Adult Film Producer Unmasks Prolific 'John DOE' Torrent Pirate as Meta Executive

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sspeckx about 2 hours ago 53 commentsRead Article on torrentfreak.com

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drewg123•about 1 hour ago

However, Strike 3 argues that this is no ordinary home pirate, using the timing of the downloads as evidence. On March 20, 2025, the porn producer’s general counsel first emailed Meta’s lawyers with forensic evidence of BitTorrent activity on the tech giant’s corporate IP addresses.
“Just hours later, Strike 3 first recorded BitTorrent infringement on John Doe’s residential IP Address,” the motion reads.

“This may suggest that Meta desired to shift infringing activity to this hidden residential IP Address in order to prevent further detection,”

Seems like there are 2 different reads to that. (a) is like they say, and Meta was using porn for AI training or something else official. Or (b) that he was personally downloading porn either at the office or a corp VPN and was told to stop by their corp It folks..

read_the_articl•5 minutes ago

From TFA: "Strike 3 suggests the downloads are consistent with work to make the headset compatible with adult films"

> The company logged all BitTorrent activity detected from the executive’s connection, which was nearly 20,000 files.

> This includes VR adult titles made for Meta’s Quest headset. Strike 3 suggests the downloads are consistent with work to make the headset compatible with adult films.

> As recently as August 25, Strike 3 says it recorded more than 150 daily downloads, from multi-language “Mega Packs” of TV shows, movies, software and books to what it describes as AI-generated pornography and VR adult films. That included nearly a dozen of its own titles.

stevenwoo•about 1 hour ago

When I worked for office with about 40 employees in 2001 or so, the FBI came to our office to arrest a guy using I think Limewire over our high speed internet access to share music and videos. It may be so common these days they only crack down like that on really egregious abuse.

busterarm•42 minutes ago

Around that same time my own brother was working at the second largest record label in the world and their own servers were hacked and serving about 1/3 of global warez downloads.

Law enforcement didn’t get involved and nobody did shit about it.

Not even the last time that company was massively hacked. ;)

sandworm101•29 minutes ago

It had to be more complicated than simple copyright infringement for the cops to get involved.

axus•27 minutes ago

The music industry had more political power in 2001 than it does now.

ryandvm•about 1 hour ago

> Or (b) that he was personally downloading porn either at the office or a corp VPN

Man, if Facebook is hiring people this dumb, it's going to make me feel a lot worse about getting rejected after interviewing there.

bartread•4 minutes ago

Mate, I got rejected by Cambridge University.

I've lived in and around Cambridge for a very long time now. I've met a lot of Cambridge undergrads and graduates. Let me tell you: they are a mixed bag.

Don't misunderstand me: there are some very smart people at Cambridge University. Very smart indeed. And I think if you took any cohort from Cambridge Uni versus a similar cohort from another university you'd certainly find that, against most universities, the Cambridge cohort would be smarter on average.

But that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of people who got their degree from Cambridge who clearly found a way to blag their way through the interview process that may not have been particularly closely correlated with their intellect. The same will be true of Meta, Google, etc. I swear, the interview processes at these companies are probably more of a sop to the egos of company leadership and people who already work there than they are any more effective at filtering down to good talent than less byzantine and overwrought hiring processes.

You just have to make your peace with it.

drewg123•about 1 hour ago

This person is supposedly an executive. I doubt most executive could pass an FAANG technical interview.

ryandrake•14 minutes ago

I doubt executives even go through the typical employee interview hazing. It's more vibes and "do you know the right people or go to the right prestigious school?"

dozerly•about 1 hour ago

They are, they probably just did slightly better at regurgitating leetcode problems than you

ElProlactin•10 minutes ago

Did you apply for the VR porn training team?

mcmcmc•35 minutes ago

I wouldn’t, lack of moral fiber is a key factor they look for

sandworm101•27 minutes ago

Does anyone honestly believe that Zuck doesn't have his own history with filesharing? Any computer nerd from that time would have deep knowledge of filesharing.

mc32•about 1 hour ago

IT is usually not the one doing the enforcement. They typically only do the monitoring and may report some activity above thresholds.

Legal is usually the one initiating then engaging with HR to do enforcement.

hackingonempty•about 1 hour ago

Strike 3, the studio involved, files more lawsuits in the USA than anyone else. I think that makes them the biggest Copyright Trolls of all time. They run their own BitTorrent monitoring operation.

mullingitover•16 minutes ago

Meta, the other company involved, engaged in industrial scale piracy in pursuit of training data[1].

Let me break out the world's tiniest violin for them.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/meta-torrented-o...

fn-mote•37 minutes ago

The company that owns the copyright should be allowed to enforce it. I don't see how that can be called trolling.

bravoetch•about 1 hour ago

1 - How are people torrenting and not using a VPN? 2 - How are judges still allowing this business model of sharing files then trying to shake down people that download them?

