参议员 Marsha Blackburn 要求 Meta 撤回商业条款更新：称其授权抓取商家与创作者网站内容
据路透社报道，美国参议员 Marsha Blackburn 10月23日致函 Facebook 母公司 Meta Platforms，对该公司计划更新的商业条款提出质疑，要求其撤回更新。她是参议院司法委员会隐私、技术与法律小组委员会主席。Meta 同日稍早宣布，把这批更新条款的实施日期由10月30日推迟至11月20日，以便回应出版商与数字广告商的关切。
Blackburn 在信中表示，更新后的条款显示 Meta 试图盘剥美国创作者与企业，赋予自身广泛权力，可抓取任何与 Facebook、Instagram 企业账户关联的网站内容。她说，Meta 此前修订条款、删去了明确提及人工智能（AI）训练的表述，但修改并不到位：修订后的文字仍授权大规模抓取外部网站，并允许 Meta 用收集到的内容「开发」其商业产品。她说：「在没有明确限制这些信息用途、包括是否可被纳入 AI 系统的情况下，Meta 的修订几乎没有给创作者的知识产权提供保障。」她还表示，这对依靠 Meta 平台触达受众与客户的美国新闻出版商、创作者与小企业尤其令人担忧，并称「美国创作者和小企业不是 Meta 可以免费盘剥的内容来源」。
欧盟与英国反垄断机构此前已收到针对这批新条款的投诉，出版商与数字广告商称新条款将赋予 Meta 无限制使用其内容训练 AI 服务的权利，Meta 否认这一说法。Meta 在回应 Blackburn 的信时表示，修订后的条款只适用于其广告与商业产品，公司并未改变使用网络爬虫的方式；Meta 还称，这些更新不会赋予其凌驾于网站偏好设置之上的新权利，「这与抓取新闻网站无关」，内容所有者仍可通过 robots.txt 表达偏好。
路透社指出，全球出版商正加大与 AI 公司的交锋力度，指其未经许可使用内容训练大语言模型，争论焦点在于版权方的权利与「合理使用」的主张。
Senator Marsha Blackburn Urges Meta to Withdraw Commercial Terms Update Over Content-Scraping Concerns
U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn raised concerns on Friday, October 23, about Facebook parent Meta Platforms' planned update to its commercial terms, urging the company to withdraw the changes, according to Reuters. Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law. Earlier on Friday, Meta said it would delay implementation of the updated terms from October 30 to November 20 to address concerns from publishers and digital advertisers.
In her letter, Blackburn said the updated terms "indicate Meta is attempting to exploit American creators and businesses by granting itself sweeping authority to scrape content from any website associated with Facebook and Instagram business accounts." She said Meta had previously revised the terms to remove an explicit reference to AI training, but that the changes did not go far enough, because the revised language still authorizes extensive scraping of external websites and permits Meta to "develop" its business products with the collected content. "Without clear restrictions on how that information may be used, including whether it may be incorporated into AI systems, Meta's revisions offer little assurance that creators' intellectual property will be protected," she said, adding that this is "particularly troubling for American news publishers, creators, and small businesses that rely on Meta's platforms to reach their audiences and customers." She also said, "American creators and small businesses are not a free source of content for Meta to exploit."
EU and UK antitrust authorities have received complaints about the new terms from publishers and digital advertisers who say the terms would give Meta unlimited rights to use their content for its AI services, a claim Meta has rejected. Asked for comment on Blackburn's letter, Meta said the revised terms apply only to its ads and business products and that it is not changing how it uses web crawlers. Meta said the updates "don't give us new rights to supersede such preferences and this isn't about scraping news sites," noting that content owners can still use robots.txt to signal their preferences.
Reuters notes that publishers worldwide are escalating their fights with AI companies over the use of their content to train large language models without permission, underscoring the clash between copyright owners and fair-use arguments.
来源：GSM·美国（原文链接）
图片来源：Meta 位于 Menlo Park 的总部标牌（资料图），Nokia621 摄，CC BY-SA 4.0，经维基共享资源
