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However, Strike 3 argues that this is no ordinary home pirate, using the timing of the downloads as evidence. On March 20, 2025, the porn producer’s general cou
by drewg123 12d ago
However, Strike 3 argues that this is no ordinary home pirate, using the timing of the downloads as evidence. On March 20, 2025, the porn producer’s general counsel first emailed Meta’s lawyers with forensic evidence of BitTorrent activity on the tech giant’s corporate IP addresses.
“Just hours later, Strike 3 first recorded BitTorrent infringement on John Doe’s residential IP Address,” the motion reads.
“This may suggest that Meta desired to shift infringing activity to this hidden residential IP Address in order to prevent further detection,”
Seems like there are 2 different reads to that. (a) is like they say, and Meta was using porn for AI training or something else official. Or (b) that he was personally downloading porn either at the office or a corp VPN and was told to stop by their corp It folks..
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 12d agoThe second read, (b), is irrelevant with respect to Meta's liability for the downloads before the switch to a residential IP, i.e., the downloads that prompted the email to Meta's lawyers
- mc32 12d agoIT is usually not the one doing the enforcement. They typically only do the monitoring and may report some activity above thresholds. Legal is usually the one initiating then engaging with HR to do enforcement.
- stevenwoo 12d agoWhen I worked for office with about 40 employees in 2001 or so, the FBI came to our office to arrest a guy using I think Limewire over our high speed internet access to share music and videos. It may be so common these days they only crack down like that on really egregious abuse.
- busterarm 12d agoAround that same time my own brother was working at the second largest record label in the world and their own servers were hacked and serving about 1/3 of global warez downloads. Law enforcement didn’t get involved and nobody did shit about it. Not even the last time that company was massively hacked. ;)
- sandworm101 12d agoIt had to be more complicated than simple copyright infringement for the cops to get involved.
- axus 12d agoThe music industry had more political power in 2001 than it does now.
- sandworm101 12d agoOr he was sharing other material that was kept quiet.
- joemi 12d agoThe raid being due solely to music copyright infringement is really the most likely situation. There's no need to imply it was anything else. For example, in 2009 I worked at a record store that got raided due to such claims. The RIAA's informant claimed he had seen people selling hidden bootlegs, which absolutely wasn't happening, and that was all they needed to have cops raid the store, arrest several people and cart off boxes of not-bootlegged, sold-by-major-CD-distributors CDs. Court dates followed and the case was eventually dismissed (or settled due to being more convenient than continuing the case? I can't remember), but it still took time, money, and lawyers. And this was in 2009, when the recording industry wield less power than in 2001. (I was running late for work that day or else I would have ended up arrested too, since I was one of the managers scheduled then. Thank god I was running late!)
- k310 11d agoAs a procrastinator, I applaud you. Tomorrow.
- stevenwoo 12d agoI don’t know, rolled into work at 10 and only saw they were giving him the perp walk to the car and I only heard about the details from coworkers, wasn’t close to him.
- shimman 12d agoThis is crazy. Worked at a national ISP/telecom and one of the directors openly had a seedbox and was torrenting massive amount of things. Chalked it up as the poors being held to different standards as this person had a close relationship with one of the executives.
- abofh 12d agoI mean basically that. If you hit a corporate IP, unless they have flow level logging or you have very extensive timestamps, then the game ends, company says they've enacted new training or controls, but they can't identify a specific person and it's not their fault. Essentially - this is not a suggestion. Residential ip's map to a specific person, and it's a lot harder for them to deflect and say I'm not responsible for my own Internet connection
- teiferer 12d ago> Residential ip's map to a specific person, Since when does every household member have their own residential IP? Even in single households that's not true (friends visiting, on-and-off partner, one night stands, helping the neighbor out cause their wifi is broken, ...) And I don't know the logging + data retention requirements for CGNAT.
- autoexec 12d ago> Since when does every household member have their own residential IP? Isn't that the dream of IPv6? Every member and device in your home trackable all the time?
- b112 12d agoThank you for making it clear why IPv6 must not succeed. Long Live IPV8.
- bityard 12d agoMost devices should be using temporary dynamic IPv6 addresses, for this exact reason. I believe this is the default on most Linux distributions, not sure about others.
- cube00 12d agoI felt quite let down when I realised Fedora which bills itself as "free & private" didn't use temporary addresses by default and I had to go hunting for configuration files to enable it as it's not exposed in the UI either. https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/ipv6-privacy-option-as-default/178479 https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/ipv6-privacy-option-a... https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2280924#c3 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2280924#c3
- alex7o 12d agoI think they are training ai porn so ... this should be a lawsuit
- ryandvm 12d ago> Or (b) that he was personally downloading porn either at the office or a corp VPN Man, if Facebook is hiring people this dumb, it's going to make me feel a lot worse about getting rejected after interviewing there.
