Two major porn production companies have filed a copyright lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, alleging unauthorized use of their videos to train AI models.
TorrentFreak reports that the adult film studios Strike 3 Holdings and Counterlife Media are taking aim at Meta with a copyright lawsuit. The companies, which produce popular adult brands like Vixen, Tushy, Blacked, and Deeper, claim that Meta illicitly downloaded at least 2,396 of their movies via BitTorrent since 2018 for the purpose of training its AI systems, including the Meta Movie Gen and Large Language Model (LLaMA).
Filed in a California federal court, the complaint alleges that Meta’s unauthorized use of the copyrighted adult films could ultimately result in AI models capable of creating similar “high-quality” porn content at a lower cost, potentially threatening the studios’ business. The plaintiffs argue that by training specifically on their works, “Meta’s AI Movie Gen may very well soon produce full length films with Plaintiffs’ identical style and quality, which other real world adult studios cannot replicate.”
The lawsuit also accuses Meta of not only downloading the copyrighted works without permission but also uploading them to third parties participating in the same BitTorrent swarms. This allegation is allegedly backed by data from the studios’ proprietary tracking software, VXN Scan. BitTorrent’s “tit for tat” algorithm rewards users for sharing content with others to increase download speeds, and the plaintiffs claim that Meta deliberately chose to continue sharing the pirated files to capitalize on faster downloads and infringe more content at a quicker pace.
Strike 3 and Counterlife Media discovered the alleged infringements after Meta’s BitTorrent activity was revealed in a separate lawsuit filed by book authors. In that case, Meta admitted to obtaining content from pirate sources. This revelation prompted the adult studios to search their archive of collected BitTorrent data for Meta-linked IP addresses, uncovering forty-seven addresses owned by the company that allegedly infringed their copyrights. The complaint provides a list of thousands of alleged infringements from these addresses as evidence. Strike 3 has filed many lawsuits in the past related to videos allegedly downloaded by BitTorrect pirates, leading one judge to label them as a “copyright troll.”
Based on these allegations, Strike 3 Holdings and Counterlife Media are accusing Meta of both direct and secondary copyright infringement, seeking a trial by jury. The rightsholders are demanding statutory damages, which could amount to $150,000 per work for willful infringement. With 2,396 movies at stake, the potential damages could reach $359 million.
A Meta spokesperson told Breitbart News, “We’re reviewing the complaint, but don’t believe Strike’s claims are accurate.”
Read more at TorrentFreak here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
