A coalition of Norwegian media organizations has initiated legal action against Meta, arguing that the company's proposed changes to its business terms could allow it to collect articles, images, and videos from publishers' websites without consent for use in artificial intelligence products. The 10 media groups contend that the new terms would grant Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, the right to gather content, including material behind paywalls, to develop AI services. The Norwegian Media Businesses' Association (MBL) head, Lene Eltvik Vindfeld, stated that "Meta uses media groups' investments to develop artificial intelligence services that compete with them directly.
This is both unacceptable and distorts competition." The plaintiffs, which include public broadcaster NRK, and media groups Schibsted, Amedia, Polaris, and Aller, along with Norwegian news agency NTB, filed a request with the Oslo District Court for a provisional injunction against the terms' entry into force. The proposed terms of use would apply to all professional account holders, leaving them no option to opt out other than deleting their accounts.
Meta had initially announced changes to its Commercial Terms on October 8, with a planned rollout of October 30, but the company postponed the launch, stating the delay was "to allow more time for us to explain to our partners and stakeholders what's changing and what's not." The legal challenge by the Norwegian groups will test whether publishers can block the changes before they take effect. This dispute mirrors a wider issue, as since May, over 340 local and national news sites, including The Guardian, The New York Times, and USA Today, have blocked internet archive crawler bots to prevent data collection for AI model training.
Furthermore, in June, France’s competition authority warned Meta that its approach to copyright talks with news outlets could "seriously harm" the press.
