The Fruity Cargo Cult Apple has responded to a lawsuit filed by three YouTube channels alleging unlawful video scraping and piracy.
The case alleges that Job’s Mob violated the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act by accessing and scraping millions of copyrighted YouTube videos. The videos were allegedly used to train AI models.
The class action lawsuit was filed in April with the US District Court for the Northern District of California.
The owners of h3h3Productions, MrShortGame Golf and Golfholics claim Job’s Mob “deliberately circumvented” YouTube’s protections against video scraping.
They allege the Apple “profited substantially” by doing so.
The complaint said Job’s Mob’s actions were “not only unlawful, but an unconscionable attack on the community of content creators whose content is used to fuel the multi-trillion-dollar generative AI industry without any compensation”.
h3h3Productions is a well-known YouTube channel created by Ethan Klein and Hila Klein, who later created the H3 Podcast. Their channels have millions of followers, while MrShortGame Golf and Golfholics have hundreds of thousands of followers.
The channels filed equivalent lawsuits against Meta, Nvidia, ByteDance and Snap, suggesting the lawyers have been busy sharpening the same stick.
Job’s Mob responded this week, saying that the plaintiffs made the videos publicly available on YouTube and that the DMCA allowed access to them.
Job’s Mob said YouTube’s terms of service likewise permitted the company to access the videos.
“Plaintiffs allege that they posted audiovisual works to YouTube, and that any member of the public can see them there,” Job’s Mob said.
“No password. No payment. No lock. No key. Allegedly, YouTube employs technological measures to prevent unauthorised 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.”
Job’s Mob said the plaintiffs had failed to state a claim and asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit.
