Brave, the web browser with baked-in ad blocking unveiled in January by Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich, has come under fire from the NAA (Newspaper Association of America).

17 NAA members, together representing over 1,200 US newspapers, co-signed a letter to Brave branding its plans to replace publishers existing ads with its own as “blatantly illegal”, and stating that the media companies involved “intend to fully enforce their rights… including but not limited to statutory damages of up to $150,000 (£107,000) per work”.

“Your plan to use our content to sell your advertising is indistinguishable from a plan to steal our content to publish on your own website,” reads the letter, which you can see in full here. “Your public statements demonstrate clearly that you intend to harness and exploit the content of all the publishers on the web to sell your own advertising.”

In case it wasnt clear, the letter “expressly declines” Braves proposed business model, which would give publishers a cut of revenues and enable users to make Bitcoin donations to publishers, on the grounds that it “cannot begin to compensate us for the loss of our ability to fund our work by displaying our own advertising”.

Brave has struck back with a response on its blog, claiming that it does not “tamper with any first-party publisher content, including native ads that do not use third-party tracking”, though its worth noting that this certainly isnt the only – or even primary – source of ad revenue for most publishers.

Brave also refutes the NAAs claim that the cut being offered to publishers is an “unspecified percentage”. As we reported back in January, 55 per cent will go to publishers, with the remaining amount split equally between Brave, its ad partners and its users, and claims it will “actually pay the publishers more of the revenue shared through our system than most websites are getting now from third-party ads”.

“Make no mistake: this NAA letter is the first shot fired in a war on all ad blockers, not just on Brave,” the post reads. “Though the NAA never reached out to us before firing this shot, we would be happy to sit down with them for an opportunity to discuss how the Brave solution can be a win-win for our users and the publishers they browse. We will fight alongside all citizens of the internet who deserve and demand a better deal than they are getting from todays increasingly abusive approach to web advertising.”