Publishers ask EU, UK to halt Meta AI-scraping terms

The Movement for an Open Web, an advocacy group whose members include digital advertisers and publishers, has complained to the European Commission and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority and requested interim measures to suspend Meta’s new commercial terms before they take effect Oct. 30, per Reuters. Co-founder Tim Cowen called the terms “clearly anti-competitive,” saying businesses with no real alternative to Meta’s services would be forced to sign away rights to their content, which Meta could then use to power AI services that compete with them. Meta says the terms apply only to its ads and business products and don’t change how its crawlers behave or override robots.txt. The complaint follows similar objections raised by the European Publishers Council the week of Oct. 12 and by Germany’s BDZV and the UK’s MVFP earlier the week of Oct. 19 — the same underlying clause News/Media Alliance asked Meta to withdraw on Oct. 22. The CMA says it met with Meta on Oct. 21 and is in “urgent discussions”; the European Commission says it received the complaint and will assess it under its usual procedure.