Norwegian news organisations are taking Meta to court in an attempt to stop its sweeping new rights for AI access to publisher content from being imposed.
The legal action in Norway is part of an unusually “swift and united” response from the international media industry against Meta.
The updated terms and conditions would effectively give Meta sweeping rights to scrape content from any publisher that uses Facebook or Instagram and reuse it – whether that content was published via those platforms or not.
Meta has delayed implementation of the new terms from 30 October to 20 November following publisher backlash.
Mediebedriftenes Landsforening (MBL), which represents news publishers in Norway, has now filed a request for a temporary injunction asking the Oslo District Court to stop the new terms and conditions from coming into effect until it has been able to decide whether they are legal.
MBL represents major Norwegian newspaper groups including Schibsted, Amedia, Polaris and Mentor Media, as well as business daily Dagens Näringsliv, and broadcasters NRK and TV2.
MBL noted that the Meta terms would mean “every single article, every picture and every video, even those behind paywalls, can be scraped. There is no way to say no. The only way out is to delete the account and lose contact with Norwegian Facebook and Instagram users.”
One Norwegian local newspaper, Fjell-Ljom in Røros, has already announced it will delete its official Facebook page and leave Meta altogether in response from 1 January. US local newspaper McKinley Park News is also deleting its accounts.
Olav Nyhus, legal director of public service broadcaster NRK, said it could not do the same as the organisation has an obligation to reach people and platforms like Facebook and Instagram have become so integral to distribution.
MBL chair Lene Eltvik Vindfeld said publishers fear Meta “will use this power to secure rights to journalism”.
She said: “Journalism requires investments in people, knowledge and presence. If technology companies are to use this work to build their own AI products, the media houses must be allowed to decide for themselves and be properly paid.”
Meta deleted a specific reference to AI training in its new terms in response to initial backlash but publishers say the revised wording, which includes allowing the used of scraped content to “develop, improve, research and maintain advertising and business products”, still covers Meta’s generative AI services.
Meta has said it will respect robots.txt blocks on AI scraping but this is not written into the terms.
Elsewhere in Scandanavia, Denmark’s national newspaper association Danske Medier and copyright organisation Danish Press Publications’ Collective Management Organisation (DPCMO) have jointly written to the national competition authority, while in Sweden several publisher associations have reported Meta to their competition watchdog.
Thomas Mattsson, vice chair of Utgivarna, the Swedish publishers’ organisation, told Press Gazette: “All the major media organisations in Sweden have criticised Meta’s new terms and reported the company to the competition authority.
“The major media companies are also following developments in Norway and other markets and are, of course, considering legal action if national regulators or the European Commission fail to act swiftly.
“I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed such a swift and united response from the media industry. Everyone, from journalists’ unions and copyright organisations to media associations and media companies, is joining forces against Meta, and we can only hope that Meta will now listen.”
Similarly Paul Deegan, president and CEO of News Media Canada, told Press Gazette: “Meta’s new terms of service have done more to unite publishers around the world than anything I’ve seen before.
“Meta’s action is a unilateral act of aggression against publishers of words, images, and songs. It’s anti-competitive and competition authorities around the world need to intervene and they need to do it before 30 November. They cannot be allowed to snatch copyright-protected content for free.”
News Media Canada was part of an op-ed published on Monday with global organisation WAN-IFRA and US-based News/Media Alliance which called for competition authorities around the world to intervene.
A version of the op-ed in Canada’s National Post said: “News publishers aren’t the only ones at risk – every publicly hosted word, song and image created in Canada – and everywhere else – is up for grabs if regulators don’t step in.”
A spokesperson for the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority told Press Gazette on Tuesday: “The CMA has been in urgent discussions with Meta on this important issue. Meta has now paused implementation until 20 November.
“We will continue to scrutinise these terms and engage with Meta and others as we consider our next steps.”
Also on Tuesday US Democratic Californian senator Adam Schiff wrote to Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg calling on the company to respond by 2 November with how it plans to address concerns.
He also urged Meta to add in specific guarantees that paywalls and robots.txt will be protected.
“Forcing publishers to choose between surrendering their off-platform IP or forfeiting a primary channel of public communication is a gross abuse of Meta’s power as a powerful platform with critical access to consumers,” Schiff wrote, according to Nieman Lab.
“Meta must not nullify federal IP protections and fair market competition through the unilateral insertion of fine print into terms of service contracts.”
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