Judge Allows Porn Company Lawsuit Against Meta Over Alleged AI Training Copyright Infringement
A federal judge has denied Meta's motion to dismiss a lawsuit alleging the company illegally downloaded over 2,300 copyrighted pornographic films to train its artificial intelligence models. U.S. District Judge Eumi K. Lee ruled on June 11 that Strike 3 Holdings and Counterlife Media have plausibly claimed Meta is liable for direct, vicarious, and contributory copyright infringement. The plaintiffs are seeking up to $359 million in damages, while Meta has denied the claims, describing them as "nonsensical and unsupported" and stating the downloads were for "personal use."
U.S. District Judge Eumi K. Lee issued an order on June 11, permitting a lawsuit against Meta alleging copyright infringement to proceed. The lawsuit was filed by Strike 3 Holdings and Counterlife Media, who claim Meta illegally downloaded their adult films to train its AI models.
Strike 3 Holdings and Counterlife Media allege that between 2018 and 2025, Meta infringed on more than 2,300 copyrighted pornographic movies by torrenting them. The lawsuit contends that IP addresses traced to Meta's corporate offices exhibited "non-human patterns" involving mass infringement.
Meta had filed a motion in October to dismiss the lawsuit, denying the allegations and asserting that the claims were "nonsensical and unsupported" and that any downloads were for "personal use."
However, Judge Lee denied Meta's dismissal attempt, noting download patterns such as IP addresses torrenting similar files with identical names on the same day. Lee remarked that "It strains credulity to suggest that these correlations are mere coincidence and the product of individual human selections."
The plaintiffs are seeking up to $359 million in damages. Strike 3 and Counterlife Media reportedly became aware of Meta's alleged BitTorrent activity through press coverage related to a January 2025 lawsuit against Meta, where discovery revealed the company had allegedly pirated books for AI training. Although Meta won that specific case in June 2025, the judge's ruling at the time indicated that different legal arguments might have yielded a different outcome.
According to Mashable Tech, the lawsuit can now move forward.
