A new copyright lawsuit has pulled Meta's AI training practices into another fight over how data was gathered, shared, and allegedly hidden. Strike 3 Holdings claims Meta used BitTorrent to download and seed copyrighted adult videos for years, while Meta says it does not believe the claims are accurate.
What Strike 3 Holdings alleges
The lawsuit was filed in a US district court in California by Strike 3 Holdings, an adult site operator that says it attracts "over 25 million monthly visitors" to sites it describes as "ethical sources" for adult videos. After book authors accused Meta of torrenting "at least 81.7 terabytes of data across multiple shadow libraries" to train AI models, Strike 3 Holdings says it checked its own BitTorrent-tracking tools.
According to the complaint, those tools allegedly found evidence that Meta had been torrenting and seeding Strike 3 Holdings' copyrighted content since at least 2018. Some IP addresses were allegedly registered to Meta, others appeared to be "hidden," and at least one was linked to a Meta employee, the filing said.
Strike 3 Holdings alleges Meta "willfully and intentionally" infringed "at least 2,396 movies." The company claims Meta seeded some content "sometimes for days, weeks, or even months" after downloading it, and that the files may have been used to train Meta's AI models.
Why BitTorrent matters in the complaint
The lawsuit focuses heavily on how BitTorrent works. Strike 3 Holdings told the court that BitTorrent uses a "tit-for-tat" mechanism that "rewards users who distribute the most desired content." In plain terms, a user who helps distribute popular files can gain an advantage when downloading other material from the network.
Strike 3 Holdings alleges Meta took advantage of that system by pirating adult videos that are "often within the most infringed files on BitTorrent websites" on "the very same day the motion pictures are released." The company argues that this was not random downloading, but a strategy to speed up access to large amounts of other data.
The complaint says Meta "specifically targeted Plaintiffs' content for distribution in order to accelerate its downloads of vast amounts of other content." It also alleges that while Meta said it "wrote a script to intentionally limit distributing popular books on BitTorrent," discovery will likely show Meta "continuously" distributed adult videos as a way to work around BitTorrent's incentives.
Strike 3 Holdings says it has documented at least five episodes in which Meta "hand-picked" adult videos from a specific site for "intense periods of distribution." The company argues that keeping those files in a swarm for long periods only made sense if Meta wanted to use that activity as "tit-for-tat currency" to download millions of other files from BitTorrent.
The claimed harms go beyond copyright
The complaint says the alleged conduct hurt Strike 3 Holdings' ability to compete because the videos were distributed for free. It also raises age-check concerns, claiming the tactics may have distributed the videos to minors without age checks in states that now require them.
Strike 3 Holdings is seeking extensive damages and an injunction that would permanently stop Meta from pirating its videos. It also wants Meta to delete any stolen videos from AI training data and existing AI models.
The company alleges that its copyrighted works include high-quality videos with rare long cuts of "natural, human-centric imagery," including "parts of the body not found in regular videos" and "unique" forms "of human interactions and facial expressions." In the complaint, Strike 3 Holdings argues Meta could use those works to build a rival adult video generator that could "eventually create identical content for little to no cost."
Strike 3 Holdings also claims the alleged distribution threatens its brands' reputations as respected and ethical sources for high-quality adult motion pictures. Its argument is that unauthorized free distribution, especially if minors could access the content, undermines both market competition and consent over how the works are shared.
The evidence Strike 3 Holdings says it found
To support its claims, Strike 3 Holdings says it searched "its archive of recorded infringement captured by its VXN Scan and Cross Reference tools." The company says it found 47 "IP addresses identified as owned by Facebook infringing its copyright protected Works."
The complaint alleges this data shows "continued unauthorized distribution" over "several years." Strike 3 Holdings also claims Meta did not stop seeding after being confronted with the evidence, which the company says was verified through Maxmind.
The lawsuit further alleges Meta tried to "conceal its BitTorrent activities" through "six Virtual Private Clouds" that formed a "stealth network" of "hidden IP addresses." Strike 3 Holdings says analysis of those addresses found "data patterns that matched infringement patterns seen on Meta's corporate IP Addresses" and included "evidence of other activity on the BitTorrent network including ebooks, movies, television shows, music, and software."
Strike 3 Holdings argues that the allegedly non-human patterns seen across the IP addresses point to AI training rather than personal use. It also says it found "at least one residential IP address of a Meta employee" infringing its copyrighted works, suggesting Meta may have directed an employee to torrent pirated data outside the office to obscure the trail.
The company did not identify the employee or the major data center discussed in the complaint. In a subsequent filing, it said it recognized the risks to Meta's business and employee privacy from sharing sensitive information.
How Meta has responded so far
The allegations arrive alongside a separate copyright fight brought by book authors. Meta has defeated most of those authors' claims and has argued there is no proof it uploaded pirated data through seeding or leeching on BitTorrent. The authors still have a chance to prove Meta may have profited from alleged piracy.
Strike 3 Holdings says its evidence shows "well over 100,000 unauthorized distribution transactions" linked to Meta's corporate IPs. The company hopes a jury will find Meta liable for direct copyright infringement, or for secondary and vicarious copyright infringement if Meta is found to have distanced itself through a third-party data center or employee residential IP address.
Asked for comment, a Meta spokesperson told Ars, "We're reviewing the complaint, but don't believe Strike's claims are accurate." Ars could not immediately reach Strike 3 Holdings' in-house lawyer or the book authors' lawyers for comment.