A group of YouTubers sued ByteDance, the company behind TikTok. They say ByteDance scraped millions of YouTube videos to train its AI video tool without permission. On October 2, a federal judge in California refused to throw the case out. The case moves forward. Here is the part that matters for you. ByteDance argued the videos were public, so taking them was fine. The judge said no. YouTube has safeguards against mass downloading, and the judge ruled those safeguards count as locked doors under copyright law. Breaking a locked door to get the work is its own violation, even if you could see the work through the window. What does this mean for creators? Courts keep drawing the same line. Your work has value. Taking it at scale to feed AI is not a gray area anymore. It is a lawsuit. The practical takeaway: before you create or build anything with AI, know what went into it. And for your own work, run the HOF Test (Human. Original. Fixed.). Did a human make the creative choices? Is it original to you? Is it fixed where people can see it? Then it can be owned. And owned work is work a court can protect. Question for you: if someone trained an AI on your videos or your book without asking, what would you want to happen next? Source: Bloomberg Law https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/bytedance-fails-to-escape-youtubers-ai-training-copyright-suit For education, not legal advice.