GoKawiilA routine John Doe lawsuit could become part of Strike 3 Holdings' $446 million AI training case against Meta. The adult film producer wants to link the two lawsuits, arguing that a Reality Labs executive downloaded nearly 20,000 files at his home for work purposes, not for personal use. Meta counters that the alleged home downloads are not linked to the company.
For well over a decade, copyright holders have used U.S. federal courts to unmask anonymous BitTorrent users.
Adult film producer Strike 3 Holdings has turned this into an industry of its own, filing thousands of John Doe lawsuits every year.
In most of these “John Doe” cases it subpoenas the Internet provider for the subscriber’s name, offers the alleged pirate a settlement, which effectively ends the case. This process is then repeated over and over.
Last summer, the company took aim at a much larger target. Together with Counterlife Media, Strike 3 sued Meta, accusing the tech giant of downloading thousands of its films via BitTorrent to train AI models. With 2,973 films at stake, the case could be worth up to $446 million.
This multi-million dollar case is now running into one of Strike 3’s routine “John Doe” lawsuits.
According to a motion filed last week, an anonymous pirate behind a residential AT&T connection is an executive at Meta’s Reality Labs division, which develops the Quest VR headsets.
From John Doe to Reality Labs Exec
The John Doe case started in March, when Strike 3 filed a complaint against the subscriber of IP address 162.192.7.34 at the same California federal court. In April, Magistrate Judge Virginia K. DeMarchi granted a subpoena to AT&T, noting that the name should not be publicly disclosed.
After AT&T shared the information, Strike 3 says its investigation revealed that the subscriber is an executive in Meta’s Reality Labs division. Citing his LinkedIn profile, the company notes that he has worked at Facebook and Meta for more than a decade.
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