- mcmcmc 12d agoI wouldn’t, lack of moral fiber is a key factor they look for
- dozerly 12d agoThey are, they probably just did slightly better at regurgitating leetcode problems than you
- drewg123 12d agoThis person is supposedly an executive. I doubt most executive could pass an FAANG technical interview.
- ryandrake 12d agoI doubt executives even go through the typical employee interview hazing. It's more vibes and "do you know the right people or go to the right prestigious school?"
- vorpalhex 12d agoExecutive (and upper management) hiring is much more about owning and using risk, getting the management unit (your part of the org) all aligned and singing the same tune, and for executives showing that you've done this successfully across distinct business units (eg sales and engineering). There's then a much more serious alignment pass. Relationships can and do pre-vouch for big pieces of this such as alignment - if you've worked with someone for a decade, you are probably mission aligned.
- ChrisMarshallNY 12d agoYou may remember this story, from a month or two ago: https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/07/on-the-run-for-20-years-most-wanted-fugitive-caught-hiding-as-a-biotech-exec/ https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/07/on-the-run-for-20-yea...
- read_the_articl 12d agoFrom TFA: "Strike 3 suggests the downloads are consistent with work to make the headset compatible with adult films" > The company logged all BitTorrent activity detected from the executive’s connection, which was nearly 20,000 files. > This includes VR adult titles made for Meta’s Quest headset. Strike 3 suggests the downloads are consistent with work to make the headset compatible with adult films. > As recently as August 25, Strike 3 says it recorded more than 150 daily downloads, from multi-language “Mega Packs” of TV shows, movies, software and books to what it describes as AI-generated pornography and VR adult films. That included nearly a dozen of its own titles.
- chorizo 12d agoWhy was torrenting needed anyway? Meta could’ve easily reached out to adult media providers to work on VR headset compatibility under an NDA. Or hired a third party contractor to do it.
- darth_avocado 12d agoIt’s much more expensive. You as a consumer can buy a movie for $5 with a DVD on sale. But tos generally don’t include commercial activities. If you reach out to the film studio to get their permission, they can charge you anywhere from $10K to $1M+ for same thing. And I’m sure meta paid for some specific content but they generally wouldn’t want to set a precedent where they paid everyone.
- chorizo 12d agoMeta wants to make their service compatible with meta vr headsets. They don’t require ongoing access to the content. The media vendor would also benefit from this, so an agreement is in the interest of both parties.
- fn-mote 12d ago> And I’m sure meta paid for some specific content Are you? I don’t understand why you think this. It seems like the only payments in this area are settlements after the fact. Counterexamples welcome.
- huijzer 12d ago> Meta was using porn for AI training or … Seems plausible. The material contains many hours of highly detailed human interaction plus I don’t expect Meta would have moral objections given their track record.
- infinite_spin 12d agoI suspect their goal is to train a model for detecting adult material, so that they can block it, which isn't necessarily an amoral goal
- overtone1000 12d agoBut would still be a copyright violation
- infinite_spin 12d agoI'm not a lawyer, but in my view copyright violations center around distribution, not necessarily the method by which a work is obtained e.g. if someone is reciting a poem they wrote in a public park, and I make a recording of that recitation, I have not violated their copyright in doing so, however I might violate their copyright by reconstructing that poem and then distributing it
- irthomasthomas 12d agoWhich is why torrenting is the dumbest way to do this, since every downloader is also an uploader. That is what gets torrenters locked up. It is possible to leach only, but its not the default mode, and if this guy was broadcasting his IP address, then he was seeding... distributing.
- infinite_spin 12d agoYou expose your IP address even when not seeding, and I don't know if this person was seeding these torrents
- jasonlotito 12d ago> "In short, this is a lot for one person to torrent on an average day, particularly one who has a demanding job," Strike 3 writes. The company believes the pattern makes more sense as AI training data or research. I hope they drag Meta hard and get every penny for this.
- gchamonlive 12d ago> b) that he was personally downloading porn either at the office or a corp VPN and was told to stop by their corp It folks.. I wonder how much porn you have to personally download to be considered prolific. EDIT: "Reality Labs executive downloaded nearly 20,000 files at his home for work purposes" Yeah, you can't consume that much porn for your own amusement.
- paimapi 12d agolike literally too, 20k films at let's say 30m average is 400+ continuous, unbroken days worth of content and I assume this was just for content from Reality Labs. god knows how much other torrenting was done outside of Reality Labs IP
- Lammy 12d ago> 20k films at let's say 30m average is 400+ continuous, unbroken days worth of content You are making the mistake of assuming someone can only have one monitor displaying porn at once. Have you never seen a real gooncave?
- notahacker 12d agoAnd with 365 days in the year and the need to have something on in the background whilst working from home...
- gchamonlive 12d agoThat's Mike Santini from The Chair Company
- ElProlactin 12d ago> Have you never seen a real gooncave? So is this what Zuck's bunker in Hawaii is all about?
- gchamonlive 12d agoEven if the dude would consume only the "highlights", that's a load of content, if you catch my drift