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

A lawsuit filed by Strike 3 Holdings says Meta pirated and seeded adult videos through BitTorrent for years, with some IP addresses tied to Meta and at least one tied to an employee. The complaint says the pattern began by 2018 and involved thousands of movies.

Strike 3 Holdings argues Meta used popular adult videos to speed downloads of other data, may have used the files in AI training, and may have hidden the activity through virtual private clouds and residential IPs. It seeks damages, an injunction, and deletion of the videos from training data and existing models.

Reading notes

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• Strike 3 Holdings says Meta infringed at least 2,396 movies as part of a BitTorrent strategy to download large amounts of data quickly.
• The complaint says Meta kept seeding the videos for days, weeks, or months after downloading them.
• The lawsuit says some IP addresses were clearly registered to Meta, others were hidden, and at least one was linked to a Meta employee.
• Strike 3 Holdings claims Meta used popular adult videos as tit-for-tat currency in BitTorrent to gain faster access to other files.
• The complaint says the videos may also have been used to train Meta’s AI models.
• Strike 3 Holdings says the distribution may have exposed minors to the videos in states that require age checks.
• The company says Meta tried to conceal its BitTorrent activity through six Virtual Private Clouds and hidden IP addresses.
• It also alleges over 100,000 unauthorized distribution transactions linked to Meta corporate IPs.
• Strike 3 Holdings wants Meta to stop piracy, pay damages, and delete the videos from training data and existing AI models.
• Meta said it is reviewing the complaint and does not believe Strike’s claims are accurate.