Amazon’s lawsuit. The case centers on Perplexity’s alleged misrepresentation of its AI Agent to circumvent Amazon’s access controls and password-protected areas, despite Amazon’s explicit prohibition and technical blocking measures. This legal intervention marks NMA’s continued escalation of enforcement actions against AI systems that bypass publisher protections.
Why it matters
The amicus filing represents NMA’s deepest legal intervention yet in the AI scraping disputes that have defined its 2026 campaign. Following the April demand that Common Crawl establish scraping protections and the March AI licensing deal with Bria, NMA is now co-litigating foundational questions about whether circumventing technical and contractual barriers to access constitutes unlawful access or misrepresentation. A favorable ruling could establish precedent that AI agents cannot evade robots.txt, login requirements, or terms-of-service restrictions—reshaping compliance obligations across the AI-training infrastructure. Conversely, if the court finds Perplexity’s conduct permissible, it signals to publishers that technical and contractual defenses alone are insufficient, forcing a pivot to either statutory protection (DMCA, state equivalents) or wholesale licensing models like the Bria partnership.