Meta Copyright Ruling Boosts Class Action Lawsuit

A recent Supreme Court decision concerning Internet service providers and piracy liability is now being leveraged by Meta in an ongoing legal battle over its use of torrented data for AI training. The company argues this ruling should shield it from claims that it contributed to copyright infringement by participating in file-sharing networks. This legal strategy emerges as Meta faces a consolidated class action lawsuit that has gained a potentially significant new claim.

Last week, Meta formally notified a court of the high court’s decision in the Cox Communications case. In that ruling, the justices found that Internet providers are not automatically liable for piracy occurring on their networks. Meta intends to file a detailed brief arguing this precedent supports its motion to dismiss a lawsuit from Entrepreneur Media. That suit alleges Meta engaged in contributory infringement by seeding roughly 80 terabytes of pirated material through torrent networks to accelerate its data collection for AI models. The plaintiffs contend that by understanding how torrenting functions and actively participating, Meta knowingly induced widespread copyright violations.

This contributory infringement claim presents a more straightforward legal challenge for plaintiffs than a separate allegation of direct infringement. In the related class action, Kadrey v. Meta, book authors argued the company’s torrenting constituted an illegal distribution of their complete works. Legal observers noted that proving direct distribution requires evidence Meta shared an entire copyrighted book, a difficult task given how torrents break files into fragments spread across a swarm of users. In contrast, a contributory claim hinges on demonstrating a party materially facilitated the infringement of others, which plaintiffs argue is met by Meta’s role in the torrent ecosystem.

The court’s recent decision to allow the contributory infringement claim to proceed within the broader class action significantly raises the stakes for Meta. Should this claim survive dismissal, it creates a more viable path for authors and other copyright holders to seek damages. Meta’s defense now appears to rest heavily on convincing judges that the Supreme Court’s Cox ruling establishes a clear protective standard. The company will assert that merely operating within a technology framework, like a torrent network or an ISP’s infrastructure, does not equate to actively inducing infringement under copyright law. The outcome could set a pivotal precedent for defining liability in the rapidly evolving intersection of AI development and copyright law.