Over the past two years, rightsholders of all kinds have filed lawsuits against companies that develop AI models.
Most of these cases allege that copyrighted works are used to train models without authorization. This applies to text, but also to images and video.
A new lawsuit filed at a California federal court by two adult production companies focuses on a specific type of video downloaded from pirate sources.
Meta Sued for Massive Copyright Infringement
The complaint was filed by Strike 3 Holdings and Counterlife Media, which are known for popular adult brands including Vixen, Tushy, Blacked, and Deeper. Strike 3 is the most active copyright litigant in the United States, mostly targeting individual BitTorrent pirates.
The case against Meta also centers on unauthorized BitTorrent sharing but on a different scale. According to the adult companies, Meta downloaded at least 2,396 of their films since 2018, allegedly to aid their AI training.
“Defendant downloaded Plaintiffs’ Works from pirate sources for purposes of acquiring content to train its Meta Movie Gen, Large Language Model (“LLaMA”), as well as various other Meta AI Models that rely on video training content,” the complaint reads.
The adult producers fear that this training may ultimately result in AI models that can create similar “Hollywood grade” films at a lower cost.
“By training so specifically on Plaintiffs’ 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”
Tit for Tat
Meta allegedly downloaded the copyrighted works without permission and also stands accused of uploading them to third parties, who participated in the same BitTorrent swarms. Plaintiffs allege this is backed up by data from their proprietary in-house tracking software VXN Scan.
BitTorrent transfers rely on a “tit for tat” algorithm where participants are rewarded for sharing content with others, as that significantly increases their download speeds. According to the complaint, Meta allegedly continued sharing pirated files for this purpose.
“Defendant was specifically aware of this issue and, discovery will likely show, is the reason why Defendant elected to continuously distribute Plaintiffs’ content as opposed to just purchasing a subscription or modifying its BitTorrent clients to download only,” the complaint notes.
“Meta made the deliberate choice to seed Plaintiffs’ motion pictures in order to capitalize on faster download speeds so it could infringe other content faster.”
Corporate IP Addresses and Hidden Datacenters
The adult producers discovered the alleged infringements after Meta’s BitTorrent activity was revealed in a lawsuit filed by several book authors. In that case, Meta admitted that it obtained content from pirate sources.
This prompted Strike 3 and Counterlife Media to search for Meta-linked IP addresses in their archive of collected BitTorrent data. This scan revealed that forty-seven IP addresses, identified as owned by Facebook, allegedly infringed their copyrighted works.
IP address ownership is linked through MaxMind’s database, and a list of thousands of alleged infringements from these addresses is provided as evidence.
The book authors lawsuit also revealed that Meta allegedly used “off-infra” IP addresses to conceal its BitTorrent activities. The adult producers argue that these stealth IPs were also used to pirate their works, identifying several they believe are linked to the activity.
Correlations between Meta IPs and third-party servers identify seven IP address ranges that show correlational activity. This includes similar download patterns as well as large-scale copyright infringement.
“These correlations also quantify that both the ‘off-infra’ as well as the Meta Corporate IP addresses act consistently in non-human patterns and that the acquisition of this content is for AI training data and not for personal use.”
Adding to these allegations, the complaint also identifies a Facebook employee who used a Comcast IP address to download content. This person, whose name is redacted, allegedly shared content via Meta corporate IPs and the stealth IP addresses.
Damages Up to $359 Million
Based on these allegations, Strike 3 Holdings and Counterlife Media accuse Meta of both direct and secondary copyright infringement, requesting a trial by jury.
The rightsholders seek statutory damages, which, for willful copyright infringement, could mean $150,000 per work. With 2,396 movies at stake, potential damages could reach $359 million.
Meta has yet to respond to the lawsuit, and all allegations have yet to be proven. This could potentially include a technical inspection of the VXN Scan tracking software, which is also used in many lawsuits against individual BitTorrent users.
Strike 3 has a history of settling copyright disputes out of court, so that’s a possible outcome here as well.
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A copy of the complaint filed by Strike 3 Holdings and Counterlife Media at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California is available here (pdf)
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
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