Ted Entertainment, Inc. v. Meta Platforms, Inc.

On 23 December 2025, YouTubers Ted Entertainment, Inc., Matt Fisher, and Golfholics, Inc. commenced class action proceedings against Meta Platforms, Inc. in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging circumvention of technological protection measures and copyright infringement.

The Complaint asserts that Meta unlawfully circumvented YouTube's access controls to scrape millions of copyrighted videos, including those owned and published by the Plaintiffs, to train its generative artificial intelligence model "Make-A-Video", contending that this conduct violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and constituted systematic copyright infringement.

According to the pleadings, Meta deployed video-downloading programmes combined with virtual machines that rotated IP addresses to evade YouTube's detection systems and access underlying video files that are normally restricted to streaming only. The claim further alleges that Meta integrated this technology into its broader AI assistant experience across Facebook, Instagram, and meta.ai platforms, whilst developing more advanced systems including the "Movie Gen" model. The Plaintiffs assert that Meta harvested their protected audiovisual content without consent or compensation.

Claims advanced include circumvention of technological measures under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. The Plaintiffs primarily seek a declaration that Defendant has wilfully circumvented the copyright protection systems of YouTube intended to protect Plaintiffs’ and the Class Members’s audiovisual content, followed by statutory damages and any equitable relief necessary to prevent further copyright infringement.