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..
When 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.
This 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.
Around 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. ;)
From 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.
I've lived in and around Cambridge for a very long time now. I've met a lot of Cambridge undergrads and graduates. Let me tell you: they are a mixed bag.
Don't misunderstand me: there are some very smart people at Cambridge University. Very smart indeed. And I think if you took any cohort from Cambridge Uni versus a similar cohort from another university you'd certainly find that, against most universities, the Cambridge cohort would be smarter on average.
But that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of people who got their degree from Cambridge who clearly found a way to blag their way through the interview process that may not have been particularly closely correlated with their intellect. The same will be true of Meta, Google, etc. I swear, the interview processes at these companies are probably more of a sop to the egos of company leadership and people who already work there than they are any more effective at filtering down to good talent than less byzantine and overwrought hiring processes.
I 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?"
Does anyone honestly believe that Zuck doesn't have his own history with filesharing? Any computer nerd from that time would have deep knowledge of filesharing.
Strike 3, the studio involved, files more lawsuits in the USA than anyone else. I think that makes them the biggest Copyright Trolls of all time. They run their own BitTorrent monitoring operation.
1 - How are people torrenting and not using a VPN? 2 - How are judges still allowing this business model of sharing files then trying to shake down people that download them?
yeah everyone knows the losses they argue for are bullshit, I really think people should see how many times lawyers and other legal professionals give each other jobs by creating a world in which they are more and more needed.
Of course legal professionals are always needed but so much of what is done today is just a kind of rent seeking.
Very dumb but what if he claims he was only using to train an AI model, what was that ruling on copyright material being ok to training AI models on. Would this hold up in court or not?
I don't know a single company where an executive would be downloading training data themselves.
The only exception would be a very small startup, which isn't the case here, or all IT, admin and engineering staff told the company they aren't doing anything illegal for Zuckerberg. That's not going to happen at Meta either.
The idea that you'd get notified of infringing activity on corporate network and deliberately shift to residential without changing the activity is crazy. Like, it's hard to believe anyone is that dumb.
> Meta also flags a contradiction in Strike 3’s theory that downloads were switched to the home connection hours after the March 2025 warning. Strike 3’s own complaint alleges that Meta’s “off-infra” activity started in 2018, and that downloads on corporate IP addresses continued long after the notice.
Oh. The connection is maybe more tenuous than Strike 3 claims.
Even better, they used a corporate network. The plaintiff is alleging that this was actually for work, since they were an executive at Reality Labs (home of Oculus.) They contend that the executive was testing VR porn as part of their job.
This reminds me of a stand up comedy routine about people being bad at hiding their porn collections because their brain doesn't work right when they are horny.
“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..
Law enforcement didn’t get involved and nobody did shit about it.
Not even the last time that company was massively hacked. ;)
> 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.
Man, if Facebook is hiring people this dumb, it's going to make me feel a lot worse about getting rejected after interviewing there.
I've lived in and around Cambridge for a very long time now. I've met a lot of Cambridge undergrads and graduates. Let me tell you: they are a mixed bag.
Don't misunderstand me: there are some very smart people at Cambridge University. Very smart indeed. And I think if you took any cohort from Cambridge Uni versus a similar cohort from another university you'd certainly find that, against most universities, the Cambridge cohort would be smarter on average.
But that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of people who got their degree from Cambridge who clearly found a way to blag their way through the interview process that may not have been particularly closely correlated with their intellect. The same will be true of Meta, Google, etc. I swear, the interview processes at these companies are probably more of a sop to the egos of company leadership and people who already work there than they are any more effective at filtering down to good talent than less byzantine and overwrought hiring processes.
You just have to make your peace with it.
Legal is usually the one initiating then engaging with HR to do enforcement.
Let me break out the world's tiniest violin for them.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/meta-torrented-o...
Of course legal professionals are always needed but so much of what is done today is just a kind of rent seeking.
I am hard pressed to believe that this was for the exec.
what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander
I just wnat to know what bandwidth this exec has at his house. I want it.
This was mostly a hoarding thing. Hoarders gonna hoard.
The only exception would be a very small startup, which isn't the case here, or all IT, admin and engineering staff told the company they aren't doing anything illegal for Zuckerberg. That's not going to happen at Meta either.
Maybe an ethically bankrupt company with a "move fast and break things" ethos looking for exactly the plausible deniability your comment hints at?
> Meta also flags a contradiction in Strike 3’s theory that downloads were switched to the home connection hours after the March 2025 warning. Strike 3’s own complaint alleges that Meta’s “off-infra” activity started in 2018, and that downloads on corporate IP addresses continued long after the notice.
Oh. The connection is maybe more tenuous than Strike 3 claims.
Backdoored dad's work computer, how diabolical. ;)