Judge Rules Blacked.com Can Sue Meta for Scraping Its Porn

2026-06-15 · Source: 404media Feed · Field: Legal & Regulatory — Intellectual Property & Patents, Compliance & Risk Management · Depth: Fundamental Awareness, short

Summary

A federal judge has denied Meta Platforms Inc.'s motion to dismiss a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Strike 3 Holdings, owner of adult content sites like Blacked.com, Vixen.com, and Tushy.com. The lawsuit alleges Meta scraped thousands of porn videos, totaling over 81 terabytes, from Anna's Archive between 2018 and 2025, using 47 IP addresses to torrent 2,396 videos 6,008 times, ostensibly for AI model training. Judge Eumi K. Lee of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California rejected Meta's defense that "rogue employees" were responsible, citing evidence of a "coordinated effort" based on synchronized torrenting of files with similar keywords. The judge clarified that Meta's liability for direct, vicarious, and contributory copyright infringement stems from the illegal downloading and "seeding" of the content, irrespective of its eventual use in AI training.

Key takeaway

For legal professionals advising tech companies on AI training data acquisition, this ruling clarifies that unauthorized downloading and distribution of copyrighted material constitutes infringement. You must ensure robust internal controls and clear policies prevent employees from using company resources for illicit data scraping. This applies even if AI training intent is unproven. The decision underscores significant legal risks from broad, unverified data collection for AI model development.

Key insights

Copyright infringement occurs upon unauthorized downloading and distribution, regardless of AI training intent.

Principles

• Coordinated data acquisition implies corporate responsibility.
• Illegally downloading copyrighted material is infringement.
• "Seeding" pirated content constitutes distribution.

In practice

• Document IP address activity for coordinated data scraping.
• Identify torrenting patterns using file name keywords.

Topics

• Copyright Infringement
• AI Training Data
• Meta Platforms Inc.
• Strike 3 Holdings
• Data Scraping
• Legal Ruling

Best for: CTO, VP of Engineering/Data, Director of AI/ML, Legal Professional, AI Ethicist, Tech Journalist

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Editorial summary, takeaway, and curation by AIssential. Original article published by 404media Feed.