<i>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.<p>“Just hours later, Strike 3 first recorded BitTorrent infringement on John Doe’s residential IP Address,” the motion reads.<p>“This may suggest that Meta desired to shift infringing activity to this hidden residential IP Address in order to prevent further detection,” </i><p>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..
> 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..<p>I wonder how much porn you have to personally download to be considered prolific.<p>EDIT: "Reality Labs executive downloaded nearly 20,000 files at his home for work purposes"<p>Yeah, you can't consume that much porn for your own amusement.
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.
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.<p>Law enforcement didn’t get involved and nobody did shit about it.<p>Not even the last time that company was massively hacked. ;)
I 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.<p>Essentially - this is not a suggestion.<p>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
It had to be more complicated than simple copyright infringement for the cops to get involved.
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.
> Or (b) that he was personally downloading porn either at the office or a corp VPN<p>Man, if Facebook is hiring people this dumb, it's going to make me feel a lot worse about getting rejected after interviewing there.
Mate, I got rejected by Cambridge University.<p>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.<p>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. In fact the place is genuinely awash with very smart people literally everywhere.<p>But that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of people that went to 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.<p>You just have to make your peace with it.
I worked there for years. I assure you, based on my experience, that there are a lot of dumb people there making > $500k/year.
There's a strong luck component to interviewing.<p>Which interviewers you get, vibes, which team is hiring, whether the folks in your hiring bar are grumpy, ...<p>Best thing you can do is know several people who can act as direct hiring manager.
This person is supposedly an executive. I doubt most executive could pass an FAANG technical interview.
In a related article linked at the bottom of the article's page, it says Meta confirmed it was a former data engineer:<p><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/meta-confirms-data-engineer-is-behind-key-ip-address-in-adult-film-piracy-lawsuit/" rel="nofollow">https://torrentfreak.com/meta-confirms-data-engineer-is-behi...</a>
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?"
You may remember this story, from a month or two ago: <a href="https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/07/on-the-run-for-20-years-most-wanted-fugitive-caught-hiding-as-a-biotech-exec/" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/07/on-the-run-for-20-yea...</a>
Executive (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).<p>There's then a much more serious alignment pass.<p>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.
is "executive" a well defined term for american corporate law? like "a person who can allocate funds from the master bank account without approval" or something like that?
generally unilateral decision making (up to a point) + supervisory functions of an entire group / department / vertical<p>e.g. they own all of Finance (or Ops, or Legal, or whatever), and have the ability to hire, fire, and use their own budget, albeit it with strings.
"Officer" is typically anyone who can bind the company contractually.
Not really, It's just another term for upper management. It's just shorthand for any employee whose title begins with "Chief" or has "Executive" in it (among others like Chairman, President, etc).<p>Usually, people who can make large decisions for the business without approval from higher-level employees.
They are, they probably just did slightly better at regurgitating leetcode problems than you
Did you apply for the VR porn training team?
It’s a massive company, with more than 75k employees. At that scale you have to have a lot of dumb people
and, like, literally you need some dumb or mediocre people.<p>you don't need 75k generals or fighter pilots, you need average folks who are going to STFU and get the unfun, unsexy tasks done.<p>you go trying to hire a Stanford/MIT hot-shot rockstar type and they'll either crash out or jump ASAP once they realize they got nailed with drudgery.
The employees at any particular company are a random sample of the population, and will therefore have traits that occur in the larger population.
To be fair, you'd have to be pretty dumb to apply to work at Meta anyway.
I wouldn’t, lack of moral fiber is a key factor they look for
It's even worse that they overpay people who do this type of thing while at work.
How is their network security that lax? I feel like if I tried run a torrent at work, netops would be hunting my ass down immediately.
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.
Who'd have thought a Meta exec would be arrogant enough to assume they can get away with this (!!). /s
From TFA: "Strike 3 suggests the downloads are consistent with work to make the headset compatible with adult films"<p>> The company logged all BitTorrent activity detected from the executive’s connection, which was nearly 20,000 files.<p>> 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.<p>> 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.
> Meta was using porn for AI training or …<p>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.
What is the moral difference between training on porn vs other genres of media?
I 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
Just never ever ask how they train the models for CSAM.
"Guys we can't sell a VR headset that doesn't do porn good, nobody will buy it" seems just as likely to me.
But would still be a copyright violation
I'm not a lawyer, but in my view copyright violations center around distribution, not necessarily the method by which a work is obtained<p>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
Which 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.
> "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.<p>I hope they drag Meta hard and get every penny for this.
IT is usually not the one doing the enforcement. They typically only do the monitoring and may report some activity above thresholds.<p>Legal is usually the one initiating then engaging with HR to do enforcement.
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.
Meta, the other company involved, engaged in industrial scale piracy in pursuit of training data[1].<p>Let me break out the world's tiniest violin for them.<p>[1] <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/meta-torrented-over-81-7tb-of-pirated-books-to-train-ai-authors-say/" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/meta-torrented-o...</a>
The company that owns the copyright should be allowed to enforce it. I don't see how that can be called trolling.
