VMG Files Opposition to Meta's Motion to Dismiss Piracy Dispute

LOS ANGELES—Strike 3 Holdings, the parent company of Vixen Media Group (VMG), filed opposition against Meta Platforms' motion to dismiss a piracy lawsuit brought by the adult studio alleging over $350 million in damages, according to court documents filed last week.  In the latest filing from Strike 3, its counsel argues that Meta’s defense in the motion to dismiss the federal lawsuit, citing “personal use” downloads of nearly 2,400 copyrighted materials, is not credible. VMG’s parent said Meta infringed on these materials to train the large tech company’s Movie Gen artificial intelligence video generation tool. “Plaintiffs provide data demonstrating unique patterns of Meta’s piracy suggestive of a centralized algorithm coordinating the infringements. Meta’s excuse that employees must be infringing plaintiffs’ copyrights for ‘personal use’ does not fit the facts,” Strike 3’s attorneys wrote in the Nov. 10 filing. They add that several download patterns they observed suggest non-human, algorithmic behaviors. To support this argument, the attorneys for Strike 3 highlight download data that suggests Meta’s so-called “hidden” IP addresses, including both corporate and residential, downloaded multiple different versions of Microsoft Office within short timeframes. “No reasonable person needs this many versions of a word processing software,” the attorneys write. “This is the kind of systematic, hyper-literal search consistent with an algorithm, and not just a person casually searching for files,” they add, pointing to their theory that Meta infringed through artificial intelligence algorithmic training and scraping. As AVN reported at the end of October, Meta responded to Strike 3’s initial complaints by pushing the narrative that the downloads linked to IP addresses owned by the Facebook and Instagram parent company were for “private personal use.” An attorney for Meta, in its motion to dismiss, argued, “The far more plausible inference to be drawn from such meager, uncoordinated activity is that disparate individuals downloaded adult videos for personal use.” Futurism noted earlier this month, citing Meta’s motion to dismiss, that detected downloads were “made using the home IP address of a Meta contractor’s father,” noting that Strike 3 pleads “no facts plausibly tying Meta to those downloads, which are plainly indicative of personal consumption.” “Meta’s motion is an attempt to thwart the protections Congress enacted in the Copyright Act,” Strike 3 pleads with the judge in the case. “Respectfully, plaintiffs simply ask for their day in court and ask this court to deny the motion.”