Strike 3 Holdings Filed More Copyright Lawsuits in 2025 Than Any Company in American History. That Is Not an Accident.
In 2025, Strike 3 Holdings filed 4,088 new copyright infringement lawsuits in United States federal courts. That is slightly more than the 3,932 cases it filed in 2024, which was itself a record. Since Strike 3 filed its first case in 2017, the company has now initiated more than 20,000 federal copyright lawsuits. To my knowledge, no other plaintiff in the history of American civil litigation that comes close. To put that in practical terms: Strike 3 filed, on average, more than eleven new federal lawsuits every single day of 2025.
What Strike 3 Actually Does
Strike 3 Holdings owns the copyrights to a catalog of adult films distributed under brands including Blacked, Tushy, Vixen, and Holed. The company monitors BitTorrent networks, identifies IP addresses it believes participated in downloading or distributing its films, subpoenas internet service providers to get the name and address of the account holder associated with each IP address, and then files suit against the account holder for copyright infringement. Most cases resolve through confidential settlement. In 2025, approximately 68 percent of Strike 3's new cases were already closed, with most disappearing from dockets within months of filing.
The content involved, porn, provides Strike 3 with considerable leverage that has nothing to do with the merits of any individual case. Most defendants would rather write a check than explain to a federal judge, opposing counsel, and potentially the public how their IP address ended up in a BitTorrent swarm distributing pornography.
Why the Volume Is the Strategy
Strike 3's filing volume is not an indication that 20,000 people infringed its copyrights in identifiable, provable ways. It is an indication that Strike 3 has built a litigation model in which volume itself is the value proposition. The cases do not need to go to trial. They do not need airtight evidence. They need to generate settlements, and settlements flow from the asymmetric pressure that mass litigation creates.
This is worth understanding if you receive a Strike 3 subpoena, because the paperwork arriving in your mailbox is not a judgment against you. It is the opening move in a process designed to conclude with a payment that is small enough for you to make and large enough for Strike 3 to profit from. The company filed 4,088 of these cases in a single year. If even half of them resolve for a few thousand dollars each, the math is straightforward.
The Defenses Still Exist
An IP address identifies a router on a network. It does not identify the person who used that router at any given time, and it does not, standing alone, establish that the account holder downloaded anything. Courts have recognized this limitation for years, and Strike 3 is fully aware of it. The company relies on the fact that most defendants do not understand the gap between being identified by IP address and being proven to have infringed a copyright.
Strike 3's own lawsuit against Meta — filed in July 2025 and alleging that Meta torrented nearly 2,400 Strike 3 films to train its artificial intelligence models — has given that gap new visibility. Meta is raising defenses that individual defendants have asserted for years, and this time, Strike 3 cannot rely on the settlement calculus of a defendant who cannot afford to fight back. If the IP address evidence is compelling enough to extract settlements from private individuals, it should be compelling enough to move the case against Meta forward. Courts and commentators will be watching to see whether that is true.
More importantly, if you did not infringe, then you should have evidence that can support that. And, if that is the case, then you have a very viable defense. We can help you with that. Unlike most defense attorneys, we actually litigate the cases worth litigating.
What to Do If You Get the Letter
If you receive a Strike 3 subpoena or complaint, the worst response is also the most common one: panicking and paying before anyone evaluates the case. The volume of Strike 3 filings does not mean every defendant infringed. It means Strike 3 has a process for identifying IP addresses and converting that identification into settlement pressure. Those are two different things.
Jonathan L.A. Phillips defends Strike 3 cases. If you have received a subpoena or complaint, contact him Here. An IP address in a BitTorrent log is a starting point for an investigation, not the end of one.