who owns the open web?

 

who owns the open web? when did our creative work become somebody else's training material?

November 3, 2026

An open letter to artists, designers, photographers, writers, publishers, lawyers, governments and everyone who has ever put original work on the internet.

I have a question.

When we started putting our work on the internet, did we agree to give it away to billion-dollar technology companies?

Did publishing a photograph, painting, article, poem, research paper, illustration or personal story mean we were giving permission for someone else to collect it, reproduce its characteristics, use it to train commercial artificial intelligence and potentially compete with the very people who created it?

I don't think most independent creators understood that this was becoming part of the bargain.

And I don't think we should quietly accept it.

what's happening?

Automated web crawlers have been visiting websites for years. Search engines use them to discover and index pages. That's how people find information through search.

But generative AI has introduced another purpose for collecting enormous amounts of information: building datasets that can be used to develop and improve AI systems.

Meta operates several types of crawlers, including one identified as Meta-ExternalAgent, associated with AI-related data collection.

Recently, a children's author and illustrator named Chelsea Paulus discovered that Meta's crawlers had made more than 550,000 requests to her websites.

Her hosting company warned her that she was approaching her allocated computing-resource limits. She had to investigate the traffic, change settings and work with her hosting provider to block the activity.

Think about that.

An independent artist, trying to run a small business, suddenly has to spend time and potentially money defending her website against automated visitors that aren't buying anything.

Her experience raises an important question: who pays when automated systems consume the resources of small website owners?

the Meta controversy: dates matter

Here is how the current controversy developed.

• October 15, 2026: Reporting by Nieman Journalism Lab raised concerns about proposed changes to Meta's commercial terms. The wording appeared to authorize automated software to crawl and collect information from websites associated with business accounts.

• October 16: Meta revised the wording, removing explicit references to training its products and narrowing the stated purposes to advertising and business products.

• October 23: Following publisher objections, Meta postponed the proposed implementation date from October 30 to November 20.

• October 29: Meta indicated that it would not make policy changes without consulting industry groups and leaders. The consultation could extend beyond November 20.

• November 2: The Associated Press reported that Meta was postponing the rollout following further opposition from publishers and open-web advocates.

November 3, 2026: The issue remains unresolved.

Meta says the changes do not alter how its crawlers operate and that website owners can use robots.txt to communicate their preferences.

But publishers, lawyers and creators are questioning whether the proposed commercial terms adequately protect their rights.

And this is not just about news organizations. The implications extend to independent creators, photographers, illustrators, designers, researchers and small businesses.

what are the consequences?

Let's look beyond the technology itself.

For artists and photographers:

Years of original work can become material for commercial AI systems. Questions arise about consent, attribution, licensing and compensation.

For writers and journalists:

Original reporting, research, essays and archives can become part of datasets used to build competing information products.

For designers and illustrators:

Creative styles, visual approaches and accumulated professional knowledge may be incorporated into systems that can generate similar-looking work.

For small businesses:

Automated traffic can consume bandwidth, server resources and computing allowances. Owners may have to pay for additional hosting or security.

For independent websites:

People may lose control over how their work is collected and used, while having limited resources to monitor what happens.

For the public:

If independent creators decide that publishing is no longer worth the risk, we could lose access to personal archives, independent journalism, community histories, photography, research and original perspectives.

There is another consequence worth considering.

If the internet becomes dominated by a small number of companies that control both the tools and the information people encounter, what happens to independent voices?

should we all go dark?

Perhaps we should.

Not permanently. Not by destroying our own archives or making years of work disappear.

But what if independent creators, artists, writers, photographers, publishers and small businesses organized a coordinated digital blackout?

What if we temporarily withdrew our public content, stopped publishing new material and used that time to demand better protections?

What if the message was simple:

Our work is not an unlimited, unpaid resource.

A blackout would not erase material already collected, and making a website private does not retrieve copies already obtained. It could also affect the people who depend on independent websites for information.

But a coordinated protest could demonstrate how much of the open internet depends on the voluntary contributions of ordinary people.

