Major Norwegian media companies have taken Meta to court over its proposed new commercial terms, raising concerns about the potential use of news content to train artificial intelligence models, broadcaster NRK reported Tuesday.
Members of the Norwegian Media Association (MBL) argue that the new terms would grant Meta the right to scrape every article, photo and video published by editorially controlled media outlets.
Major media organizations, including NRK, TV 2, Schibsted, Amedia, Polaris, Aller, DN, Mentor Medier, NTB and Hordaland Folkeblad, have asked the Oslo District Court to suspend Meta's new terms pending a judicial review of their legality.
"We believe that this should be legally assessed to see if this is actually in line with Norwegian law," said Lene Eltvik Vindfeld, chairwoman of the MBL.
NRK's legal director Olav Nyhus also said they "in no way" want Meta to be able to use their content to further strengthen platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
Nyhus added that it would not be easy to terminate agreements with Instagram and Facebook, as the platforms have become important channels for disseminating information.
"What Meta is doing is destroying the entire financial basis for journalism," he said, adding: "We believe that Meta's conduct and terms are a clear violation of competition law."
Meta recently revised its commercial terms to remove language that raised concerns about the potential use of news websites to train artificial intelligence models.
The revised terms specify that automated website crawling is intended to develop, improve, research and maintain advertising and business products.
The provisions still allow Meta to use automated tools, including web scrapers, bots and crawlers, to access and collect content from websites associated with businesses using its platforms.
An earlier version of the proposed terms included language about using collected material to "train" Meta products, prompting concerns among publishers and legal experts over the potential use of copyrighted news content for AI development.
Meta subsequently removed the reference and clarified that the crawling provisions apply to advertising and business products.
