Yet another Hacker News

Meta’s new commercial terms will allow the scraping of news sites: experts

455 points 0in 1 day ago 167 comments

Centigonal 1 day ago | parent

This is some next level legal judo. Say what you want about the metaverse or muse, but it's clear that Meta is still innovating when it comes to its Terms of Service.

rf15 1 day ago | parent

the scariest engineers are financial and legal engineers

godwinson__4-8 1 day ago | parent

Scary in what sense?

Those are certainly among the most interesting engineers. For example, what were the American Founding Fathers, if not "legal engineers" (and certainly many of them were also "financial engineers", given this was one of their most pressing needs).

I guess if you find yourself preferring the status quo all the time they might be scary but given I can't think of any time in history where the status quo was totally desirable I'm not sure what there is to be scared of exactly.

Could you be more specific?

willy_k 1 day ago | parent

My interpretation was that they’re referring to legal/financial engineers in the context of corporate butheshareholderism, where rather than trying to e.g. build a good nation, the goal is to maximize profits.

mym1990 1 day ago | parent

These are two types of engineers that, at some places, aim to find loopholes that immensely help themselves while immensely hurting others, maybe as collateral, maybe by design. The fact that you’re so gung-ho about this…is alarming.

zargon 1 day ago | parent

What is the word for this type of troll that feigns lack of understanding?

dgellow 1 day ago | parent

Gaslighting

crashabr 1 day ago | parent

sea lions

Planktonne 1 day ago | parent

From this Wondermark comic [1].

[1] https://wondermark.com/c/1062/

Razengan 1 day ago | parent

> Could you be more specific?

They're shifty fuckers enabling greedy scummy fuckers to make everything shittier forever for everyone in the world except themselves.

rf15 1 day ago | parent

The biggest magic trick of the people that make the world burn is to convince themselves that it's not worth looking out the windows of your home.

qs1ykyusPlate 1 day ago | parent

found one

chii 1 day ago | parent

That's because they don't need to follow the laws of physics, so anything that can be imagined is possible.

rf15 1 day ago | parent

well arguably they are still trying to wrestle with theorising what they can get away with, so there are clear limitations.

isolay 1 day ago | parent

given enough money you can get away with anything.

kotaKat 1 day ago | parent

No, it's the pick-up artists. They're the ones that know how to find ways to get around saying "no" to touch what they wanna touch even if the rest of us didn't want them to.

Turneyboy 1 day ago | parent

That's a bit of a stretch of the term engineer

isolay 1 day ago | parent

This is some next-level newspeak euphemism. I foresee a stellar career in PR or the ministry of propaganda.

notpushkin 23 hours ago | parent

That was a joke. (I assume, at least?)

SkyBelow 21 hours ago | parent

Does it need to be a joke?

"Innovating" is often used in situations we consider good and sometimes we begin to associate it with some positive moral/ethical weight, but that is an incorrect association. Innovating on something is only as good or as bad as that something is. Innovating on something bad is thus bad.

The grand parentonly called out being innovative on "Terms of Service" without assigning "Terms of Service" a good or bad moral weight. I think we can read some implication from the short post, but (IMHO) the best part is that it can just as easily be read as a criticism of the wider concept of "Terms of Service" as of Meta itself.

MSFT_Edging 23 hours ago | parent

In a just world, meta wouldn't exist like this. I fail to see any benefit in a company like this. I can't think of a single useful product or advancement they've made besides creating the page that makes grandma go insane and young people everywhere to hate themselves.

They're pointedly worse than most other social media. Even twitter doesn't really pretend they're anything but a place to say slurs now that "comedy is legal".

Meta feels so much more nefarious due to how 99% of their business is quiet deals with data brokers and ad buyers, and they just smile and nod as if they make anything positive at all. It feels like a company that makes most of it's money selling heroin, but they have a cute storefront so they get a pass.

bdcravens 22 hours ago | parent

> I can't think of a single useful product or advancement

> They're pointedly worse than most other social media.

I agree that there's a lot wrong, but both Marketplace and Groups are actually pretty valuable and useful. To say that Facebook is just a feed of memes and politics is reductive.

MSFT_Edging 21 hours ago | parent

Marketplace is a far worse replacement for Craigslist in the North American market.

It hides what you're searching for, ignores your distance filters, and fills your results with items that are essentially ebay cross-listings. The pictures are extremely compressed so you're unable to validate the item from pictures before reaching out.

The only benefit is many people already have a facebook account, but now I'm unable to delete my facebook account because marketplace is the predominant classified sales channel in most areas. It was a EEE style effort to collect more data on people.

The past few years there have been persistent spam campaigns against Craigslist in various areas of the for-sale classifieds. It wouldn't surprise me if meta was behind it.

Groups are in a similar vein. They've put a log-in barrier on various communities, lowering the barrier to entry tech-wise, but forcing people into their ecosystem when forums have existed for years.

These are bad services. They gain traction due to facebook's other malicious actions.

marricks 21 hours ago | parent

> Marketplace and Groups are actually pretty valuable and usefu

Craigslist created a new way to sell things and built up to what it is (was?) on being usable, having enough trust, and not fucking it up. Literally anyone could replicate that and add a shiny UI to rival it if they had a giant social network to support it.

Hyperbolic analogy: it's like pinning a medal to the guy who invented the roadside billboard and completely passing over the dude who actually invented the car.

In the long run the only innovating Facebook is going to do over Craigslist is monetization, and that just sucks for users.

hefner1456 19 hours ago | parent

craigslist and meetup worked fine before facebook got everyone to leave them

snovymgodym 20 hours ago | parent

That's the system we live under here.

You either have a government capable of controlling its corporations or you get corporations capable of controlling the government.

tantalor 1 day ago | parent

That's bundling.

Terr_ 1 day ago | parent

I agree there are anti-trust/monopoly issues here, but I'm not sure if if that's the right term.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_(antitrust_law)

phyzome 1 day ago | parent

"Will consent", that's some interesting phrasing in the current post title.

