Oct 1 hearing held on Apple's motion to dismiss YouTube-creators AI-training suit; motion taken under submission

What happened: On October 1, 2026, Judge Richard Seeborg of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California held oral argument on Apple Inc.'s motion to dismiss the amended consolidated class-action complaint (ECF #35) in Ted Entertainment, Inc. v. Apple, Inc., No. 3:26-cv-02936. The minute entry (ECF #57) records that oral arguments were heard, the motion was taken under submission, and a written order will follow. The plaintiffs are YouTube creators (Ted Entertainment/h3h3 Productions, MrShortGame Golf, Golfholics) who allege Apple scraped millions of YouTube videos — including roughly 438 of the plaintiffs' own videos found in the Panda-70M dataset — to train generative video AI models, in violation of DMCA section 1201(a). Apple argues that publicly posted videos carry "no password, no payment, no lock, no key," so YouTube's anti-scraping measures are not DMCA access controls.

Why it matters to creators: the forthcoming written ruling will be a key precedent on whether YouTube's download protections count as DMCA "access controls" when AI companies train on publicly posted videos. Parallel suits on the same theory target Meta, Nvidia, ByteDance, Snap, Amazon, and OpenAI, so the outcome reaches well beyond Apple.

What is not yet known: the court has not ruled — the motion is under submission and no decision date was given. This item covers only the October 1 hearing; the eventual order will be a separate development.