Adult Film Producer Unmasks Prolific 'John DOE' Torrent Pirate as Meta Executive
An adult film producer, Strike 3 Holdings, is attempting to link a routine copyright infringement lawsuit against an anonymous BitTorrent user to its larger $446 million AI training case against Meta. The producer claims the anonymous user is a Meta Reality Labs executive who downloaded copyrighted films for work-related AI training.
Why it matters
The case could set a significant legal precedent regarding corporate liability for copyright infringement during the development of AI models.
A routine John Doe lawsuit could become part of Strike 3 Holdings' $446 million AI training case against Meta. The adult film producer wants to link the two lawsuits, arguing that a Reality Labs executive downloaded nearly 20,000 files at his home for work purposes, not for personal use. Meta counters that the alleged home downloads are not linked to the company.
For well over a decade, copyright holders have used U.S. federal courts to unmask anonymous BitTorrent users.
Adult film producer Strike 3 Holdings has turned this into an industry of its own, filing thousands of John Doe lawsuits every year.
In most of these “John Doe” cases it subpoenas the Internet provider for the subscriber’s name, offers the alleged pirate a settlement, which effectively ends the case. This process is then repeated over and over.
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