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

A federal judge ruled that Meta must face a copyright lawsuit from Strike 3 Holdings, which owns adult sites like Blacked.com, for allegedly scraping and torrenting thousands of its porn videos to train AI models. The judge rejected Meta's argument that rogue employees were responsible, citing evidence of coordinated downloading across company IP addresses. The ruling allows the case to proceed, potentially impacting how tech companies use copyrighted material for AI training.

A federal judge has rejected Meta’s attempt to dismiss a lawsuit from Strike 3 Holdings, the company that owns popular sites like Blacked, Vixen, and Tushy, for scraping its porn videos. The decision https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/70899478/61/strike-3-holdings-llc-v-meta-platforms-inc/?ref=404media.co shows Meta’s nonsensical justification for scraping massive amounts of copyrighted material from the internet in order to train its AI models, and is notable for adult content creators, long before the current generative AI boom. https://www.vice.com/en/article/sexual-abuse-fueling-ai-porn-deepfake-czech-casting-girls-do-porn/?ref=404media.co who have been scraped for model training data Strike 3 Holding first filed its lawsuit almost a year ago after internal Meta emails revealed in a different lawsuit https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/meta-torrented-over-81-7tb-of-pirated-books-to-train-ai-authors-say/?ref=404media.co showed that the company downloaded over 81 terabytes of data by scraping Anna’s Archive, a massive open search search engine for torrenting copyrighted material including books, movies, TV shows, and porn. A Strike 3 Holding investigation found that 47 IP addresses belonging to Meta were used to torrent 2,396 of its videos a total of 6,008 times between 2018 and 2025. On Thursday, Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California Judge Eumi K. Lee rejected Meta’s attempt to dismiss the lawsuit, allowing it to move forward. Meta argued that Strike 3 Holdings failed to show that Meta actually intended to use Strike 3 Holdings’ videos to train its AI models and that Meta, the company, was actually responsible for downloading the videos, as opposed to rogue employees downloading porn on company time from company IP addresses. According to the judge’s ruling, Strike 3 Holdings’ investigation showed coordination across Meta’s IP addresses that proved “a coordinated effort to gather data,” as opposed to the action of random employees. Specifically, Strike 3 Holdings showed that Meta’s IP addresses torrented files with similar file names on the same day, ranging from porn to cartoons and sitcoms, suggesting the company was downloading files based on key terms. “For example, IP Ranges A and F torrented the following files on December 15, 2022: ‘Teen Sex Sessions 2 2012 ,’ ‘Teen Titans Go to the Movies 2018 ,’ ‘Teens Love Tats XXX,’ ‘TeensLoveAnal.16.09.30.Amara,’ ‘Teenfidelity Pics,’ ‘TeensLoveAnal.16.06.10.Casey,’ ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987-1996 ,’ ‘Teen Mom Girls Night In S02E08,’ ‘TeenyTaboo.22.12.07.Kiana,’ and ‘TeenageDelinquents.Maryjane,’” the decision says. “On the same day, a Corporate IP Address was used to torrent ‘TeenCurves.22.12.09.Willow.’ The connection between these files is plain: The word ‘teen’ appears in every file name.” The judge said that Meta suggesting that its IP addresses downloading all these files at the same time was the work of different individual Meta employees acting independently “strains credulity.” The judge also explained that whether Meta actually used Strike 3 Holdings’ videos to train its AI models is irrelevant because Meta violated Strike 3 Holdings’s copyright when it torrented its videos. It illegally downloaded the files and also “seeded” them, meaning they distributed the pirated to other users. “In sum, Plaintiffs Strike 3 Holdings have plausibly alleged that Defendant Meta is liable for direct, vicarious, and contributory copyright infringement based on the torrenting of their films,” the decision said. “Defendant’s motion to dismiss is therefore DENIED.”