Meta can't dodge porn producer's copyright claims over AI training

SAN JOSE, Calif. (CN) — A federal judge refused to toss copyright claims from an adult film producer that says Meta illegally downloaded its pornography to train artificial intelligence.

On June 11, U.S. District Judge Eumi Lee denied Meta’s motion to dismiss copyright infringement claims stemming from its use of BitTorrent, which allows large files to be downloaded quickly from one computer to another and is used regularly to obtain and distribute media illegally.

Adult filmmaker Strike 3 Holdings claims Meta knowingly used BitTorrent to train AI models while also distributing films without consent.

To find out the details of Meta’s infringement, the company investigated using proprietary copyright infringement detection tools and an archive of recorded infringement of their films.

“Plaintiffs began by reviewing their archive and identified 47 IP addresses belonging to defendant that were used to torrent their films 157 times from 2018 to 2025,” the Joe Biden appointee said in her order.

All told, she said, at least 2,396 of Strike 3’s films were torrented a total of 6,008 times between 2018 and 2025.

Additionally, said Lee, the IP addresses were supposedly used to send Strike 3’s films to BitTorrent, including the “continuous distribution of 1,335 of movies for at least three full days after acquiring the full copy of the movie” from BitTorrent, indicating algorithms and scripts were involved in torrenting the large amount of material.

Lee found Meta did not adequately argue Strike 3 failed to show infringement.

“In defendant’s view, plaintiffs were required to allege that their films were used to train specific AI models,” said Lee. “Defendant incorrectly extrapolates this pleading requirement from two other cases that involved a different theory of infringement.”

She further said Strike 3 didn’t necessarily claim that training the AI models was the infringing act, but instead that torrenting was, and it was possible that Meta downloaded and distributed its films for financial gain.

“The commonalities across downloads — including the apparent use of key terms, coordinated changes in language, similarity in obscure files and nonsequential torrenting of television shows — in combination with other circumstantial facts creates a reasonable inference that defendant, not its employees or visitors, controlled the identified IP addresses and used an algorithm to torrent files for a business purpose,” said Lee.

Strike 3 is the parent company of internet porn brands like Blacked, Blacked Raw, Tushy, Vixen, Deeper and Slayed, known collectively as the Vixen Media Group. The company is known to sue often over copyright infringement, and seldom do the suits make it to a motion to dismiss, with most of the opposing parties generally settling.

Since 2017, Strike 3 has filed more than 17,000 lawsuits against people it accuses of illegally downloading its X-rated movies, including 4,059 suits in 2024. Critics say the company pressures defendants to the negotiating table, including by threatening to expose their names in legal documents if they don’t settle. One federal judge has likened its practices to extortion.

“We disagree with the court’s decision,” a Meta spokesperson said. “These claims are bogus: We don’t want this type of content, and we take deliberate steps to avoid training on this kind of material.”

Strike 3 Holdings did not immediately respond to a request for comment.