Nicole Chmura v. Snap Inc

The Complaint alleges that Nicole Chmura operates the YouTube channel "Let's Go Team," featuring independently produced travel videos documenting her personal experiences. The Complaint contends that YouTube employs technological protective measures to control access to underlying audiovisual files and prevent bulk extraction by automated systems, providing access primarily through controlled streaming pathways and authorised features for users with YouTube Premium licences.

The Complaint refers to YouTube's Terms of Service which expressly prohibit scraping, unauthorised downloading, bulk extraction, and data mining of audiovisual content except through permitted product features or licensed APIs. The Complaint notes that YouTube has publicly stated that AI companies scraping videos for training models would constitute a "clear violation" of its terms of service.

The Plaintiff contends that Snap did not obtain licences or permissions from the Plaintiff and class members for file-level acquisition and use of their works as AI training inputs. Instead, the Complaint alleges that Snap used or relied upon circumvention tools and services to defeat YouTube's technological measures at scale. It is alleged that at least one video from the Plaintiff's channel appears in the "HD-VILA-100M" dataset, which the Defendant used to train its AI video-learning architecture.

The Complaint asserts that the Plaintiff and class members derive value from their works through viewership, advertising, sponsorships, licensing, and other monetisation dependent upon controlled distribution and the ability to choose whether, when, and how their works are licensed for downstream uses, including AI model training.

The sole cause of action alleges violations of the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions under 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a), which prohibit circumventing technological measures that effectively control access to copyrighted works and trafficking in circumvention technologies and services. The Plaintiff seeks injunctive relief, statutory damages, and other remedies authorised by 17 U.S.C. § 1203.