Apple loses bid to dismiss YouTube AI scraping suit

A federal judge has refused to dismiss a Digital Millennium Copyright Act lawsuit that accuses Apple of circumventing YouTube's access controls to scrape videos for training its generative AI video models.

U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg denied Apple's motion to dismiss in an order dated October 9, 2026, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The ruling disposes of Apple's second attempt to end the case and lets the anti-circumvention claim proceed to litigation.

Ted Entertainment Inc. and the creator Matt Fisher filed the suit on April 3, 2026, according to the court docket. Ted Entertainment operates YouTube channels including h3h3 Productions, and Fisher posts golf videos to the YouTube channel MrShortGame Golf, MediaPost reported. The complaint asserts a single claim, under section 1201(a) of the DMCA, which bars circumventing technology that effectively controls access to a copyrighted work. It is not a fair-use case.

The complaint alleges that Apple used automated video-downloading programs together with virtual machines that rotated IP addresses to avoid detection and blocking, enabling what the filing describes as mass unauthorized access and extraction of videos, according to MediaPost's account of the filing. Seeborg's order describes the alleged tactics in the same terms, stating that the complaint claims Apple used descrambling tools such as yt-dlp to defeat YouTube's rolling cipher and that "Apple implemented an IP rotation scheme meant to deceive YouTube's IP-based monitoring and blocking system." The order states that it accepts the complaint's well-pled factual allegations as true only for deciding this motion. No liability has been found.

Apple asked the court to dismiss the amended complaint with prejudice, arguing that YouTube's measures are use controls rather than access controls, that they do not operate in the ordinary course of operations, and that Apple took no affirmative act of circumvention, as MLex reported. In its filing, Apple argued that any member of the public could watch the videos. "No password. No payment. No lock. No key." AppleInsider quoted the filing. The court heard argument on October 1, 2026, per the docket.

Seeborg rejected all three arguments. He wrote that "YouTube's TPMs limit users' access to a singular platform, the website's authorized streaming architecture" and that "Accessing YouTube videos in any other way violates YouTube's Terms and circumvents its TPMs." The order also held that a user who can view an unencrypted YouTube video is operating outside YouTube's ordinary, authorized scope of access. It relied on the Ninth Circuit's 2017 VidAngel decision, which found that a defendant can circumvent an access control even when an authorized way to view the work exists.

The plaintiffs seek class certification, statutory damages, injunctive relief, litigation costs and attorney fees, Law360 reported. The video tools the same plaintiffs targeted in parallel suits are Amazon's Nova Reel, OpenAI's Sora and Apple's own video models, Law360 said.

The ruling is at least the third time a federal judge has let Ted Entertainment pursue a similar claim, MediaPost reported. Judge André Birotte Jr. refused to dismiss the same claim against Snap Inc. on August 19, 2026, in the Central District of California (order), and Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley denied ByteDance's motion to dismiss on October 2, 2026, in the Northern District (order).

Ted Entertainment and others have also sued Meta, OpenAI, Nvidia and Amazon over related allegations, and those matters are pending in federal courts in California and Washington, MediaPost reported. The Apple case is Ted Entertainment Inc. et al. v. Apple, Inc., No. 3:26-cv-02936.

For creators, the order keeps alive a theory that could shape how AI video companies source training data. If the claim survives to trial, it would test whether scraping millions of videos at scale amounts to picking a lock rather than reading a public page. The order decides only the motion to dismiss, and Apple can still prevail on the merits or on a later motion.

The case moves to an initial case management conference before Judge Seeborg on November 5, 2026, with the DMCA claim still to be litigated.