The objective shouldn't be to shut down the internet.

It should be to establish fair rules for using the work that makes the internet valuable in the first place.

ten questions we need to ask

These questions are for designers, artists, photographers, writers, lawyers, governments, publishers, technology companies and the public.

1. For artists: If an AI system learns from your original paintings, illustrations or photographs, should you have the right to decide whether your work can be used?

2. For designers: Where is the line between learning from a creative style and commercially reproducing the work and expertise of another designer?

3. For photographers: Who owns the value of an image when it becomes part of a dataset used to generate new images?

4. For writers and journalists: Should an AI company be allowed to collect years of original reporting, essays and research without obtaining a licence or providing compensation?

5. For lawyers: How should copyright, moral rights, consent and licensing apply when copyrighted material is collected and processed for AI training?

6. For governments: Why should individual creators have to discover, identify and block automated crawlers themselves? Shouldn't there be enforceable protections and transparent reporting requirements?

7. For technology companies: Why should a creator have to opt out of having their work used, rather than companies obtaining permission before using it?

8. For publishers and website owners: Who is responsible when automated crawlers create excessive traffic, increase hosting costs or threaten the operation of a small website?

9. For everyone: Should there be a public registry showing which works, websites and datasets have been used to train commercial AI systems?

10. For future generations: What kind of creative internet are we leaving behind if original human work becomes an unpaid resource for companies that control the technology?

what would fair use look like?

This conversation doesn't have to be about rejecting artificial intelligence.

AI can be useful. It can help people research, communicate, create and solve problems.

But innovation shouldn't mean that creators lose their ability to make a living.

We need:

• Informed consent and meaningful opt-in licensing.
• Fair compensation when commercial systems use protected creative works.
• Clear attribution and transparency about training datasets.
• Effective ways to prevent unwanted automated collection.
• Protection for small websites from excessive crawler traffic.
• Clear legal standards that creators can understand and enforce.
• Special consideration for Indigenous knowledge, cultural expressions and community archives.

Canada has already consulted the public on copyright in the age of generative AI. Its consultation report documented significant concerns from creators about consent, credit and compensation.

This conversation needs to move beyond consultation.

a proposal: make the open web heard

Here are two proposed dates for a coordinated campaign. These are suggestions, not an existing organized protest.

November 10, 2026 – Start the conversation.

Artists, designers, photographers, writers, publishers and website owners begin sharing their experiences. Ask questions. Document crawler traffic. Discuss copyright and licensing. Contact representatives.

December 1, 2026 – A proposed day of digital protest.

A voluntary 24-hour digital blackout or withdrawal of selected public content, accompanied by statements demanding consent, compensation, attribution and transparency.

Participation should be voluntary. Nobody should risk their livelihood, lose their archive or make their website inaccessible to vulnerable readers to participate.

A coordinated public statement, an information campaign or a temporary publishing pause can also make the point.

one final thought

I have spent years publishing on the internet.

I have written about people, places and things. I have photographed, painted, researched, documented and shared stories.

I never expected to become wealthy from it. I wasn't looking for millions of dollars in advertising revenue.

I simply believed that sharing information, art and ideas was part of what made the internet worthwhile.

But there is a difference between sharing something with the world and giving a corporation permission to turn your life's work into a commercial resource.

The internet was built on people contributing knowledge, creativity and information.

What happens when those people decide they've had enough?

Perhaps it is time for the creators of the internet to remind the companies profiting from it where its value came from.

Our work has value.

Our permission matters.

And the open web should remain open to people, not just corporations.

Written by Tina Winterlik | Zipolita
Independent blogger, artist, photographer and observer of the world.

keywords

artificial intelligence, AI web crawlers, copyright protection, creative rights, artist compensation, digital ownership, website scraping, independent journalism, open internet, digital protest

hashtags

#WhoOwnsTheOpenWeb #ProtectCreativeRights #StopUnpaidScraping #ConsentNotCrawling #ArtistsRights #CopyrightMatters #HumanCreativity #DigitalRights #OpenWeb #FairAI