Browsers are free to ignore…

“…The Web is a system that allows users to consume content in any combination and presentation that user-chosen software can achieve…Browsers are free to ignore, rearrange, mash-up and otherwise make use of any content from any source.”

— Brave Software, in response to a Newspaper Association of America complaint that its web browser is “blatantly illegal.”

Brave’s web browser replaces ads that use 3rd party tracking with ads that give users more privacy and security—and it it then returns up to 70% of ad revenue back to the publishers. https://brave.com/blogpost_4.html

The full quote:

"…The Web is a system that allows users to consume content in any combination and presentation that user-chosen software can achieve. 

Browsers do not just play back recorded pixels from the publishers’ sites. Browsers are rather the end-user agent that mediates and combines all the pieces of content, including third-party ads and first-party publisher news stories. Web content is published as HTML markup documents with the express intent of not specifying how that content is actually presented to the browser user. Browsers are free to ignore, rearrange, mash-up and otherwise make use of any content from any source.

If it were the case that Brave’s browsers perform “republication”, then so too does Safari’s Reader mode. The same goes for any browser with an ad-blocker extension installed, or the Links text-only browser, or screen readers for the visually impaired."