Meta pirated and seeded porn for years to train AI, lawsuit says

In a significant development in the ongoing copyright dispute involving Meta, adult film producer Strike 3 Holdings has filed a lawsuit claiming that the tech giant has illegally downloaded and shared vast amounts of copyrighted adult content for years. This lawsuit could potentially bolster the claims made by authors who previously accused Meta of using pirated data to train its artificial intelligence models. Strike 3 Holdings, which operates popular adult websites that attract over 25 million visitors monthly, asserts that Meta has been using sophisticated BitTorrent tracking tools to infringe upon its copyrights. The lawsuit alleges that Meta downloaded at least 81.7 terabytes of data through various shadow libraries and has been torrenting and seeding its copyrighted adult films since at least 2018. The court documents detail that some of the IP addresses involved in this infringement were registered to Meta, while others were hidden, raising concerns about the company's practices. Notably, at least one IP address was linked to a Meta employee. The lawsuit contends that Meta engaged in deliberate infringement of at least 2,396 movies, leveraging a strategy to maximize data downloads by seeding high-quality adult content. Furthermore, the filing suggests that Meta continued to seed this content for extended periods, potentially using it to enhance its AI models. Strike 3 Holdings emphasized that the BitTorrent protocol operates on a reciprocal sharing system, which Meta allegedly exploited by pirating popular adult films released on the same day they hit the market. As this legal battle unfolds, it could have profound implications for Meta’s operations and its approach to copyright compliance in the realm of digital content.