ChrisArchitect 1 day ago | parent

Title is: Meta’s new commercial terms will allow the scraping of news sites, (legal) experts say

gumby 1 day ago | parent

I don’t use Facebook much but the last time I logged in I was surprised to discover that I am now a business and can’t change it back.

nozzlegear 1 day ago | parent

Is this what Americans mean by corporate personhood?

SoftTalker 1 day ago | parent

When you let someone else host your content, you don't control your content.

sailfast 1 day ago | parent

This company is poison. You have built a few things people liked, bought some other things people really liked, and then used that good will to completely screw over the entire internet.

I know why you haven’t quit yet, but you probably should right? You’ve got your vested shares and you’re comfortable. Why are you still doing this to us?

techmunky 1 day ago | parent

One could argue that if you hate these megacorps then the best thing you can do (as an engineer)is to work for them and purposefully be a monkey wrench in the cogs. Be competent enough to not get fired, maximize the company resources you take up while minimizing your output. Delay delay delay and if you're really good at it, never deliver. Take as much of their time and money as possible and give as little back. Thats basically what they're doing to the rest of us. And when its gets too evil you can always leave. In the meantime you are taking up headcount that could have actually advanced their goals further, faster, evil-er.

Madmallard 1 day ago | parent

You'd be doing something evil the very first week

sailfast 23 hours ago | parent

Maybe? But I don’t think most folks working for these companies are trying to get hired as insurgents employing the CIA handbook. Slowing down Facebook resource-wise as an engineer would only expedite the rent-seeking behavior. This also assumes manager incompetence and not getting fired - which I’d buy for a few months but years would require some spy-level dedication.

tedeh 1 day ago | parent

That's terror. Terror built into the system.

Terr_ 1 day ago | parent

I really hoped Deus Ex would become less relevant to real-world problems as the years went on, but here we are...

> "[T]hey'll give people some freedom, but essentially it will be 20th-century capitalism: a corporate elite protected by laws and tax-codes."

schnebbau 1 day ago | parent

This is not a healthy way to think. Meta strong-arming news websites is not the beginning of the end. Get off the internet and try to enjoy your life.

SomeHacker44 1 day ago | parent

I am not a lawyer, but I can't see how any court would enforce this unconscionable term in a clickwrap license.

free_bip 1 day ago | parent

It's really a miracle that any judicial system considers "clicking accept without reading" to be a valid form of binding contract in the first place.

thayne 1 day ago | parent

And that they let businesses change the license at any time, with just an email notification, and the only way to opt out of the new terms is to stop using the service.

godwinson__4-8 1 day ago | parent

How else would you "opt out"? You want to have your cake and eat it too?

Most people don't care about the Terms of Service. Would you have a more positive assessment of the judicial system if it infantilized its citizens? If someone doesn't read it the first time or ignores an email what is the system supposed to do? Stand over your shoulder and make you read it? Do you want citizens to be prosecuted for signing things on the theory they didn't actually read them?

What number of people actually read the terms, actually read the new terms, decide they don't like the new terms, but after caring this much decide they don't want to "opt out" (I'm still not clear what remedy you want to invent for this)? Do you think this number is so high that you should be shocked that for some reason this is not a priority? I'm not even sure you've actually articulated a problem.

Is there a Terms of Service change you find particularly offensive that might better explain your concerns here? If so, I would be interested to hear you describe it with greater specificity.

bluefirebrand 1 day ago | parent

> How else would you "opt out"? You want to have your cake and eat it too

If the TOS changes you should be automatically opted out until you explicitly accept the new agreement

That way if you stop using the service because of the new TOS, it actually means your old activity is still bound by the previous TOS not the new one. Weird how that's never an option though.

godwinson__4-8 1 day ago | parent

> If the TOS changes you should be automatically opted out until you explicitly accept the new agreement

Does it not work this way? Don't the terms you sign often say something like these terms can be updated at any time? Yet they still often want you to agree to the new terms to proceed, right?

> That way if you stop using the service because of the new TOS, it actually means your old activity is still bound by the previous TOS not the new one.

Are you suggesting a statutory remedy? What is the average diff of a terms change? Are they really that meaningful? I would think the scope of what they can actually change is controlled by various other areas of law. If you don't accept the new terms are you concerned your old data is going to be used in a new way, while you remain opted out of the future? Is that actually how it works? It feels like it would not, which I gather is why they often want you to explicitly accept the new terms.

Once again it would be helpful if a specific change or event was brought up here that better explained your concerns. I feel like there are times when I am forced to agree to new terms to continue using the service, and other times where it feels like I am not. I would suspect this relates to some controlling law regarding the nature of the update itself, as not all updates are equally meaningful?

thayne 19 hours ago | parent

> How else would you "opt out"? You want to have your cake and eat it too?

I should have the option to continue using the old terms. If they want to be able to change the terms after I initially agree to them, then the initial terms need to explicitly state how long the terms are good for, and they can't be changed before that. No "we can change the terms at any time". And yes, to accept the new terms, they should require that I explicitly acknowledge the changes, not just assume that I read an email lost in all the marketing spam they send me.

> Is there a Terms of Service change you find particularly offensive that might better explain your concerns here?

Changes in terms that I've found offensive include:

- Requiring that I don't participate in any class-action lawsuits or arbitration

- Using my data to train AI

- Limiting the devices I can use the service on

- Allowing them to share my data with third parties

- etc.

Admittedly, I haven't always opted out. But largely because I don't have much of a choice, in many cases there either isn't a realistic alternative to switch to, or all the alternatives have similar terms, which is it's own problem.

As for what changes I would like to see:

- There should be well-defined limits on what can be put in a ToS. Ex. you can't prohibit participating in class-action lawsuits. There should be a process for appealing arbitration to an actual court. etc.

- For paid subscriptions/license any ToS apply for the duration of the subscription/license. They cannot force you to change the terms until your current subscription expires. For on-demand or free services, they must guarantee the terms won't change for some period of time.

