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Chmura v Snap Inc

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Case Information
Case name Chmura v. Snap Inc[1]
Court U.S. District Court for the Central District of California[1]
Docket 2:26-cv-01732; consolidated lead case 2:26-cv-00754-AB-MBK[1][2]
Filed February 18, 2026[1]
Judge(s) André Birotte Jr.[3]
Plaintiffs Nicole Chmura; consolidated plaintiffs Ted Entertainment, Inc., Matt Fisher and Golfholics, Inc.[2]
Defendants Snap Inc.[1]
Case type Proposed civil class action[1]
Claims / issues DMCA § 1201(a): alleged circumvention of YouTube access controls[1]
Status April 13, 2026 consolidated complaint; Snap’s reply supporting dismissal filed June 24, 2026. Later developments have not been verified.[2][3]

Chmura v. Snap Inc.' is a class action lawsuit filed on February 18, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, alleging that Snapchat circumvented YouTube's technological protection measures to mass-download video content for AI training, violating the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions.[4]


April 13, 2026 consolidated complaint; Snap’s reply supporting dismissal filed June 24, 2026. Later developments have not been verified.[2][3]

Allegations

Plaintiff Nicole Chmura alleges that Snap Inc. circumvented YouTube's technological access controls to scrape, bulk-download, and extract YouTube-hosted audiovisual works at the file level for training Snapchat's AI systems.[4]

Specific claims include:

  • Snap used circumvention tools and services to defeat YouTube's streaming-only restrictions at scale
  • The company instructed employees to evade detection and scrape repeatedly for video clips
  • Snapchat's AI systems were trained on unlawfully accessed copyrighted content without creator permission or licenses
  • The circumvention was conducted deliberately and systematically to obtain commercial AI training data[4]

Relief Sought

  • Injunctive relief to cease circumvention-based access to YouTube-hosted works
  • Statutory damages under 17 U.S.C. § 1203
  • Declaratory relief
  • Jury trial[4]

Significance

This case is part of a wave of DMCA anti-circumvention lawsuits filed against AI companies in early 2026, alongside similar actions against Runway AI, Meta, Nvidia, and others. It represents an expansion of AI copyright litigation beyond text-based training data into video content scraping.[4]

See Also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Court filing / case record, reviewed September 7, 2026
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Court filing / case record, reviewed September 7, 2026
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Court filing / case record, reviewed September 7, 2026
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