Earlier this year, three YouTube channels sued Apple, alleging that the company violated the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by unlawfully accessing and scraping millions of copyrighted YouTube videos to train its AI models.
In a class action lawsuit filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in April, the owners of the YouTube channels h3h3Productions, MrShortGame Golf, and Golfholics allege that Apple "deliberately circumvented" YouTube's protections against video scraping and "profited substantially" by doing so.
Apple'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," the complaint alleged.
h3h3Productions is a well-known YouTube channel created by Ethan Klein and Hila Klein, and they 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.
Apple responded to the lawsuit this week, according to a court document viewed by MacRumors. In short, Apple said the plaintiffs made the videos publicly available on YouTube and that it was permitted to access the videos under the DMCA. Apple 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," reads Apple's response. "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 said the plaintiffs have ultimately failed to state a claim, and it requested that the court dismiss the lawsuit as a result.
