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

For well over a decade, copyright holders have used U.S. federal courts to unmask anonymous BitTorrent users. Adult film producer Strike 3 Holdings has turned this into an industry of its own, filing thousands of John Doe lawsuits every year. In most of these “John Doe” cases it subpoenas the Internet provider for the subscriber’s name, offers the alleged pirate a settlement, which effectively ends the case. This process is then repeated over and over. Last summer, the company took aim at a much larger target. Together with Counterlife Media, Strike 3 sued Meta, accusing the tech giant of downloading thousands of its films via BitTorrent to train AI models. With 2,973 films at stake, the case could be worth up to $446 million. This multi-million dollar case is now running into one of Strike 3’s routine “John Doe” lawsuits. According to a motion filed last week, an anonymous pirate behind a residential AT&T connection is an executive at Meta’s Reality Labs division, which develops the Quest VR headsets. From John Doe to Reality Labs Exec The John Doe case started in March, when Strike 3 filed a complaint against the subscriber of IP address 162.192.7.34 at the same California federal court. In April, Magistrate Judge Virginia K. DeMarchi granted a subpoena to AT&T, noting that the name should not be publicly disclosed. After AT&T shared the information, Strike 3 says its investigation revealed that the subscriber is an executive in Meta’s Reality Labs division. Citing his LinkedIn profile, the company notes that he has worked at Facebook and Meta for more than a decade. The executive’s name and title are redacted, as shown below. Meta has asked the court to keep them under seal, as it did earlier for two other individuals named in the Meta case. 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,” Strike 3 adds. Strike 3 sued the John Doe a year later. Only then, it says, did it find the alleged connection to the Meta case, which brings us back to the present day. Nearly 20,000 Files In addition to the timing, Strike 3 uses the number of downloads in the John Doe case as an argument. 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. “In short, this is a lot for one person to torrent on an average day, particularly one who has a demanding job,” Strike 3 writes. The company believes the pattern makes more sense as AI training data or research. This is not the first time a Reality Labs employee has surfaced in the case. Earlier this summer, Meta confirmed that a former data engineer at the division was behind a Comcast connection linked to 97 films. With its latest motion, Strike 3 asks U.S. District Judge Eumi K. Lee to relate the John Doe case to the Meta lawsuit, so that both proceed before the same judge. On paper, the request could streamline the court cases, by avoiding depositions and discovery. However, the motion goes further than that as it would also turn executive’s home downloads as evidence in the $446 million suit. If the cases are related, Strike 3 plans to amend the John Doe complaint to name Meta directly, argue that the executive is jointly liable, and move to compel Meta to appoint a Reality Labs custodian and hand over its torrenting records. Meta: ‘Nothing Ties’ Downloads to Company This week, Meta responded to the motion to link the cases. Officially, the company takes no position yet, as it can’t investigate whether the subscriber is even an employee without knowing his name. However, even if the subscriber is who Strike 3 claims, Meta argues that nothing ties the downloads to the company. “They simply assume that the Subscriber is responsible for everything done on the IP address, and then leap to the additional, similarly unsupported assumption that he did it for Meta,” Meta writes. The tech company leans on a common defense in BitTorrent piracy lawsuits, stressing that an IP address doesn’t identify the infringer. Judge DeMarchi flagged the same point when she allowed the subpoena. 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. “Plaintiffs’ new theory cannot be logically reconciled with those it is already pursuing,” Meta writes. Meta has used the personal use explanation before. When a different Reality Labs worker, a former contractor, surfaced in the Kadrey case, Meta said its investigation showed his downloads were personal and unrelated to his work. Whether Judge Lee agrees to link the John Doe case to the $446 million Meta lawsuit has yet to be seen. For now, the Reality Labs executive remains anonymous, even to Meta. — A copy of Strike 3’s motion to relate the cases, filed at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, is available here (pdf). Meta’s response can be found here (pdf).