“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.
Strike 3 Holdings shared a screenshot of MaxMind’s findings.
Credit:
via Strike 3 Holdings’ complaint
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.