- They must provide easily understandable terms or at least easily understandable (and accurate) descriptions of the terms, that don't leave out subtle loopholes for the company.

- If the terms do change, they notify you with enough notice that you have time to migrate off of the platform before the new terms take affect.

- The new terms can't be retroactively applied to data I gave them before the change in terms, unless I specifically opt in.

godwinson__4-8 17 hours ago | parent

These are some good concrete answers on proposed changes, thanks.

Sounds like things to be codified in statutory regulations. I suspect some of these must exist in bills somewhere, will enjoy checking on that later. Have a good day!

VladVladikoff 1 day ago | parent

In Canada at least it currently has the same level of legal binding as signing a paper contract with a pen.

what 1 day ago | parent

It’s not really different from paper contracts. Nobody reads them, they just sign where they’re told to.

GrantMoyer 23 hours ago | parent

I regularly fully read and try to understand paper contracts before signing them. Every time, it's clear that no time was set aside for me to read the contract, and the other party expected me to sign the contract within a few seconds of first receiving it. Often, I get the sense that the other party is annoyed or frustrated that I take time to read the contract before agreeing to it.

I've read that contracts fundamentally require a "meeting of the minds", where two parties come to a mutual understanding of an agreement. At the same time, overwhelming people are expected to not read and understand contracts they agree to. I don't understand how these two facts don't combine to mean the vast majority of written contracts are not legally binding, but apparently judges don't share my confusion.

esikich 1 day ago | parent

Is it illegal to scrape websites? Idk, feels like consenting to being filmed in public, it's already legal.

clort 1 day ago | parent

I don't know about the USA, but it seems that generally filming in public where you catch sight of passerbys and filming a specific person in public spaces are wildly different things.

If I stand outside your house and follow you all day recording your every moment in a public space, is that legal or has that turned into harassment? Certainly in many countries, filming an incidental person may be legal but filming them in detail and from every angle is not (eg upskirting)

nradov 1 day ago | parent

This is an agreement between two businesses, not a clickwrap license being forced upon consumers. Businesses have plenty of alternatives to Meta; they can just close their accounts if they don't like the terms.

thayne 1 day ago | parent

That's a bold move. I imagine a lot of businesses will leave Meta over this. And if their gamble pays off, and businesses can't afford not to advertise on Meta platforms, then there is probably a good antitrust case for them abusing their oligopoly power.

VladVladikoff 1 day ago | parent

Doubt it. Most are already being scraped by meta and do nothing about it because they lack the technical competency to even notice it.

AznHisoka 1 day ago | parent

There have been many many reasons for businesses to leave Meta over the past decade, and almost none of them have

consensus1 1 day ago | parent

Why? Let's say I am a restaurant. How is Meta's activity here damaging to my business?

olalonde 1 day ago | parent

In Meta's defense, I don't think you actually need a business' consent to scrape their website.

dawnerd 1 day ago | parent

No but they’re covering themselves as they’re also making fake accounts to bypass login walls. Probably to avoid a similar nitter issue.

kazinator 1 day ago | parent

No, but you do in order to rebroadcast some content they created themselves. If they obtain this consent from a business, then that business cannot find some piece of their copyrighted stuff in Meta's AI output and launch a copyright complaint.

bredren 1 day ago | parent

Do business accounts on FB provide user activity data, such as checkout completion, user acquisition funnels, or other useful labeling of web behavior?

Because the scrapes become more interesting once combined with such information.

bmink 1 day ago | parent

You have to set up a Meta Pixel and include it into all your webpages for that. Then these events become visible in the Meta Events Manager.

troyvit 1 day ago | parent

You don't need their consent, but they don't suffer if they block you. Now Meta is saying they would be breaking their TOS.

sandeepkd 1 day ago | parent

I do not want to be cynical, yet my reading is that they are most likely doing it already. This is to provide a legal cover to it.

amluto 1 day ago | parent

I don’t really understand the legal theory here. Party A (Meta) writes a contract with Party B (a business account holder) ostensibly granting A the right to scrape B’s website and a license to the content.

But why is there any presumption that B owns the content or has any right to grant this license? It’s extremely common for a publisher to license content from a third party under terms that may not allow this sort of sublicencing. What happens if the publisher can’t grant this license?

edmundsauto 1 day ago | parent

Isn’t the reasonable expectation that publishers don’t transfer rights they don’t own?

What happens if the publisher has a license granted by their tier1 but their tier1 can’t grant this license?

spiderfarmer 1 day ago | parent

Big Tech will tell you that you care too much.

bluGill 21 hours ago | parent

They will.

However some court will eventually tell them no. Big tech has gotten away with a lot, and courts try to be hands off. However eventually the power rests with the government not big tech and so when the courts decide to act they can strike much harder than big tech.

kazinator 1 day ago | parent

> But why is there any presumption that B owns the content or has any right to grant this license?

Because they placed the content on a public website.

> What happens if the publisher can’t grant this license?

Then it's unlikely that the content is something they themselves have the rights to broadcast on their website.

mopsi 1 day ago | parent

Dead wrong on both points. Having a license to publish something on a website does not mean that the publisher has the right to grant sublicenses or transfer the license to someone else. For example, stock image licenses are normally non-sublicensable and non-transferable.

kazinator 1 day ago | parent

But Meta is not asking for anything of the sort, like you must assign to us the rights to use stock images. Just consent to the scraping activity.

