Runway must face YouTube creators' DMCA scraping suit

A federal judge in New York on October 30 denied Runway AI's motion to dismiss a consolidated class action that accuses the company of circumventing YouTube's technical protections to scrape creators' videos and train its Gen-3 video model.

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York entered the memorandum opinion, Docket 61, in Ace Cam, Inc. v. Runway AI, Inc., No. 1:26-cv-01362-LAK, denying Runway's motion at Docket 34, per the CourtListener docket. The ruling lets the case proceed toward Runway's answer and discovery. It is not a finding that Runway broke the law, and no class has been certified.

The case rests on a single claim under the anti-circumvention provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a), according to the consolidated complaint. The creators allege Runway bypassed five technological protection measures YouTube uses to stop bulk downloading: a rolling cipher that withholds a usable file address until a scrambled signature is solved; IP blocking and rate limits; short-lived, session-bound streaming links; CAPTCHA challenges triggered by automated activity; and proof-of-origin tokens that verify a request came from YouTube's own player.

The complaint alleges Runway used the open-source downloader yt-dlp to defeat the rolling cipher, kept retrieving files after session authorizations lapsed, and rotated IP addresses with virtual machines and proxy services so YouTube would not detect and block the downloads. The files were then fed into Runway's training pipeline, the creators allege, without permission from YouTube or the video owners.

Much of the factual basis comes from a July 2024 404 Media report that the complaint cites, describing an internal spreadsheet listing about 3,968 YouTube channels and more than 100,000 videos. 404 Media also reported a second sheet listing 14 links to piracy sites. The complaint says YouTube's third-party training setting is off by default and names Runway among the companies a creator could opt into, so a creator would have had to opt in for Runway to have permission.

The creators ask for statutory damages, an injunction and attorneys' fees. Under 17 U.S.C. § 1203, a court may award statutory damages of $200 to $2,500 per act of circumvention, openclassactions.com reports. Those figures describe what the law permits a court to award, not a forecast of any recovery.

Runway moved to dismiss on three grounds, and Kaplan rejected each at this stage. Runway first argued a work anyone can watch free in a browser cannot be protected by an access control, which it said requires something like a password or paywall. The judge disagreed, writing that "the public nature of content that has been uploaded to YouTube does not render it unprotected because the public's viewership of the content necessarily is subject to YouTube's TPMs," per openclassactions.com's account of the opinion. Second, Runway said YouTube's measures only stop downloading, which it argued falls under ordinary copyright law and its fair-use defense. The court found the creators plausibly alleged the measures control access, noting allegations that YouTube cuts off delivery, including ordinary playback, to users who fail its checks. Third, Runway argued the statute requires the copyright owner to control the measure. Kaplan said the law does not require creators to install the protections themselves and that the creators plausibly alleged they authorized YouTube to deploy them by uploading.

At this stage a court assumes the complaint's factual allegations are true and asks only whether they state a legal claim. Runway can raise the same arguments again later in the case.

The ruling follows denials of similar Section 1201 motions in creator suits against other AI developers. In Ted Entertainment, Inc. v. ByteDance Inc., No. 3:25-cv-10933-JSC (N.D. Cal.), denied October 2, 2026, Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley found the creators plausibly alleged that "even watching a video on YouTube" without downloading the underlying file requires satisfying technological measures, according to Loeb & Loeb's summary. Motions to dismiss also failed against Snap in August 2026 and Apple in October 2026, mubert.com reports. Kaplan relied in part on Yout v. Recording Industry Association of America, a 2022 Connecticut decision now on appeal at the Second Circuit, which covers New York and could reshape these cases.

For creators, the theory matters because it turns on how the files were obtained rather than on whether training on them is fair use. Most YouTube videos are never registered with the Copyright Office, and registration is normally required before a copyright owner can sue for infringement; the creators argue Section 1201 does not require it, per openclassactions.com. A later ruling for Runway on the access-control question would narrow that route.

Runway's next step is an answer to the consolidated complaint; the case then moves to discovery, after which the plaintiffs would ask the court to certify a class.