• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, Yesterday

Perplexity, facing lawsuits and accusations in the U.S., is now being sued in Japan, giving the content-scraping issue a global cast. 

Yomiuri Shimbun, reportedly Japan’s largest newspaper with a circulation of six million, has filed a suit accusing Perplexity of copyright infringement, alleging that it has scraped 120,000 articles. The suit filed in Tokyo District Court seeks $14.7 million in damages and injunctive relief. 

Yomiuri Shimbun charges Perplexity with "free-riding on the results of the activities of news organizations, which have invested a great deal of effort and expense," The Japan Times reports.

These purported actions violate Japan’s Copyrights Act, the suit states.  

“Allowing this free ride would negatively impact accurate reporting backed by research and could undermine the foundation of democracy,” a Yomiuri Shimbun spokesperson says, according to WebPro News. 

This occurs shortly after BBC threatened Perplexity with litigation for allegedly using its content without permission. And Perplexity is fighting a lawsuit filed last year by Dow Jones and NYP Holdings, accusing it of “a massive amount of illegal copying of publishers’ copyrighted works and diverting customers and critical revenues away from those copyright holders.”

In addition, Cloudflare, which last month unveiled a system for blocking content scrapers, claims it sees stealth crawling behavior on the part of Perplexity.

On the other hand, Gannett and Perplexity have formed a strategic partnership that will allow Perplexity to license content from over 200 local publications and USA Today. And Perplexity has arrangements with numerous other publishers.