Copyright Alliance Issues Statement on Meta’s Proposed Commercial TOS Updates

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Eileen Bramlet ebramlet@copyrightalliance.org

Washington, DC—On November 20, Meta will update its business-related Terms of Service (TOS) for its products, including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads, and WhatsApp. The changes appear to authorize Meta to scrape and use websites and other content from commercial account holders for Meta’s business products, including to train and ground Meta’s AI products. There is no opt-out option available, so the only way to avoid these terms would be for a business partner to unilaterally sever its relationship with Meta and its massive audience.

In a statement by Copyright Alliance CEO Keith Kupferschmid about Meta’s proposed TOS updates, he noted, “The new terms of service that Meta intends to put into practice are unconscionable. They could allow Meta to scrape any business user’s content and use that scraped content, much of which is protected by copyright, in Meta’s own business products, including for advertising, and to train and ground the company’s AI products. While Meta did make additional changes to its terms in response to justified objections, those changes do not ameliorate our concerns. The revised terms continue to allow for broad scraping of websites and unjustified exploitation of content for generative AI purposes. They also allow Meta to ignore or circumvent protocols like robots.txt used to indicate a request to disallow scraping.

“This is not just a news media issue. Virtually every organization in the creative industry (and most other industries) has a business account with Meta to enable them to manage Facebook pages, Threads accounts, Instagram profiles, and WhatsApp channels. The negative impact of Meta’s updated commercial terms would be so far-reaching that all businesses and creators with online content, such as photographers, newspapers, artists, you name it, would be adversely affected.

“Further, because there is no ability to opt out of these terms, Meta’s updated terms would force business account holders to either accept these terms or individually terminate essential commercial accounts, which is extremely difficult given Meta’s market power.

“This approach to doing business is wholly unacceptable. We strongly urge Meta to withdraw the changes to the TOS and to address the significant concerns voiced by the Copyright Alliance and many others.”

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ABOUT THE COPYRIGHT ALLIANCE

The Copyright Alliance is a non-profit, non-partisan public interest and educational organization representing the copyright interests of over two million individual creators and over 15,000 organizations in the United States, across the spectrum of copyright disciplines. The Copyright Alliance is dedicated to advocating policies that promote and preserve the value of copyright, and to protecting the rights of creators and innovators. The Copyright Alliance is the unified voice of the copyright community, and the views espoused may not reflect the specific views of any individual or organization. For more information, please visit our website.