The publisher using stock images does have the right to transmit those images to visitors. Those visitors don't have the right to incorporate the images into their own public work that they rebroadcast. But Meta isn't asking for that; they want consent from the business to scrape. The subsequent copyright violation is then a matter between Meta and the vendor of the stock images.

rprwhite 1 day ago | parent

You’re missing half the picture here. It’s not the scraping that’s the big problem, it’s what the rest of the TOS say they can do with everything they get from scraping your site. Like use it to train their AI and provide responses to people questions. That’s part is the real legally contentious part, for a multitude of reasons. I imagine they see this as a way of getting around things like Australia’s requirement they pay a fee to news outlets if they show their content. The TOS also says they can create fake accounts on your site, for scraping. Which means if you have anything on your site, that you don’t have full legal rights to distribute and use in any fashion you like, you are at significant legal risk if you continue to use anything meta after 30 October.

kazinator 1 day ago | parent

I'm not missing anything. I just don't believe that by granting those permissions you're making the legal representation that you are licensing third party material. The request is not worded in those terms, even, just as a consent to engage in scraping and subsequent uses of the material. For those materials that you do own, the consent does amount to licensing. For materials you don't own, the consent only covers the activity of scraping; you consenting to the material being used for training simply means nothing. You have attested that you have no objection to that. That doesn't remove the copyright holder's right to have an objection. All those things they are asking for, any visitor can engage in without any permission, and everyone knows it.

Imagine someone asks you: see that guy across the street? Do I have your consent to search his pockets? If you say yes, what does it mean? Precisely nothing.

Suppose you are asked: do I have your consent to search the pockets of everyone in this neighborhood? If you say yes, it still means nothing with regard to the guy across the street, who has not given any constent, but you've consented to your pockets being searched.

fauigerzigerk 1 day ago | parent

>Imagine someone asks you: see that guy across the street? Do I have your consent to search his pockets? If you say yes, what does it mean? Precisely nothing.

I think if you have some kind of authority over the place where this happens and/or if you facilitate an illegal action then you could be breaking the law.

kazinator 19 hours ago | parent

Well, you are not in an analogous position of authority with regard to some licensed stock images or whatever. You are not the guardian of their copyright, charged with defending them from illegal copying. You were licensed those images knowing that the world-wide public will fetch copies of these images and do whatever they want.

If you signed some agreement whereby you pledge to protect licensed images from AI scraping bots, then signing off on a consent to Meta would breach that agreement.

There is no such agreement. Licensees of images are understood to be broadcasting them to the entire world, including anonymous visitors.

shevy-java 1 day ago | parent

> Because they placed the content on a public website.

I don't think this is a very good argument. For instance, if I have a company, called 'tickle-cats', I may expect regular customers to go and tickle a cat for, say, 1 cent, as cost. So I would expect regular people to visit my homepage.

I may not necessarily expect or want to have bots, scrapers and what not, per se. I may have this by extension - possibly, e. g. to rank a website more highly. But bots and so forth are not my real target audience to begin with (and some are just malicious, trying to disrupt the business); some company owners may want to not have to do anything with them (bots, crawlers etc...). That's just one example of many more; I don't think the distinction "public versus private" is the only one that can be applied here.

kazinator 16 hours ago | parent

All you are saying is that scraping is an undesirable form of access, different from authentic access.

However, it is something that happens, and when you license copyrighted material to someone such that they have permission to serve it to visitors on their website, they are not automatically required to be a cop guarding your material against scraping.

There is an understanding that public-facing content gets scraped and used for AI training and whatever else. Someone licensing content into that role is accepting that reality.

Also, anyone in their right mind granting consent to Meta for scraping will still block them from doing that. That action speaks louder that the consent. If some content licensor accuses you of giving Meta consent to steal their material, you can point to your implemented physical defense against that and argue that the only way it could be happening is if Meta are circumventing your utmost efforts block scraping.

another-dave 1 day ago | parent

When pubs & cafés play music here in the UK they pay royalty fees to PRS for Music.

If I record the songs playing & they sell bootleg CDs, I don't have a defence of "but it was played in public, so all copyright was waived". That's not how copyright works.

kazinator 20 hours ago | parent

There is no question that Meta violates copyright; what is in question is whether the business whose website they are scraping is doing something illegal w.r.t. third party licensed material by consenting.

If the musician gives someone consent to record (plus subsequently use the material in various ways) then in fact they do waive some of the copyright with regard to any of their original songs. The consented party has been given an implicit license to the material within the bounds expressed in the consent.

The status of the licensed songs is not affected whatsoever, and the musician has made no legal representation in regard to that. The musician is paying the royalty fees to PRS and doing everything they are supposed to.

The musician can say, "you have my consent to record and use the recordings, but be aware that some of the songs are copyrighted by a third party and I'm using them under license. Nothing I say gives you right over those songs."

g-b-r 1 day ago | parent

Is that different from them doing whatever with your data, without knowing if that's actually messages written by you, pictures of you alone taken by you etc?

jeswin 1 day ago | parent

Not a lawyer, but what if someone did this:

- Find examples of content that will constitute infringement. Then send Meta legal a notice saying here are examples where the publisher does not own the content, and their scraping is not legal. Our current/future clients will be damaged by Meta's planned actions.

This might elevate it to willful infringement.

bluGill 21 hours ago | parent

Just register the copyright on things that you expect Meta to use. Registering a copyright is cheap and gives you the right to sue for triple damages for any infringement after the copyright is registered. You must have a registered copyright to sue, if you register the copyright after the infringement you can only sue for actual damages.

Consult a real lawyer if this matters to you. The above is my understanding of the law, but I'm not a lawyer and different countries have slightly different laws.

jenadine 1 day ago | parent

Not a lawyer, but my understanding is that crawling is a gray area. By putting that into their terms of service that most of the planet is agreeing to, they protect themselves in the case someone complains.

Also, this is about crawling and has little to do with the license of the contents.

spiderfarmer 1 day ago | parent

Not a lawyer, but my understanding is that if a Big Tech company doesn't explicitly rule out using your data, they're using your data. And if they rule it out explicitly, they will eventually still use your data.

mmahemoff 1 day ago | parent

In this case, Party B is sandwiched between Party A (scraper such as Meta) and Party C (the third-party content provider). The scraping agreement dictates A-B relationship and the licensing agreement dictates B-C relationship. Devil is in the fine print as far as what is allowed in both agreements.

