Apple Inc. Sued for Violating DMCA Anti-Circumvention Provisions

On April 3, 2026, Ted Entertainment, Inc. (which owns channels including h3h3 Productions), Matt Fisher (Mr Short Game Golf channel), and Golfholics, Inc. filed a class-action lawsuit against Apple Inc. in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

The complaint alleges that Apple knowingly circumvented YouTube's technical protection measures to scrape large volumes of copyrighted videos from the platform for the purpose of training its generative text-to-video artificial intelligence models.

The plaintiffs cite a 2025 paper published by Apple's research team, STIV: Scalable Text and Image Conditioned Video Generation. The paper acknowledges that the video generation model was trained using a large dataset called Panda70M. Panda70M is essentially an index file containing a large number of YouTube video URLs, identifiers, and timestamps. The plaintiffs argue that even if Apple used only the links within this dataset, the act of fetching the original video content for training itself constitutes circumvention of YouTube's anti‑scraping mechanisms.

The plaintiffs claim that hundreds of videos from their channels appear in the Panda70M dataset, more than 500 times in aggregate. They seek to represent a nationwide class of similarly situated YouTube content creators whose videos have been used by Apple for AI training.

In this lawsuit, the plaintiffs have not directly sued Apple for copyright infringement. Instead, they have invoked the anti‑circumvention provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), codified at 17 U.S.C. § 1201. The core of this provision states that no person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under copyright. This provision, on the one hand, prohibits the act of circumventing a technological protection measure (TPM) itself, and on the other hand, prohibits the manufacture or provision of technologies or services primarily designed for circumvention. A violation of this provision requires only proof that the defendant, without authorization, bypassed a technological barrier—there is no need to prove that any subsequent copying constitutes copyright infringement.

China's legal framework addressing circumvention of technical measures in the internet sector is primarily set forth in Article 13 of the Anti‑Unfair Competition Law, as amended in 2025. Article 13 provides that: "A business operator shall not acquire or use data legitimately held by another business operator through improper means including fraud, intimidation, avoiding or compromising technical management measures, etc., thereby harming the legitimate rights and interests of the other business operator and disrupting the order of market competition."

However, there are important differences between the two regimes. 17 U.S.C. § 1201 is part of the copyright law framework; the interest it protects is the copyright owner's right to exercise technical control over their works—essentially a property‑right protection mechanism. By contrast, China's Article 13 of the Anti‑Unfair Competition Law is part of the unfair competition law framework; the interests it protects are the fairness of the order of market competition and the competitive interests of business operators. The core question it addresses is whether the defendant's conduct improperly obtains a competitive advantage—whether it "free‑rides" on the business achievements that another operator has built at substantial cost.

The greatest practical difference between the two regimes lies in the allocation of the burden of proof. Under DMCA § 1201, the rights holder does not need to prove that any subsequent copying constitutes copyright infringement. This means that even if Apple were to argue that its use of the videos qualifies as "fair use" (a common defense used by AI companies), as long as the plaintiffs can prove that Apple circumvented YouTube's technical protection measures in obtaining the videos, the claim under the anti‑circumvention provision would be established. This structure—where the mere act of circumvention is itself unlawful—significantly lowers the rights holder's burden of proof.

China's Article 13 of the Anti‑Unfair Competition Law, however, does not have a comparable "conduct‑per‑se" structure. The rights holder must prove that: the plaintiff has a competitive interest in the data; the defendant engaged in improper acquisition or use of the data; and that conduct caused harm (such as substantial substitution, or interference with normal operation). Although judicial practice in China has increasingly strengthened the protection of data rights in recent years, the burden of proof remains generally higher than under the DMCA § 1201 path.

Statutory references:

17 U.S. Code § 1201 - Circumvention of copyright protection systems

(a)Violations Regarding Circumvention of Technological Measures.—
(1)
(A)No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. The prohibition contained in the preceding sentence shall take effect at the end of the 2-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this chapter.

(B)The prohibition contained in subparagraph (A) shall not apply to persons who are users of a copyrighted work which is in a particular class of works, if such persons are, or are likely to be in the succeeding 3-year period, adversely affected by virtue of such prohibition in their ability to make noninfringing uses of that particular class of works under this title, as determined under subparagraph (C).

(C)During the 2-year period described in subparagraph (A), and during each succeeding 3-year period, the Librarian of Congress, upon the recommendation of the Register of Copyrights, who shall consult with the Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information of the Department of Commerce and report and comment on his or her views in making such recommendation, shall make the determination in a rulemaking proceeding for purposes of subparagraph (B) of whether persons who are users of a copyrighted work are, or are likely to be in the succeeding 3-year period, adversely affected by the prohibition under subparagraph (A) in their ability to make noninfringing uses under this title of a particular class of copyrighted works. In conducting such rulemaking, the Librarian shall examine—
(i)the availability for use of copyrighted works;
(ii)the availability for use of works for nonprofit archival, preservation, and educational purposes;
(iii)the impact that the prohibition on the circumvention of technological measures applied to copyrighted works has on criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research;
(iv)the effect of circumvention of technological measures on the market for or value of copyrighted works; and
(v)such other factors as the Librarian considers appropriate.

(D)The Librarian shall publish any class of copyrighted works for which the Librarian has determined, pursuant to the rulemaking conducted under subparagraph (C), that noninfringing uses by persons who are users of a copyrighted work are, or are likely to be, adversely affected, and the prohibition contained in subparagraph (A) shall not apply to such users with respect to such class of works for the ensuing 3-year period.
(E)Neither the exception under subparagraph (B) from the applicability of the prohibition contained in subparagraph (A), nor any determination made in a rulemaking conducted under subparagraph (C), may be used as a defense in any action to enforce any provision of this title other than this paragraph.

(2)No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that—

(A)is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;

(B)has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or

(C)is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person’s knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

(3)As used in this subsection—

(A)to “circumvent a technological measure” means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and

(B)a technological measure “effectively controls access to a work” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.........