Ted Entertainment v Apple Inc
Ted Entertainment, Inc. v. Apple Inc. (N.D. Cal., Case 3:26-cv-02936) is a class-action lawsuit filed on April 3, 2026, by YouTube content creators against Apple, alleging violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by circumventing YouTube's technological protection measures to train "Apple AI Video" models.<ref name="piracymonitor">Piracy Monitor - YouTube publisher sues Apple, Amazon, OpenAI</ref>
Background
The plaintiffs—Ted Entertainment (creator of "h3h3 Productions" and "H3 Podcast Highlights"), Matt Fisher ("MrShortGame Golf"), and Golfholics—operate YouTube channels with over 6 million subscribers and 4.3 billion views combined.<ref name="piracymonitor" />
Allegations
The complaint targets Apple's video AI models allegedly trained using the Panda-70M dataset. This dataset, containing 70 million clips split from YouTube videos, was released by Snap in 2024 and reportedly used by Apple to train its video generation capabilities.<ref name="piracymonitor" /><ref name="claimdepot">ClaimDepot - Apple sued for allegedly scraping YouTube videos</ref>
Plaintiffs allege Apple circumvented YouTube's technological protection measures—including streaming-only delivery, API limits, access controls, rolling ciphers, and IP detection systems—to download millions of videos at scale.<ref name="piracymonitor" />
Legal Claims
The plaintiffs allege violations of 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a), the DMCA's anti-circumvention provision.<ref name="piracymonitor" />
The plaintiffs seek:
- Statutory damages of up to $150,000 per violation
- Class certification
- Permanent injunctions against further circumvention<ref name="piracymonitor" />
Related Cases
This case was filed alongside parallel lawsuits against OpenAI and Amazon.<ref name="piracymonitor" />
See Also
- Ted Entertainment v OpenAI Inc
- Ted Entertainment v Amazon.com Inc
- April 3, 2026 — YouTubers Sue OpenAI, Apple, and Amazon for DMCA Video Scraping
- DMCA
- Apple
References
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