Party B has already committed to uphold B-C. Entering A-B may put them at risk of violating that agreement by appearing to grant Party A rights that Party C never granted to anyone but Party B (and maybe even rights that Party B doesn't enjoy). Party B's options are don't consent to A-B (e.g., withdraw from Meta program), take down the Party C content (which would suck if they've already paid for it), or negotiate a carve-out with one or both of Parties A and C.

(IANAL)

stymaar 1 day ago | parent

That's the (evil) genius in Meta's terms: they get the right to scrap out of thin air, and the only party liable to the scraping is B.

kerenskiy 1 day ago | parent

IANAL, but copyright binds everyone regardless of entering into any agreement. In that case Meta would still be potentially liable for its infringement, exactly because "thin-air right" is not a thing. B could not grant it, because they don't have it.

dspillett 1 day ago | parent

The problem there is that both B and C are pulley much smaller than Meta. Copyright and other IP law at the scale of meta has become something that only really works for those with significant resources.

stymaar 1 day ago | parent

AFAIK scraping itself doesn't go against copyright, only redistribution matters with respect to copyright (which is why B and C must have an agreement together).

mountainb 1 day ago | parent

A license is a contract or contract term waiving certain rights to sue. That’s what a copyright license is. And yes, you cannot issue a valid license if you don’t have the right to do that.

What these kinds of platform agreements usually say is that you, the licensor, agree that you are fully representing that you can issue that license, and that any infringement is thus your fault and not the platform-licensee’s. Under the DMCA and other sources of law this is plausible.

forgotaccount3 22 hours ago | parent

> What these kinds of platform agreements usually say is that you, the licensor, agree that you are fully representing that you can issue that license, and that any infringement is thus your fault and not the platform-licensee’s.

I know the comment is brief, but it's important to understand what it means when the infringement is 'your fault'.

If it's B's fault that it caused A to infringe on the copyright license of C, then that would be handled by B indemnifying A against a charge from C. C can still sue A, C can still win a suit against A, A would then utilize the contract with B to get reimbursed from B.

If B is small and can't afford to reimburse A, that's A's problem. If B goes out of business, that's A's problem.

In my field, we require this indemnification fairly frequently as we distribute content created by others where it's impossible to fully guarantee that content leaves us with no liability, in a reasonable timeframe of distribution.

We have many processes that give us a best effort to prevent us from distributing content that we would be financially liable for. We have processes where we let things go which are gray area, but the client has posted a bond with us and signed an indemnification agreement sufficient to cover the potential fine we may face if the content was an issue. Or we reject the same content from others who don't have that signed agreement and haven't posted that same bond. Sometimes we sign an agreement without a bond because we've had decades of experience with the client and the number of violations is small enough that we would eat the cost.

amluto 21 hours ago | parent

I wish that there were well defined, common sense limits on indemnification and liability for misrepresentations.

Compare both to bona fide insurance markets. If I buy insurance, there is a defined maximum payment. And if I defraud the insurer, I get in trouble. And the insurer knows that they’re getting into, and they understand the risks and get compensated appropriately.

When some random consumer contract states that the consumer indemnifies the service provider, the consumer usually has no idea what this means and probably literally never sees the contract text. There is rarely a limit specified and, if there is, it’s probably basically a joke. And the benefit to the consumer rarely has anything to do with the risk (in fact, often the consumer pays and supposedly indemnifies the party they’re paying).

And then we get to representations. In a real B2B contract negotiated by lawyers both sides, the representations are generally relevant, everyone does them, and the replying party is expected to do due diligence. But in contracts like this Meta thing, to the extent that there is a representation that the publisher can issue a license:

a) That representation has nothing to do with the actual reason the publisher is entering into a relationship with Meta (the customer probably just wants to run ads or use business messaging)

b) The customer is extremely unlikely to have had a lawyer review the contract and Meta would not allow any good faith negotiation anyway.

c) Meta is not doing due diligence.

I feel like some combination of a, b and c should invalidate Meta’s right to rely on the representations and, in an ideal world, would even serve as evidence of bad faith on Meta’s part and serve to shift additional liability to Meta.

DannyBee 17 hours ago | parent

IP Lawyer here - no, it's not plausible.

Copyright is strict liability. You do not have to have knowledge or intention to violate copyright, that only goes to the types of damages.

Unintentional copyright violation, or believing you have a license, is not a defense to infringement.

I have no idea what you mean by "under the DMCA and other sources of law it is plausible". The DMCA is irrelevant here, and you give no "other source of law".

throwaway09F9 16 hours ago | parent

I hereby grant all HN users and not users the right to copy, modify and redistribute any and all text and binary on the Internet and outside the Internet, already existing or yet to be created, forever and 1 day.

Onavo 1 day ago | parent

If they really want to be spiteful they can rewrite all the news articles they post to Meta using Muse. Then we can finally see if the theories of statistical model collapse hold up at the trillion param level model scale.

vineyardmike 1 day ago | parent

I'd really be curious to see how much of Muse and similar 2026 models are actually from scraping, especially from this hypothetical unsorted random sites.

My understanding is that most of the gains after the early GPT-3 "add more weights" era have come from post-training from synthetic data, especially through reinforcement learning.

I couldn't quickly find any public statements about the actual breakdown of training data, other than almost every lab saying that post-training size was "scaling" or growing "by an order of magnitude" from their previous major release.

atoav 1 day ago | parent

I am not an expert in licensing legalese, but that strikes me as awfully wrong. If I am e.g. a musician and I license my work to be used by B for specific purposes and B unilaterally signs an agreement with A that gives them rights to my stuff, the question is gonna be what MY licensing terms allow. They have an agreement with me. Whether they enter other agreements is their decision to make, but they still have to fulfill my terms.

