Copyright Alliance Calls Meta's New Business Terms 'Unconscionable' Ahead of Nov. 20 Start

The Copyright Alliance has asked Meta to withdraw the new business terms it plans to apply to Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Messenger and WhatsApp on November 20. In a statement on October 27, the group said the changes "appear to authorize Meta to scrape and use websites and other content from commercial account holders," including to train and ground Meta's AI products, with no way to opt out.

The terms matter to more people than the name suggests. Meta's Commercial Terms apply to any use of its products "for a business or commercial purpose," and Meta lists examples that include "using ads, selling products, developing apps, managing a Page." An author who runs a Facebook Page or buys ads falls under them, and so does a publisher. The page now carries a notice that the updates "will go into effect on November 20, 2026."

What the Copyright Alliance says

Keith Kupferschmid, the alliance's CEO, called the terms "unconscionable." He said 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."

He acknowledged that Meta had already revised the wording after complaints, but said "those changes do not ameliorate our concerns." In his view, the revised terms still allow broad scraping and "allow Meta to ignore or circumvent protocols like robots.txt," the file site owners use to tell crawlers what they may not collect.

"This is not just a news media issue," Kupferschmid said, adding that "virtually every organization in the creative industry" has a business account with Meta. Since there is no opt-out, he said, account holders would have to accept the terms or close essential commercial accounts.

How the terms changed

The fight started with news publishers. As first written, the terms let Meta use content from websites linked to business accounts "to provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain the integrity" of its products, Ars Technica reported. After a backlash, Meta removed the word "train." The revised version lets Meta "periodically pull updates" from business users' websites to "provide, develop, improve, research, and maintain advertising and business products."

Meta told Ars that "the crawling terms we consolidated only applied to our ads and business products," that the change "does not change how Meta uses web crawlers," and that "content owners can use robots.txt to signal their preferences." Legal scholars were not convinced. Cornell law professor James Grimmelmann told Nieman Lab the "develop... advertising and business products" language was "still broad enough to drive a truck through."

The terms were due to start on October 30. Meta pushed that back to November 20, a Meta spokesperson told The Verge, "to allow more time for us to explain to our partners and stakeholders what's changing and what's not." By then the News/Media Alliance had written to Mark Zuckerberg, and publisher groups in the EU and UK had asked regulators to step in.

Why it matters for writers

Many authors with a Facebook Page link it to their own website, and many sell books from that site or post excerpts and sample chapters there. Under the new terms, that site is the kind of content Meta says it may pull from. Meta says content owners can still use robots.txt to signal their preferences, but that assurance is in a press statement, not in the terms themselves, which is the gap the Copyright Alliance and the legal experts keep pointing to.

There is no opt-out short of leaving Meta's business tools, which for most authors means giving up their Page and ads. Writers who want a say should know what their robots.txt file currently allows, keep an eye on whether Meta changes the wording again before November 20, and watch whether regulators in Europe or the UK act first.

Sources

• Copyright Alliance, October 27, 2026: Copyright Alliance Issues Statement on Meta's Proposed Commercial TOS Updates
• Meta: Meta Commercial Terms
• The Verge, October 23, 2026: Meta delays new business terms after publisher pushback on AI scraping
• Ars Technica, October 20, 2026: Meta drops the word "train" from its commercial TOS after AI backlash

Photo: The entrance sign at Meta's headquarters, 1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park, California, in May 2022. Photo by Nokia621, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.