RealityVoid•about 1 hour ago

In countries with lax enforcement VPN use is not really needed.

ranger_danger•44 minutes ago

How do you know the IP in question was not the final hop of someone's VPN connection?

kodoman•about 1 hour ago

yeah everyone knows the losses they argue for are bullshit, I really think people should see how many times lawyers and other legal professionals give each other jobs by creating a world in which they are more and more needed.

Of course legal professionals are always needed but so much of what is done today is just a kind of rent seeking.

WaitWaitWha•about 1 hour ago

how long are these videos? 2,973 of them (and not even the 20,000 count)? even at 15 minute clips that is like... five years?! watching non-stop.

I am hard pressed to believe that this was for the exec.

what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander

I just wnat to know what bandwidth this exec has at his house. I want it.

hackingonempty•about 1 hour ago

I doubt many consumers of these videos are watching them straight through like a normal movie.

Hamuko•26 minutes ago

Don't know how they're keeping up with the plot like that.

hiccuphippo•43 minutes ago

Hoarders gonna hoard

wvbdmp•37 minutes ago

umm it’s called archiving, thank you very much.

well_ackshually•40 minutes ago

A few decades back, someone I know had entire CD towers worth of burned CDs & DVDs of porn. Easily onto the thousand discs.

This was mostly a hoarding thing. Hoarders gonna hoard.

kodoman•about 1 hour ago

Very dumb but what if he claims he was only using to train an AI model, what was that ruling on copyright material being ok to training AI models on. Would this hold up in court or not?

gorbachev•33 minutes ago

I don't know a single company where an executive would be downloading training data themselves.

The only exception would be a very small startup, which isn't the case here, or all IT, admin and engineering staff told the company they aren't doing anything illegal for Zuckerberg. That's not going to happen at Meta either.

ElProlactin•8 minutes ago

> I don't know a single company where an executive would be downloading training data themselves.

Maybe an ethically bankrupt company with a "move fast and break things" ethos looking for exactly the plausible deniability your comment hints at?

hackingonempty•42 minutes ago

Downloading it and making a copy on your disk are separate potentially infringing events from copying into memory and a model.

horsawlarway•about 1 hour ago

They might be in the clear if they were solely downloading (might) but if he's also seeding then it's just copyright violations.

lisp2240•21 minutes ago

What if Meta is using its facial recognition on porn clips for blackmail and extortion?

petesergeant•10 minutes ago

What if the moon is secretly made of cheese?

loeg•12 minutes ago

The idea that you'd get notified of infringing activity on corporate network and deliberately shift to residential without changing the activity is crazy. Like, it's hard to believe anyone is that dumb.

> Meta also flags a contradiction in Strike 3’s theory that downloads were switched to the home connection hours after the March 2025 warning. Strike 3’s own complaint alleges that Meta’s “off-infra” activity started in 2018, and that downloads on corporate IP addresses continued long after the notice.

Oh. The connection is maybe more tenuous than Strike 3 claims.

modeless•about 1 hour ago

Pretty sure you could unredact this based on the length of the name in this font. People who redact things don't really think very hard.

loeg•14 minutes ago

Between that and the tenure, yeah.

flerchin•about 1 hour ago

Or his kid, spouse, or other household member...

eli•about 1 hour ago

Hours after they alerted Meta that similar activity was happening from their corporate network?

loeg•6 minutes ago

Read to the end. It isn't really clear how much causality can be inferred from the hours after thing.

shadowgovt•about 1 hour ago

That's a very dedicated kid.

Backdoored dad's work computer, how diabolical. ;)

novok•28 minutes ago

Hey if the dad is into tech, decent chance the angry teenage kid is into tech too.

tyre•about 1 hour ago

There was huge traffic from Meta's corporate networks.

SV_BubbleTime•about 1 hour ago

I would think a Meta Executive who was into torrenting would know they likely had enough to lose to use something other than their home IP address.

stevenwoo•about 1 hour ago

One might think to call them “Careless People”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Careless_People

chad_strategic•about 1 hour ago

Read the book, you will never trust facebook again. (if you did before)

tyre•about 1 hour ago

Even better, they used a corporate network. The plaintiff is alleging that this was actually for work, since they were an executive at Reality Labs (home of Oculus.) They contend that the executive was testing VR porn as part of their job.

staticman2•about 1 hour ago

This reminds me of a stand up comedy routine about people being bad at hiding their porn collections because their brain doesn't work right when they are horny.

cgannett•about 1 hour ago

It is so easy to get lulled into a false sense of security.

shadowgovt•about 1 hour ago

I'd put good money on him thinking the odds of him getting caught were negligible.

pier25•about 1 hour ago

“I only broke the law to train AI your honor”