Sure, they should not sign things that put them into the spot of having to break my licensing agreement with me, but the fact that these kind of legal stretches are even seen as valid in the US reassures me in my stance to avoid business relations with the US. I prefer countries with a legal system that can't easily be bent out of shape using money.

sdellis 23 hours ago | parent

You really hit the nail on the head. I can't sign over rights to stuff I don't own. Is there a good chance that this move could blow up in Meta's face, in which the Party B's organize (or are ordered) en masse not sign the license agreement and leave Zuck without the legal ability to steal while also losing marketshare?

I think more and more people like you around the world are realizing not only how corrupt the U.S. is, but that it's power and influence are in a sharp state of decline and perhaps not worth the risk at this point.

incompatible 1 day ago | parent

I'd guess that Meta is going to scrap everything anyway, and this license addition is just something that they think may come in useful if there are future court cases. The details of who has permission to grant licenses won't matter until then.

Lio 1 day ago | parent

Yes that makes senses. It's a hedge.

Meta's past behaviour has been to ignore illegality in business, with the hope that they can either win in court or stave off legal action altogether.

That's how they acted with the books they pirated to train models and when they targeted children with gambling products to increase revenue.

They love a legal grey area. It's not what's moral it's what you can get away with.

faishalmanzar 1 day ago | parent

Yeah, I think so too. They know that even if a fine is imposed on them, it will be far less than the profit they stand to make.

yummybear 1 day ago | parent

“Hello, it’s me - the expensive lawyer”

akudha 23 hours ago | parent

My guess is - legal or not, Facebook might’ve calculated the consequences (aka, fines) and decided it is worth the cost. Most publishers will not have the resources to fight them in court anyways

bluGill 22 hours ago | parent

Most publishers have resources - it is millions, but it looks like a cut an dried case that they are highly likely to win. A 2 $million investment that results in $10 million dollar is a good investment. The numbers seem reasonable, though of course publishers need to consider their real situation.

lenerdenator 22 hours ago | parent

Given how most of SV seems to work, they will likely simply continue scraping the content regardless of license.

1vuio0pswjnm7 17 hours ago | parent

Excerpts from "Commercial Terms"

Current

https://www.facebook.com/legal/commercial_terms

Licenses: As described in The permissions you give us section in our Terms, you grant us a license to content that is covered by intellectual property rights (like photos or videos) you share, post, or upload on or in connection with our Meta Products.

For any access or use of the Meta Products, that license applies to content you or someone on your behalf (such as your agency that places an ad for you or your service provider that manages your Page content for you) makes available on or in connection with any Meta Product.

You also will ensure that you own or have secured all rights necessary to grant the licenses and rights you (or someone on your behalf) grant to us under the Commercial Terms and any applicable supplemental terms, including permission to display, distribute and deliver your content within the Meta Products. https://www.facebook.com/legal/commercial_terms_preview

New (Effective Oct 30, 2026)

https://www.facebook.com/legal/commercial_terms_preview

Licenses & Rights You Provide Meta: As described in "The permissions you give us" section in our Terms, you grant us a license to content that is covered by intellectual property rights (like photos or videos) you share, post, or upload on or in connection with our Meta Company Products ("Content").

That license applies to Content you or someone on your behalf (such as your agency that places an ad for you or your service provider that manages your Page content for you) makes available on or in connection with any Meta Company Products.

Without limiting anything in our Terms and for clarity, Meta may use such Content as described in our Terms, including to provide, develop, improve, research, and maintain Meta Company Products, services, and features provided under these Commercial Terms and any other applicable supplemental terms.

This includes business, commercial, and related services to help you create and deliver ads and other commercial content, provide users information about your products and services, and connect you with users who may be interested in your products and services.

You represent and warrant that you own or have secured all rights necessary to grant the licenses and rights you (or someone on your behalf) grant to us under the Commercial Terms and any applicable supplemental terms, including permission to display, distribute, create derivative works, and deliver your Content within the Meta Company Products, and that your Content will comply with all applicable policies for the Meta Company Products.

You authorize us (or any entity acting on our behalf) to use automated software (such as web scrapers, bots, robots, spiders, crawlers, and user agents) and create test credentials to access, index, cache, analyze, collect, retrieve, or crawl the domains, web pages, or URLs (and any content available through them) that are associated with your products or services, or that are made available through your or users' use of Meta Company Products and services, and to periodically pull updates from such domains, web pages, or URLs.

1vuio0pswjnm7 17 hours ago | parent

Perhaps it's debatable whether the sentence beginning "You authorize..." is part of a license

For example, the current Commercial Terms use the heading "Licenses" whereas the updated ones refer to "Licenses and Rights"

Licenses can be revoked by the licensor (B)

Under Meta's "Terms", the license given to Meta ends when the content is deleted

https://www.facebook.com//business/terms

What if Meta wants to keep "scraping" in perpetuity

Does the express authorization in that sentence, which might be used as defense to a CFAA claim, for example, end when the content is deleted from Facebook

What if the express authorization to "scrape" is not part of a (revocable) license grant based on copryright (e.g., CFAA does not require copyright)

The Meta Terms and Commercial Terms have no termination provisions

There are no notice provisions

There is no negotiation

There is no reciprocity

For example, A is allowed under the Commercial Terms to use automation to access B, B is prohibited under the Terms from using automation to access A

Arguably the only parts of this "agreement" that can be terminated are the licenses given to Meta and these end only when the content is deleted from Meta's systems

But that's not within B's control

It's up to Meta to ensure the content is "fully deleted"

What if Meta fails in that regard

Accepting Meta's terms is agreeing to limit Meta's maximum liability to $100

Not only that but Meta has a list of exclusions that allow deletion to be delayed or denied, including "technical limitations" (see below)

In sum, attempting to terminate licenses given to Meta may be a "nondeterministic" process (apologies for any errors in using nerd speak)

Was it Senator Hatch who told Zuckerberg something like, "Your terms suck"

Excerpt from "Terms"

https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms

3. Deleting Your Content: You can delete individual content you share, post, and upload at any time. In addition, all content posted to your personal account will be deleted if you delete your account. about how to delete your account. Account deletion does not automatically delete content that you post as an admin of a page or content that you create collectively with other users, such as photos in Shared Albums which may continue to be visible to other album members. It may take up to 90 days to delete content after we begin the account deletion process or receive a content deletion request. If you send content to trash, the deletion process will automatically begin in 30 days unless you chose to delete the content sooner. While the deletion process for such content is being undertaken, the content is no longer visible to other users. After the content is deleted, it may take us up to another 90 days to remove it from backups and disaster recovery systems.

