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Meta pirated and seeded porn for years to train AI, lawsuit says [arstechnica.com]:

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Porn sites may have blown up Meta's key defense in a copyright fight with book authors who earlier this year said that Meta torrented [arstechnica.com] "at least 81.7 terabytes of data across multiple shadow libraries" to train its AI models.

Meta has defeated most of the authors' claims and claimed there is no proof that Meta ever uploaded pirated data through seeding or leeching on the BitTorrent network used to download training data. But authors still have a chance to prove that Meta may have profited [arstechnica.com] off its massive piracy, and a new lawsuit [arstechnica.net] filed by adult sites last week appears to contain evidence that could help authors win their fight, TorrentFreak reported [torrentfreak.com].

The new lawsuit was filed last Friday in a US district court in California by Strike 3 Holdings—which says it attracts "over 25 million monthly visitors" to sites that serve as "ethical sources" for adult videos that "are famous for redefining adult content with Hollywood style and quality."

After authors revealed Meta's torrenting, Strike 3 Holdings checked its proprietary BitTorrent-tracking tools designed to detect infringement of its videos and alleged that the company found evidence that Meta has been torrenting and seeding its copyrighted content for years—since at least 2018. Some of the IP addresses were clearly registered to Meta, while others appeared to be "hidden," and at least one was linked to a Meta employee, the filing said.

Meta’s AI training tactics may have harmed minors

According to Strike 3 Holdings, Meta "willfully and intentionally" infringed "at least 2,396 movies" as part of a strategy to download terabytes of data as fast as possible by seeding popular high-quality porn. Supposedly, Meta continued seeding the content "sometimes for days, weeks, or even months" after downloading them, and these movies may also have been secretly used to train Meta's AI models, Strike 3 Holdings alleged.

The porn site operator explained to the court that BitTorrent's protocol establishes a "tit-for-tat" mechanism that "rewards users who distribute the most desired content." It alleged that Meta took advantage of this system by "often" pirating adult videos that are "often within the most infringed files on BitTorrent websites" on "the very same day the motion pictures are released."

These tactics allegedly gave Meta several advantages, making it harder for Strike 3 Holdings' sites to compete, including potentially distributing the videos to minors for free without age checks in states that now require them.

"Meta specifically targeted Plaintiffs’ content for distribution in order to accelerate its downloads of vast amounts of other content," the lawsuit said. And while Meta claimed that it "wrote a script to intentionally limit distributing popular books on BitTorrent," Strike 3 Holdings believes "discovery will likely show" Meta "continuously" distributed its adult videos specifically as a strategy to get around the BitTorrent protocol.

So far, 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" to avoid seeding other content it was sourcing through BitTorrent.

"The only reason to incur the server and bandwidth expense of remaining in a swarm for these long durations is to leverage the extended distribution as tit-for-tat currency in order to efficiently download millions of other files from BitTorrent," Strike 3 Holdings alleged.

Strike 3 Holdings is seeking extensive damages and an injunction to permanently stop Meta from pirating its videos.

The company also wants Meta to delete any stolen videos from its AI training data and existing AI models. The company alleged that Meta could use its high-quality copyrighted works—which provide rare long cuts of "natural, human-centric imagery" showing "parts of the body not found in regular videos" and "unique" forms "of human interactions and facial expressions"—to create a rival adult video generator that could "eventually create identical content for little to no cost."

"Plaintiffs cannot compete against Meta when it ignores federal and state laws and offers Plaintiffs’ works for free," Strike 3 Holdings alleged. "This will effectively eliminate Plaintiffs’ future ability to compete in the marketplace" as well as its brands' "hard-earned reputations as respected and ethical sources for high-quality adult motion pictures by potentially allowing minors unfettered access to Plaintiffs’ content against Plaintiffs’ consent."

Asked for comment on the lawsuit, 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 book authors' lawyers for comment.

Evidence may prove Meta seeded more content

Seeking evidence to back its own copyright infringement claims, Strike 3 Holdings searched "its archive of recorded infringement captured by its VXN Scan and Cross Reference tools" and found 47 "IP addresses identified as owned by Facebook infringing its copyright protected Works."

The data allegedly demonstrates a "continued unauthorized distribution" over "several years." And Meta allegedly did not stop its seeding after Strike 3 Holdings confronted the tech giant with this evidence—despite the IP data supposedly being verified through an industry-leading provider called Maxmind.

Meta also allegedly attempted to "conceal its BitTorrent activities" through "six Virtual Private Clouds" that formed a "stealth network" of "hidden IP addresses," the lawsuit alleged, which seemingly implicated a "major third-party data center provider" as a partner in Meta's piracy.

An analysis of these IP addresses allegedly 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." The seemingly non-human patterns documented on both sets of IP addresses suggest the data was for AI training and not for personal use, Strike 3 Holdings alleged.

Perhaps most shockingly, considering that a Meta employee joked "torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn’t feel right," [arstechnica.com] Strike 3 Holdings further alleged that it found "at least one residential IP address of a Meta employee" infringing its copyrighted works. That suggests Meta may have directed an employee to torrent pirated data outside the office to obscure the data trail.

The adult site operator did not identify the employee or the major data center discussed in its complaint, noting in a subsequent filing that it recognized the risks to Meta's business and its employees' privacy of sharing sensitive information.

In total, the company alleged that evidence shows "well over 100,000 unauthorized distribution transactions" linked to Meta's corporate IPs. Strike 3 Holdings is hoping the evidence will lead a jury to find Meta liable for direct copyright infringement or charge Meta with secondary and vicarious copyright infringement if the jury finds that Meta successfully distanced itself by using the third-party data center or an employee's home IP address.

"Meta has the right and ability to supervise and/or control its own corporate IP addresses, as well as the IP addresses hosted in off-infra data centers, and the acts of its employees and agents infringing Plaintiffs’ Works through their residential IPs by using Meta’s AI script to obtain content through BitTorrent," the complaint said.

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