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One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchOn January 23, 2026, Ted Entertainment Inc., Matt Fisher and Golfholics Inc. filed a proposed class-action complaint against Snap Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. Case No. 2:26-cv-00754 alleges that Snap bypassed YouTube’s technical protections, used millions of videos in generative-AI development and commercially benefited without creator permission. The filing is an allegation, not a court finding that Snap infringed copyright or violated the DMCA.
The lawsuit in brief
The complaint names Snap, Snapchat’s parent company, as the defendant. The named plaintiffs are Ted Entertainment Inc., associated with h3h3 Productions and H3 Podcast Highlights; golfer and creator Matt Fisher, associated with MrShortGame Golf; and Golfholics Inc. TechCrunch reported that the associated channels had about 6.2 million subscribers combined.
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The plaintiffs seek statutory damages and a permanent injunction. They also ask the court to allow the case to proceed as a class action for similarly situated creators. A proposed class is not a certified class: certification would require a later court decision under the federal class-action rules.
The filing is available in the federal complaint; contemporaneous reporting appears in TechCrunch.
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What the creators allege Snap did
According to the complaint, Snap:
- accessed and scraped millions of YouTube videos;
- circumvented technological measures that YouTube used to control access or downloading;
- used the videos, directly or through datasets, in developing generative-AI systems;
- connected that work to commercial products and services; and
- received commercial value without obtaining permission from, or compensating, the affected creators.
Those verbs describe the plaintiffs’ theory. The publicly available materials do not establish that Snap downloaded every listed video, assembled every dataset itself, or used every video in a commercial model.
Which Snap AI systems are implicated?
The complaint describes a broader generative-AI system capable of producing video from text and image inputs. News coverage also links the alleged training activity to Snapchat’s Imagine Lens, a feature that lets users modify images with text prompts.
These references should not be collapsed into one product. Imagine Lens is publicly described as an image-editing feature, while the complaint discusses a system with video-generation capability. The available sources do not establish that every allegedly scraped video trained Imagine Lens specifically, or that Imagine Lens itself is a text-to-video product.
The creators and videos identified in the filing
The plaintiffs say their channels’ videos appeared in two named video datasets. The complaint and a copy hosted by the Copyright Alliance identify these counts:
| Channel | HD-VILA-100M | Panda-70M |
|---|---|---|
| H3 Podcast Highlights | 285 videos | 283 videos |
| Golfholics | 62 videos | 62 videos |
The counts are allegations about dataset contents. They do not independently prove who downloaded the works, who created or supplied the datasets, whether Snap obtained them directly, or whether Snap used each item for commercial training.
Why HD-VILA-100M and Panda-70M matter
The complaint identifies HD-VILA-100M and Panda-70M as large-scale video datasets. The plaintiffs allege that the relevant datasets or associated materials were limited to academic or research use, while Snap allegedly used them in commercial AI development.
That creates separate legal questions:
- License scope: Did the dataset terms permit commercial use, redistribution or model training?
- Copyright: Was copying the underlying audiovisual material unauthorized, regardless of the dataset’s repository?
- Provenance: Did Snap obtain the files lawfully, and what exactly did it receive?
- Use in training: Were complete videos, frames, captions, metadata or embeddings used for pretraining, fine-tuning, evaluation or only research?
A research repository does not automatically prove downstream copyright infringement. Conversely, a research-use restriction could create a licensing or contractual dispute even if a separate copyright defense were available.
The legal theories at the center of the case
Copyright infringement
The case may address whether downloading or copying videos constituted unauthorized reproduction, whether training involved a legally relevant reproduction or adaptation, and whether any copying was fair use. The plaintiffs could also distinguish the initial copying from later model outputs. The complaint’s filing does not resolve any of those questions.
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DMCA anti-circumvention
The distinctive feature of the complaint is its allegation that Snap bypassed YouTube’s technological measures. Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act can prohibit circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a copyrighted work.
That is not the same as merely breaking a website’s terms of service. Plaintiffs would need to establish what technical measure existed, how it controlled access, and what conduct allegedly bypassed it. A terms-of-service violation alone does not automatically establish DMCA anti-circumvention liability.
Dataset, platform and contract restrictions
The plaintiffs may rely on several different restrictions: alleged research-only dataset licenses, YouTube’s rules against scraping, and copyright owners’ exclusive rights. Copyright, contract, license and platform-policy claims have different elements and defenses; one does not automatically prove another.
Fair use
A potential fair-use dispute would weigh the purpose and character of the copying, the creative nature of video, the amount taken and the effect on existing or potential licensing markets. Plaintiffs are likely to emphasize commercial AI development, wholesale copying and the possible market for licensed training data. A defendant could argue that training performs a transformative analytical function and does not substitute for the original videos.
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Courts have not adopted a universal rule that all AI training is fair use or that all such copying is infringement. The outcome would depend on the evidence and claims in this case.
Class certification
Although the complaint seeks to represent a nationwide group of creators, the court has not certified a class in the materials available here. Plaintiffs would have to show, among other things, that common questions predominate and that the named representatives and their claims are suitable for the proposed class.
Damages and an injunction
The requested statutory damages are a remedy the plaintiffs ask the court to award, not a guaranteed payment. A permanent injunction could address specified conduct if granted, but filing the request does not mean Snap’s AI systems would automatically be shut down.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What evidence would matter as the case develops?
Important factual questions include:
- Whether Snap directly downloaded, commissioned or licensed the videos.
- Internal records connecting the named datasets to commercial model training.
- The exact license terms and any restrictions attached to HD-VILA-100M and Panda-70M.
- Whether the datasets were used for pretraining, fine-tuning, evaluation or research only.
- Technical evidence of memorization or recognizable reproduction of creator content.
- How the plaintiffs matched their videos to the datasets and preserved that evidence.
The initial complaint and contemporaneous coverage do not answer all of these questions. Dataset inclusion is evidence about a dataset; it is not conclusive proof of Snap’s conduct or of unlawful model use.
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What the filing does—and does not—establish
- It establishes that a proposed class-action complaint was filed on January 23, 2026, in the Central District of California under Case No. 2:26-cv-00754.
- It sets out allegations about scraping, circumvention, datasets and commercial AI development.
- It does not establish that Snap infringed copyright, violated Section 1201, breached a dataset license or used any particular video unlawfully.
- It does not establish that Imagine Lens and the broader alleged video-generation system are the same product.
- It does not establish that a class has been certified or that any creator is entitled to damages.
Why creators and AI companies are watching
The dispute brings training-data provenance into a single case involving access controls, research datasets and commercial generative AI. Discovery could test whether companies can rely on third-party datasets without tracing the original collection method and license restrictions.
A ruling could influence negotiations over creator-video licenses, opt-in training programs and technical controls against automated collection. It would not, by itself, create a universal rule requiring every AI developer to license every training work.
The case could become significant if a court addresses how DMCA anti-circumvention law applies to video scraping, how dataset restrictions interact with copyright defenses, and what evidence links inclusion in a dataset to commercial model training.
What happens next
In a typical federal case, the next stages may include Snap’s answer or a motion to dismiss, possible amendments to the complaint, discovery, disputes over class certification and motions addressing the DMCA and fair-use theories. The case could also settle or proceed toward trial.
The sources available for this article do not establish a later ruling, settlement, dismissal, discovery result or verified Snap response. Any account of the case’s current procedural posture should therefore be checked against the federal docket.
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