Apple Responds to Lawsuit From 3 YouTube Channels
▼ Summary
– Three YouTube channels sued Apple in April, alleging it violated the DMCA by scraping copyrighted YouTube videos to train AI models.
– The lawsuit claimed Apple deliberately circumvented YouTube’s anti-scraping protections and profited without compensating content creators.
– The plaintiffs, including h3h3Productions, have filed similar lawsuits against Meta, Nvidia, ByteDance, and Snap.
– Apple responded that the videos were publicly accessible on YouTube, so no access control was violated under the DMCA.
– Apple argued the plaintiffs failed to state a valid claim and requested the court dismiss the lawsuit.
Earlier this year, three prominent YouTube channels filed a lawsuit against Apple, claiming the tech giant violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by scraping millions of copyrighted videos without permission to train its artificial intelligence models. The legal action, submitted in April to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accuses Apple of deliberately bypassing YouTube’s anti-scraping protections to fuel its AI development.
The class action suit was brought by the owners of h3h3Productions, MrShortGame Golf, and Golfholics. Their complaint asserts that Apple “circumvented” the platform’s safeguards and “profited substantially” from the unauthorized use of creator content. The channels argue that this behavior represents “an unconscionable attack” on the creative community, whose work powers the multi-trillion-dollar generative AI industry without fair compensation.
Ethan and Hila Klein, the creators behind h3h3Productions and the H3 Podcast, command millions of subscribers. MrShortGame Golf and Golfholics each boast hundreds of thousands of followers. These same channels have also pursued similar legal claims against Meta, Nvidia, ByteDance, and Snap.
Apple formally responded to the allegations this week, as revealed in a court filing obtained by MacRumors. The company contends that the plaintiffs made their videos publicly accessible on YouTube, and that such access is permitted under the DMCA. According to Apple, YouTube’s Terms of Service also authorize the company to view the content.
“Plaintiffs allege that they posted audiovisual works to YouTube, and that any member of the public can see them there,” Apple stated. “No password. No payment. No lock. No key. Allegedly, YouTube employs technological measures to prevent unauthorized downloading. But because YouTube provides public access to the videos, the alleged technological measures do not control access to the works, as § 1201(a) requires.”
Apple argues that the plaintiffs have failed to state a valid legal claim and has requested the court dismiss the lawsuit entirely.
(Source: MacRumors)
