Commentary: A porn firm that a judge called a 'copyright troll' now has Meta in its sights and it could win

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It isn’t often that a lawsuit can make me smile, much less laugh out loud.The latest exception is Strike 3 Holdings vs.

Meta Platforms, which is currently unfolding in San Jose federal court.Two things are amusing about the case.One is that Meta, the giant social media company, is accused of copyright infringement for allegedly downloading 2,400 of the plaintiff’s movies to train its AI bots.

If Meta loses, that would be a serious (and in my opinion, deserved) blow against AI companies that have used copyrighted materials without permission.The second part of the joke is the identity of the plaintiff.

Strike 3 Holdings, you see, makes porn.Moreover, for years it has pursued a plainly unscrupulous business model in which it sues individuals for allegedly downloading its movies without permission, and shames them into settling for a few thousand dollars at a pop.

While it is possible one or more Meta employees downloaded Plaintiffs’ videos, it is just as possible...that a ‘guest, or freeloader,’ or contractor, or vendor, or repair person—or any combination of such persons—was responsible for that activity.— Meta points the finger at others for a porn scandalWhether or not Strike 3 has a legitimate claim for copyright infringement, it doesn’t deserve your sympathy.The firm was flayed in 2018 by federal Judge Royce C.

Lamberth of Washington, D.C., for engaging in what he labeled a “high-tech shakedown ...smacking of extortion.” Lamberth called Strike 3 a “copyright troll” and threw out its lawsuit against an unidentified internet user for having treated his court “not as a citadel of justice, but as an ATM.”When I wrote about this scheme in 2023, I counted more than 12,440 lawsuits that the Los Angeles-based firm had filed in federal courts coast-to-coast.

The latest count, according to a Lexis search a defense lawyer ran for me, is more than 21,000...