> 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.<p>It sounds like this person/IP was just downloading a ton of different content, of which these VR videos were are part of.<p>Doesn't that water down their complaint a bit? If they are trying to say they moved to a residential IP to specifically download VR content for training data, why are they also downloading unrelated eBook and other media? Seems like VR content made up a pretty small percentage of overall downloaded content.
how long are these videos? 2,973 of them (and not even the 20,000 count)? even at 15 minute clips that is like... five years?! watching non-stop.<p>I am hard pressed to believe that this was for the exec.<p>what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander<p>I just wnat to know what bandwidth this exec has at his house. I want it.
I doubt many consumers of these videos are watching them straight through like a normal movie.
3000 fifteen minute clips is 750 hours, or 31 days. A lot, but not five years.
Hoarders gonna hoard
I've heard the same about pirated software, people who have downloaded thousands of programs. People are strange.
umm it’s called archiving, thank you very much.
Checkout r/DataHoarder for what kind of person does this.<p>It's about having the library, not about reading the books.
humans aren't watching it mate, they're training something related to VR
It said it was AT&T, which probably implies AT&T Fiber. Gigabit fiber.
A few decades back, someone I know had entire CD towers worth of burned CDs & DVDs of porn. Easily onto the thousand discs.<p>This was mostly a hoarding thing. Hoarders gonna hoard.
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?
> not using a VPN<p>because in some cases VPNs tie to you neatly to an action better than just home internet.<p>With a VPN, you have much less deniability, because its tied to a device often with a username and password.
What cases are you talking about?
My general understanding is that if the VPN provider does not keep any logs, all that is left is timing / bandwidth correlation. If the endpoint you are connecting to isn't compromised and you connect to a high traffic node wouldn't this be essentially impossible?
Unless you do some user error stuff like logging into accounts tied to your public persona?
Depends on the VPN. Mullvad account don’t have a username tied to you.
What’s the argument if it’s on your Home internet?
When I use the VPN, I am connecting to an endpoint that 40 other people are also connected to. Did I download that file, or did one of the other 39 download it? Even the VPN provider can't tell... they keep no logs. I wouldn't want to use the VPN to phone in some bomb threat, that wouldn't even hide me 5 minutes from the feebs, but it's like an impenetrable shield for copyright troll lawyers. Smooth sailing for the last 13 or 14 years, for $3/month.<p>I'd be shocked if anyone in the United States is still downloading stuff without a VPN. There are entire countries that don't have to worry about it, but none in Europe or North America where that is the case.
In countries with lax enforcement VPN use is not really needed.
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.<p>Of course legal professionals are always needed but so much of what is done today is just a kind of rent seeking.
Company I work for got sued because someone filled out a form to get contacted, got a phone call as is expected after filling out said form, then sued because they're on the do not call list. Why did you fill out the form then?
How do you know the IP in question was not the final hop of someone's VPN connection?
Sure, that's plausible... a facebook exec so dumb that they're using their personal ISP connection to run a VPN for others, and even dumber that they don't notice or don't care about a massive amount of torrent traffic through that VPN.<p>It's not really a VPN <i>for piracy purposes</i> unless it's a commercial, no-log VPN. Since when a VPN is used to move the point at which traffic enters the internet, the owner of the VPN exit will be held to account.<p>They can try to claim they were running a "private" VPN and gave random people (from reddit and discord) internet access through it. They can try to claim they don't keep logs. Meanwhile, for a facebook VP with suspected activity tied to facebook corporate, the rightsholder will subpoena every digital device in the person's home, depose all their family and close friends, subpoena their facebook email...
Are you confusing Tor with a VPN? With a VPN the IP is a commercial server run by the VPN provider, and there's usually just one hop (you run an encrypted connection between yourself and the VPN provider that all your traffic is routed over, then the VPN provider makes outgoing connections on your behalf). You're relying on the VPN provider's promise to not log customer connections, but if they are honest, all connections seem like they're coming from the VPN provider and aren't traceable beyond that.<p>With Tor, you connect to a random Tor node (which may be another residential computer), which connects to a node in the middle, which connects to an exit node, which forwards your requests on to their final destination. All connections look like they come from the exit node, which might be someone's residential IP.
I'm torn on this. While I can imagine Meta being morally corrupt enough to do all of this, I just can't imagine an exec taking on personal liability for the company.
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?
Downloading it and making a copy on your disk are separate potentially infringing events from copying into memory and a model.
I don't know a single company where an executive would be downloading training data themselves.<p>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.
They might be in the clear if they were solely downloading (<i>might</i>) but if he's also seeding then it's just copyright violations.
Pretty sure you could unredact this based on the length of the name in this font. People who redact things don't really think very hard.
Between that and the tenure, yeah.
i'm waiting for a name, then...
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.<p>> 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.<p>Oh. The connection is maybe more tenuous than Strike 3 claims.
My hero.
Or his kid, spouse, or other household member...
I would think a Meta Executive who was into torrenting would know they likely had enough to lose to use something other than their home IP address.
One might think to call them “Careless People”.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Careless_People" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Careless_People</a>
It is so easy to get lulled into a false sense of security.
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.
“I only broke the law to train AI your honor”
What if Meta is using its facial recognition on porn clips for blackmail and extortion?
Didn't hear that on last earnings call, but if they'd mention it they'd probably say it's going to be face swap as it's way cheaper, no?
what if i spill coffee on my lap on the way home?<p>there is 0 evidence for either discussion in the article
What if the moon is secretly made of cheese?