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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?
> 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.
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?
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.
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.
"Will consent", that's some interesting phrasing in the current post title.
In Meta's defense, I don't think you actually need a business' consent to scrape their website.
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.
No but they’re covering themselves as they’re also making fake accounts to bypass login walls. Probably to avoid a similar nitter issue.
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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.
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.
There have been many many reasons for businesses to leave Meta over the past decade, and almost none of them have
Doubt it. Most are already being scraped by meta and do nothing about it because they lack the technical competency to even notice it.
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.
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.
I am not a lawyer, but I can't see how any court would enforce this unconscionable term in a clickwrap license.
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.
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.
In Canada at least it currently has the same level of legal binding as signing a paper contract with a pen.
It’s not really different from paper contracts. Nobody reads them, they just sign where they’re told to.
That's terror. Terror built into the system.
When you let someone else host your content, you don't control your content.
That's bundling.
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.
Title is: Meta’s new commercial terms will allow the scraping of news sites, (legal) experts say
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?
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.