Ten Norwegian media companies, including the public broadcaster NRK, TV 2, Schibsted and Amedia, have asked the Oslo District Court to suspend Meta’s new commercial terms until a court has assessed whether they are lawful, NRK reported on 27 October 2026.
The Norwegian Media Association (Mediebedriftenes Landsforening, MBL) says in its own release that the members have filed a request for a temporary injunction to stop Meta changing the terms (our translation). The full list is NRK, TV 2, Schibsted, Amedia, Polaris, Aller, DN, Mentor Medier, NTB and Hordaland Folkeblad.
Video explainer · Norway’s newsrooms and Meta’s terms
A 16:9 video explainer narrated from the published headlines of this piece and three related FourWeekMBA pieces.
The key insight: As we read it, the media companies are pressing on two fronts at once: a request to the Oslo District Court to suspend the terms before their 20 November start, and three demands to Meta itself, including a separate, paid agreement for any AI-training use.
Members of MBL argue, Anadolu Agency reported, that the new terms “would grant Meta the right to scrape every article, photo and video published by editorially controlled media outlets”.
MBL’s release adds that this would include content behind paywalls, and that the only way to say no is to delete the account and lose contact with Norwegian Facebook and Instagram users (our translation).
MBL chair Lene Eltvik Vindfeld told NRK: “We believe that this should be legally assessed to see if this is actually in line with Norwegian law,” in Anadolu’s English rendering.
NRK’s legal director Olav Nyhus said the broadcaster “in no way” wants Meta to use its content to strengthen Facebook and Instagram. “What Meta is doing is destroying the entire financial basis for journalism,” he said, adding: “We believe that Meta’s conduct and terms are a clear violation of competition law.”
The steps in Norway’s case against Meta’s new business terms: the revised terms without the ‘train’ line, the media companies’ request to the Oslo District Court on 27 October 2026, and the terms’ start date of 20 November. Sources: MBL and NRK (27 Oct 2026, in Norwegian); Anadolu Agency; Reuters via FourWeekMBA.
The Three Demands
MBL’s release sets out three demands to Meta (our translation). First, Meta must commit in the terms themselves to respect machine-readable copyright reservations, including robots.txt; assurances from spokespeople are not enough.
Second, any use of journalism for AI training or standalone AI products must rest on a separate, voluntary agreement with each media house, with room to negotiate payment. Third, Meta must guarantee that a media house that opts out is not punished with reduced reach or traffic.
NRK reported that, as far as NRK and MBL know, Norway is the first country to take the terms to court. NRK also reported that the local paper Fjell-Ljom in Røros has chosen to delete its Facebook page permanently from 1 January 2027.
What Meta’s Terms Say
Meta recently revised the terms to remove language about using collected material to “train” Meta products, Anadolu reported. The revised terms say automated website crawling is intended to “develop, improve, research and maintain advertising and business products”.
The provisions still allow Meta to use automated tools, “including web scrapers, bots and crawlers”, to collect content from websites associated with businesses using its platforms, according to the same report.
NRK wrote that Meta has rejected the claims, and that Meta had not yet answered NRK’s request for comment on the court case (our translation). Meta previously told Reuters it had moved the terms’ start date to 20 November.
On 20 October we reported that Meta dropped ‘train’ from the UK terms too. That piece carries two updates: the move of the start date to 20 November, reported by Reuters on 23 October, and a US senator’s letter asking Meta to withdraw the terms. What’s new: publishers have now gone to court, in Norway.
The Structural Read
As we read it, the request rests on two arguments at once: copyright control over journalism, in MBL’s three demands, and competition law, in Nyhus’s claim that Meta’s conduct and terms are a clear violation of it.
As we read it, the dependence NRK describes sits alongside the financial argument: Nyhus said leaving Facebook and Instagram is not easy because the platforms have become important channels for reaching people, while one local paper, Fjell-Ljom, has chosen to leave.
As we read it, the two sides describe the same clause differently: Meta’s revised terms say the crawling serves advertising and business products, while MBL says the terms still let Meta scrape every article, image and video, including content behind paywalls (our translation).
Olav Nyhus, NRK legal director, via Anadolu Agency, 27 October 2026
“We believe that Metaโs conduct and terms are a clear violation of competition law.”
Three Implications
FOR PUBLISHERS ELSEWHERE NRK reported that, as far as it and MBL know, Norway is the first country to take the terms to court; the 20 November start date applies to the same terms elsewhere, per Reuters.
FOR META NRK wrote that Meta has rejected the claims and had not yet answered NRK about the court case; the request asks the court to suspend the terms until their legality is assessed.
FOR BUSINESSES ON FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM MBL says the terms affect every Norwegian business with a Facebook or Instagram page, not only media houses (our translation).
The framework describes “The Corpus Moat — built by pretraining, eroding as the public web is exhausted and synthetic data closes gaps.”
As we read it, the Norwegian case is about who sets the terms of access to one part of that corpus, journalism: MBL wants any AI-training use negotiated separately, while Meta’s revised terms say the crawling serves advertising and business products. The framework was not written about this case.
What Is Not Established
MBL and NRK do not give a hearing date, and the court filing itself is not published. Meta’s answer to the court is not known. MBL’s and NRK’s texts are in Norwegian; passages marked as our translation are not quotes. We make no prediction about the outcome.
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On 27 October 2026, ten Norwegian media companies asked the Oslo District Court for a temporary injunction against Meta’s new commercial terms, due to start on 20 November, arguing that they let Meta scrape their journalism and breach competition law.
A note on sourcing. The Norwegian Media Association’s release and NRK’s report (both 27 October 2026, in Norwegian) were read in full; passages marked as our translation are paraphrases, not quotes. Quotations are from Anadolu Agency’s English report of the same day. The 20 November start date is from Reuters, as covered in our earlier piece. We did not contact Meta or MBL. This is not legal advice.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
