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MACHINE AGE CARTOON

THE BURGLAR AND THE FENCE

By Zimbo · November 3, 2026

AI cartoon by Zimbo: Satirical cartoon: a masked lion in a BRAVE cap smashes through a PAYWALL brick wall carrying stacks of NYT newspapers and hands them to a grinning robot labeled AI, which pays him with a wad of cash.
A masked Brave lion smashes through the PAYWALL wall with an armful of NYT papers and sells them to a grinning AI robot, which pays him in cash.Zimbo for AI News Page

The story behind the cartoon

The New York Times sued Brave Software in Manhattan federal court on November 2, accusing the browser maker of scraping its copyrighted articles to build a search index of more than 30 billion webpages, then selling AI companies access to it.

The complaint calls Brave a burglar that misappropriates the content of publishers, and an AI fence that sells stolen content to third parties, naming Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI and Cohere as buyers, not defendants.

The suit also targets a Brave feature that bypasses paywalls and its practice of blocking publishers' ads while selling its own; the Daily News, Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel filed a near-identical suit the same day.

The lion broke down the paywall, stole the papers, and fenced them to the robots — and the only thing he left behind was the wall, in pieces.

READ THE FULL REPORT — TechCrunch ↗

MORE ZIMBO ↓

Satirical cartoon: a giant cheerful robot devours framed stock photographs at a tiny table while a ruined shareholder offers his last SHARES certificate on a dinner plate and the robot reaches for it with a fork.AI ATE THE STOCK PHOTO EMPIRE — GETTY GOES BANKRUPT, SHAREHOLDERS GET NOTHINGSatirical cartoon: a gloved judge's hand slaps a red DISQUALIFIED ribbon onto a microscope slide where a tiny machine labeled AI GENERATED prints fake cells under a SMALL WORLD microscope.NIKON STRIPPED A MICROSCOPE CHAMPION — THE 'CELLS' WERE AISatirical cartoon: a performer seen from behind holds up a refusing hand while a suited figure with an Amazon-smile orb head holds out an unsigned LIKENESS WAIVER form; behind them a machine with red lasers scans blank heads.NIC CAGE DIDN'T SIGN.Satirical cartoon: a glamorous AI comedian takes a bow on a comedy-club stage as papers stamped RECEIPTS rain down; behind the curtain a weary human comedian slumps beside a bin of crumpled pages, one reading ORIGINAL MATERIAL.THE JOKE WAS ALREADY OCCUPIED

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