Meta has reportedly urged the US district court to dismiss a copyright lawsuit from adult-film producer Strike 3 Holdings, which accused the tech giant of illegally torrenting thousands of its videos to train an unannounced AI model. In a court filing, Meta described the allegations as resting on “guesswork and innuendo” and labeled Strike 3 a “‘copyright troll’ that files extortive lawsuits.” “These claims are bogus,” a Meta spokesperson told Ars Technica. Strike 3 had traced roughly 2,400 downloads of its titles to Meta corporate IP addresses over seven years, plus additional activity it alleged Meta hid behind a “stealth network” of 2,500 obscured addresses. The plaintiff speculated the files fed a secret adult version of Movie Gen, Meta’s video-generation AI, and sought damages potentially topping $350 million. Meta countered that the downloads began in 2018 — four years before its multimodal and generative-video research—and totaled just 22 titles annually, “intermittently obtained one file at a time.” Such “meager, uncoordinated activity,” the company wrote, points to “private personal use” by individuals, not a coordinated data-harvesting effort.“[T]he far more plausible inference… is that disparate individuals downloaded adult videos for personal use,” Meta’s motion states.
The company noted that its terms of service prohibit generating adult content, “contradicting the premise that such materials might even be useful for Meta’s AI training.” Strike 3, Meta added, “cite[d] no facts to suggest that Meta has ever trained an AI model on adult images or video, much less intentionally so.”
May be downloaded by contractors, visitors or any other third parties
Meta also disputed any firm link to its employees. “Tens of thousands of employees,” plus contractors, visitors, and third parties, access its network daily, the filing says. One cited incident involved a contractor allegedly torrenting at his father’s house; Meta called this “plainly indicative of personal consumption” and noted the engineer’s automation role offered “no apparent basis” for sourcing training data. On the “stealth network” claim, Meta asked: “[W]hy would Meta seek to ‘conceal’ certain alleged downloads… but use easily traceable Meta corporate IP addresses for many hundreds of others?”Meta noted that Strike 3 cannot claim that Meta should have been better at “policing” its network for illegal activity. “Monitoring every file downloaded by any person using Meta’s global network would be an extraordinarily complex and invasive undertaking,” Meta argued, citing precedent that only requires Meta employ a “simple measure” to monitor such activity.
Meta: Adult content is banned on our platform
Meta further argued it cannot be expected to minutely police every download across its global network, citing legal precedent requiring only “simple measure[s]” to curb infringement. “We don’t want this type of content, and we take deliberate steps to avoid training on this kind of material,” the Meta spokesperson told Ars Technica.Strike 3 has two weeks to respond, per TorrentFreak. A victory for Meta means that it not only avaoids hefty damages but reinforce its stand that its video AI tools are designed to stay away from explicit material.