Content will not be deleted within 90 days of the account deletion or content deletion process beginning in the following situations:

...

where deletion within 90 days is not possible due to technical limitations of our systems, in which case, we will complete the deletion as soon as technically feasible; or

...

In each of the above cases, this license will continue until the content has been fully deleted.

VladVladikoff 1 day ago | parent

As a business owner who has meta accounts and even advertises on meta, I have long since blocked their crawler traffic. They try to hide their scraper traffic dishonestly behind user agents that purport to be Facebook users browsing the web via their Facebook browser, the thing is, I know it’s a lie because there is absolutely no reason for 1000s of Facebook users from Ireland to want to know anything about a small local business in Canada, that only services local clients within 50km radius due to the nature of the business. So I know it’s a lie, therefore was blocked. And guess what, fuck your terms of service the blocks are staying in place.

alex1138 23 hours ago | parent

I have never, I hope I'm not living under a rock, heard this from Google. Not with Gemini and not in the pre-LLM days where they were indexing the web

Facebook is run by a criminal known for such lovely things as 'if you need info on anyone at Harvard just ask, they 'trust me', dumb fucks', 'I'm going to fuck them [Winklevoss twins] probably in the ear' 'you can be unethical and legal and that's how I live my life haha' and that's just at Harvard never mind all the other things he's done since

bmacho 22 hours ago | parent

Google had "Don't be evil" in their agenda and removed it when they officially went evil.

garbawarb 1 day ago | parent

I assume this is because of Muse? A lot of businesses block bots which stops Muse from being able to buy from those websites on a user's behalf. It seems like that'd be good for the businesses too.

threecheese 1 day ago | parent

This makes the most sense. Meta can guarantee at least that cohort of sites will permit their agents to operate, and all they needed to do was publish a tos update. Some Meta PM is smiling today, in between bites of infant flesh.

atomicfiredoll 1 day ago | parent

iirc when I was dealing with reviewing traffic and AI scraping bots recently, I noticed something about Meta's: When a user links to a page, the bots that grab oembed data to generate the link preview are using the same User Agent string as the Meta AI crawlers that scrape content.

For context, oembed data about your page could be seen as information you're basically happy to share, so other sites can create things like previews.

That's not necessary, there are other companies that just use different UA strings for the different tasks. They appear to deliberately make it so that if you have nothing to do with Meta and block their content scrapers, you also break basic functionality for people who happen to share a link to your site in their products.

g-b-r 1 day ago | parent

The test credentials thing, to bypass publisher paywalls with fake accounts, is pretty smart

zenincognito 1 day ago | parent

The most aggressive bot on our website right now is Meta Bot - here is an AI index - https://mojodojo.io/ai-crawler-index

christkv 1 day ago | parent

I fail to understand how is this different to a google web crawler in practice other than ignoring the robots.txt?

Terr_ 1 day ago | parent

What happens when I put a Terms of Service on my website (esp. with a firm click-wrap) which says Meta agrees to not scrape my website--notwithstanding any prior agreement--and will owe me a billion dollars in damages if they do?

jenadine 1 day ago | parent

You should do it, so we find out.

(But my guess is that such Terms of Services are not considered accepted only by visiting or crawling the website. There probably need to be at least a clock through performed by an human)

Terr_ 1 day ago | parent

Hey, if they can bypass a ToS agreement with a bot that clicks for them, so can I!

Well, assuming, y'know, justice under the law and such.

clort 1 day ago | parent

How about if you put that notice on the website, but also write it out explicitly and post it via registered mail to the Meta lawyers. Explicitly state that the content on your site is not licenced to be scraped for free and any usage must be paid for (eg $10/GET with penalties for non-payment), and that any usage of the site by Meta or their agents is an indication that they accept the terms fully.

Then check your logs and start sending appropriate invoices.

Then after 1yr of unpaid invoices: <profit>

haneefmubarak 22 hours ago | parent

I imagine the general problem is still that you're trying to bind a party without a live human who is plausibly authorized to bind them making a reasonably active decision to do so. IANAL, but AIUI "doing XYZ normal thing means you accept my contract" is already on shaky grounds, whereas never actually having the other party affirmatively agree (esp to a contract of adhesion) makes it super unlikely any non-kangaroo court would do anything besides throw your case out.

consensus1 1 day ago | parent

If Meta clicks on the checkbox and agrees to the TOS then it is binding on them just like any other contract. If they don't, then it isn't.

MisterMunchkin 1 day ago | parent

They’ll say their TOS is the prior agreement. It’s genius.

dgellow 1 day ago | parent

Will you enforce it?

coldpie 1 day ago | parent

Facebook is a zillion dollar company, so they get to decide what will happen.

bilekas 1 day ago | parent

So basically, thanks for building our business side of Facebook for all those years, we are changing the rules of the game now in so if you want to continue using our service, we get to use all of your website's data however we like in perpetuity.

There isn't even a veil of "customer satisfaction is important" anymore.

ProofHouse 1 day ago | parent

"Consent." It's not consent.

bozhangquant 1 day ago | parent

Scraping is easy. The hard part is that the page can change after you scraped it, and there's no way to prove what it said before.

nananana9 1 day ago | parent

Doesn't them requiring a license from partners to train on their content undermine the more general argument that they don't need a license from copyright owners to train on copyrighted content -- which I assume most big AI firms would love to make?

