IP Law Daily, COPYRIGHT NEWS: AI video startup again sued for DMCA violations by content creator, (Feb 27, 2026)

By Carolin Dennis, B.Sc., LL.B., LL.M.

The complaint alleges that the startup intentionally violated content creators’ rights by accessing their video content and scraping it for use in training the startup’s generative AI model.

Ace Cam Inc., DBA Random Golf Club (RGC), has filed a proposed class-action complaint against artificial intelligence company Runway AI Inc. for violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). RGC seeks a declaration that Runway willfully circumvented the copyright protection systems of YouTube, statutory damages, injunctive relief, impoundment, and attorney fees and costs. The allegations are similar to those put forth in another recently filed lawsuit against Runway (Random Golf Club v. Runway AI Inc., No. 1:26-cv-01362 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 18, 2026)).

Plaintiffs. RGC and the Class Members are content creators who upload their audiovisual content to YouTube. In doing so, the content creators are authorizing and instructing YouTube to provide protection to the video content through YouTube’s anti-circumvention software and Terms of Service. In fact, per the complaint, YouTube’s anti-circumvention software and protective Terms of Service are a driving factor behind content creators’ decision to upload their video content to YouTube. YouTube deploys technological protection measures (TPMs) designed to control access to the underlying video files and prevent direct downloading outside permitted channels (e.g., streaming-only delivery, application programming interface (API) usage limits, and access controls). YouTube’s Terms of Service expressly prohibit scraping, unauthorized downloading, bulk extraction, or other forms of data mining of audio-visual content except through expressly permitted features or licensed APIs.

Defendant. Runway is a multi-billion-dollar technology company that develops and commercializes generative artificial intelligence tools focused on video creation, editing, and synthesis. Runway’s flagship AI video model, released publicly as “Gen-3,” is marketed as a cinematic text-to-video and image-to-video generation system for commercial users, creators, and enterprise customers.

Scraping allegations. In 2024, investigative journalists obtained a large internal spreadsheet originating from Runway that catalogued thousands of YouTube channels and individual videos compiled for AI training purposes. The spreadsheet contains approximately 3,968 unique YouTube channels containing over one hundred thousand unique videos.

According to the complaint, at no time did Runway seek or obtain RGC’s or the Class Members’ authorization to access and use the videos it used to train its generative AI models, nor did Runway compensate RGC or the Class Members for the access, copying, ingestion, and use of their YouTube videos in AI training and related workflows.

RGC contended that rather than seek permission or pay a fair price for the audiovisual content hosted on YouTube, Runway harvested content creators’ protected and copyrighted videos at scale. Runway used automated tools for the sole purpose of circumventing YouTube’s access barriers and extracting files never made available to the public. RGC argued that in doing so, Runway improperly obtained millions of videos from YouTube’s platform.

Runway’s acquisition of YouTube videos allegedly was not academic research or isolated experimentation. It was a commercially driven effort to accelerate development of a revenue-generating AI platform because Runway’s success in the competitive AI video market depended on ingesting large volumes of creators’ content without authorization.

The complaint asserted that, in order to acquire high-quality text-to-video and image-to-video generation, Runway, directly and through agents, contractors, and affiliates, intentionally accessed large volumes of YouTube videos by scraping and/or using tools and workflows that bypass or evade YouTube’s TPMs and usage restrictions, and then reproduced those videos to assemble training corpora for Runway’s’s AI models and services. When Runway scraped audio and video files from YouTube, it did not simply download those files onto the YouTube app for offline streaming, as envisioned by YouTube’s Premium plan. Instead, Runway improperly accessed the actual audio and video files and downloaded those files into its own system, where it had control over the files and where it could store them indefinitely. These actions are inconsistent with YouTube’s Premium plan, the complaint stated.

RGC contended that viewing a YouTube video through YouTube’s platform does not provide access to the underlying file. However, Runway’s circumvention tools broke through that access barrier, triggering liability under Section 1201 of the DMCA. Runway allegedly accessed, downloaded, stored and utilized those videos to assemble training corpora for its AI models and services. RGC alleged that that each act of circumvention constituted a separate violation of Section 1201. Further, RGC also alleged that each of Runway’s acts of infringement is a willful violation, as Runway specifically utilized automated tools designed to evade YouTube’s TPMs.

Claims, remedies sought. RGC, individually and on behalf of the proposed and the Class Members, is seeking a jury trial. RGC requests a declaration that Runway willfully circumvented the copyright protection systems of YouTube that were intended to protect RGC’s and the Class Members’ audio-visual content. RGC also asks for statutory damages, injunctive relief, impoundment, pre-judgment and post-judgment interest, attorney fees and costs, and such other relief as the district court may deem just and proper.

The Case is No. 1:26-cv-01362.

Judge: Kaplan, L.

Attorneys: Mark Svensson (Milberg, PLLC) for Random Golf Club.

Companies: Random Golf Club; Runway AI Inc.

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