Judge hears Apple's motion to dismiss YouTube creators' AI-training class action; ruling pending

What happened: On 1 October 2026, Judge Richard Seeborg of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California held a hearing on Apple's motion to dismiss the amended complaint in Ted Entertainment, Inc. v. Apple, Inc., 3:26-cv-02936. Oral arguments were heard (plaintiff's counsel Rohit Nath; Apple's counsel Dale Cendali, Joshua Simmons, Andrew Gass, Josh Berlowitz); the motion was taken under submission and the court will issue a written order. Apple seeks dismissal of the proposed class action brought by YouTube creators (Ted Entertainment, Inc./h3h3Productions, Matt Fisher of MrShortGame Golf; Golfholics, Inc. voluntarily dismissed itself from the case on 23 September 2026), who allege Apple violated the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions (17 U.S.C. §1201(a)) by scraping millions of their YouTube videos to train generative video AI models. Apple's argument, reported by MLex and Law360: it circumvented no technological barrier to access the videos because they were posted publicly - 'no password, no payment, no lock, no key' - so YouTube's anti-scraping measures do not 'control access' to the works as §1201(a) requires. The case was filed 3 April 2026; plaintiffs filed an amended complaint 14 July 2026, Apple moved to dismiss 28 July 2026, and the parties completed briefing by 9 September 2026.

Why it matters to creators: This is the highest-profile test of whether DMCA §1201(a) reaches the scraping of publicly posted YouTube videos for AI training. A dismissal would blunt creators' main legal theory against training-data scraping; survival would keep a novel DMCA claim alive in a circuit whose tech-law rulings are widely followed. The complaint frames the alleged scraping as 'an unconscionable attack on the community of content creators whose content is used to fuel the multi-trillion-dollar generative AI industry without any compensation.' Parallel suits by the same channels against Meta, Nvidia, ByteDance and Snap are unaffected by this hearing.

Not yet known: How Judge Seeborg will rule (written order pending as of 2 Oct 2026). Whether the case will be certified as a class action. Whether the court accepts Apple's access-vs-use distinction under §1201(a).