IANAL, but this looks like Meta lawyers trying to shield themselves against partners' suing them, but enough cases like this could help set a precedent that -- yes, you do in fact need a license.

consensus1 1 day ago | parent

TOS has nothing to do with copyright. A TOS can prevent scraping, training, or any other activity that is not covered by copyright. Public web scraping is subject only to copyright because no TOS has been agreed to, but what Meta is doing here applies to scraping things that are not available on the public web.

impossiblefork 1 day ago | parent

If you don't have a license to download the material, aren't you doing piracy?

If the licenses say that download is only permitted if you agree not to train on it or similar, then if you have downloaded it, you have agreed to the license, have you not?

Ajedi32 23 hours ago | parent

I don't think it works like that. I can't just write "By reading this comment, you have agreed to pay me $100." and expect that to be legally enforceable unless you explicitly agreed to a contract to that effect in advance before reading the comment.

I could write "If you don't agree to pay me $100, I reserve the right to block your future access to my comments." (Which is what a ToS is.) But that's not a license agreement.

impossiblefork 18 hours ago | parent

Yeah, but you can have one page where people agree to a certain license and if they agree are allowed to download another document.

TOS agreements often have terms concerning things like in which venues disputes about them are to be handled etc., and often have penalties other than the service simply being ended, and if those are valid, then this kind of thing is too.

SAI_Peregrinus 22 hours ago | parent

There's no such thing as a license to download. Downloads are requested, it's the sending server that's responsible for making the copy.

impossiblefork 18 hours ago | parent

Maybe, maybe not.

But in navigating to the page being requested the user may have agreed to something, and that may be a contract.

win311fwg 23 hours ago | parent

Not really. Consent has always been required. If a web server happily serves you up news content then you've been given clear consent to use it. Yes means yes. However, a site reserves the right to say no to whomever it pleases. News sites especially often don't happily serve up their content. Often you need to pay for access, for example. Hacking into their systems to retrieve content that wasn't normally happily given to you is clearly against the law. These terms gives Meta access to all content that is accessible to Meta users, seeing publishers agree to not say no to Meta.

fluidcruft 21 hours ago | parent

Even if you don't actually need a license, I would assume that making it an explicit term of the contract makes the dispute shorter.

ProblemExplorer 19 hours ago | parent

> but this looks like Meta lawyers trying to shield themselves against partners' suing them

it's less about getting sued and more about not being blocked from being able to scrape.

herbst 1 day ago | parent

Ok fine. So will it stop crawling my websites so extensively? I never had a business account

shevy-java 1 day ago | parent

Well - don't outsource your company to Suckerberg's evil empire.

Oddly enough, many don't seem to want to have a company homepage, in particular smaller companies.

rochak 1 day ago | parent

Seems like Meta is using the new meta

bradley13 1 day ago | parent

IANAL and I know I'm a minority opinion, but: seems to me that scraping must be legal. If you put content online, it is readable by anyone (or anything) who cares to look. Don't want it read, put it behind a login or a paywall.

Frieren 1 day ago | parent

Go ahead. Download all the assets form https://www.disney.com and make your own. And their lawyers will explain clearly why are you wrong.

N_Lens 1 day ago | parent

You're certainly right that you're not a lawyer, and have a minority opinion.

none_to_remain 21 hours ago | parent

I am not a lawyer but I agree with the parent: accessing public websites is legal

illwrks 1 day ago | parent

The news sites should engineer their articles to mislead the AI’s.

Bengalilol 1 day ago | parent

or ... just check the user-agent and serve a different page accordingly.

illwrks 1 day ago | parent

Who’s to say it would report it self as an agent, then diff the two versions.

toppa33 1 day ago | parent

The Australian government tried to stop the scraping of news publications without permission but ultimately failed.

pluc 1 day ago | parent

So did Canada, and succeeded but were exiled from Facebook.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/online-news-act-meta-facebo...

Bengalilol 1 day ago | parent

The article doesn't mention the geographical scope of these new terms, but I suspect those are illegal in Europe, right?

pluc 1 day ago | parent

And Canada since they're still blocking Canadian news content?

aragilar 1 day ago | parent

Doubt they'll go over well in Australia as well, given the media bargaining code.

femto 1 day ago | parent

More to the point, Australia has laws against unfair contract terms for small businesses and consumers.

https://www.accc.gov.au/business/selling-products-and-servic...

Bring it on Meta...

tinykerneldev 1 day ago | parent

Meta, the gift that keeps on giving.

tonyhart7 1 day ago | parent

how is this legal btw ????? to use Meta platform you must agree that your content is being used to train AI ???? for free ?????

yt5tq364e 23 hours ago | parent

oh man, ready for a farm of fake accounts on the Internet to scrape content! The Internet is broken!

exabrial 23 hours ago | parent

if (zuck) {

  printf(fakeNews);

} else {

  goOnWithLife():

}

monster_truck 21 hours ago | parent

I'm going to pretend they're literally scraping the experts too because it's funny

Barbing 21 hours ago | parent

HN title now matches article. Previously:

  Business accounts will consent to Meta scraping their websites Starting Oct. 30

rietta 21 hours ago | parent

They don’t want to be behind Google and Bing which all these businesses already let index.

penguin_booze 21 hours ago | parent

When you sign trade deals with US, you're essentially enslaving yourselves to them. What Meta is asking is essentially that. The former is usually done covertly; the latter is done overtly. That's all. Nothing new here. Classic US way of doing business.

If you're not OK with the terms, you think you can walk away, right? R i g h t?

ktosobcy 21 hours ago | parent

Can we ban Meta and the rest of Usanian BigTech already? Or at lease regulate / break them down? Dis is beyond rediculous... even Russia doesn't have such elaborate oligarchs =,=

hn_explorer121 19 hours ago | parent

No matter what the terms of service are scraping is happening actively already.. I know website having over 11k monthly vistis with under 100 being genuine clicks

neerajjain22 8 hours ago | parent

This is super weird, to say the least. Through dark patterns, publishers rarely get a choice. But making it so explicit and in-your-face is the next level of Meta's dictatorship.