Strike 3: Difference between revisions

 

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”’Strike 3 Holdings, LLC”’ is an American company incorporated in Delaware. It is the parent company of the pornography production company [[Vixen Media Group]] (VMG). As of November 2025, it has filed more than 20,000 copyright lawsuits against Internet users alleged to have pirated VMG and other Strike 3–owned pornographic films, making them the single most prolific filer of copyright lawsuits in the US. Critics have called the firm a [[copyright troll]].<ref name=”Guardian-2025″>{{Cite news |last=Hitt |first=Tarpley |date=2025-11-04 |title=Rise of the ‘porno-trolls’: How one porn platform made millions suing its viewers |url=https://www.theguardian.com/society/ng-interactive/2025/nov/04/strike-3-porn-copyright-lawsuits |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20251104162113/https://www.theguardian.com/society/ng-interactive/2025/nov/04/strike-3-porn-copyright-lawsuits |archive-date=2025-11-04 |access-date=2025-11-04 |work=[[The Guardian]]}}</ref>

”’Strike 3 Holdings, LLC”’ is an American company incorporated in Delaware. It is the parent company of the pornography production company [[Vixen Media Group]] (VMG). As of November 2025, it has filed more than 20,000 copyright lawsuits against Internet users alleged to have pirated VMG and other Strike 3–owned pornographic films, making the single most prolific filer of copyright lawsuits in the US. Critics have called the firm a [[copyright troll]].<ref name=”Guardian-2025″>{{Cite news |last=Hitt |first=Tarpley |date=2025-11-04 |title=Rise of the ‘porno-trolls’: How one porn platform made millions suing its viewers |url=https://www.theguardian.com/society/ng-interactive/2025/nov/04/strike-3-porn-copyright-lawsuits |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20251104162113/https://www.theguardian.com/society/ng-interactive/2025/nov/04/strike-3-porn-copyright-lawsuits |archive-date=2025-11-04 |access-date=2025-11-04 |work=[[The Guardian]]}}</ref>

==History==

==History==

American holdings company

Strike 3 Holdings, LLC is an American company incorporated in Delaware. It is the parent company of the pornography production company Vixen Media Group (VMG). As of November 2025, it has filed more than 20,000 copyright lawsuits against Internet users alleged to have pirated VMG and other Strike 3–owned pornographic films, making it the single most prolific filer of copyright lawsuits in the US. Critics have called the firm a copyright troll.^[1]

In 2015, Greg Lansky incorporated Strike 3 as a holding company in Delaware. He had previously founded VMG, a pornography production company; he sold his stake in 2020.

Strike 3 owns the copyright to around 2,000 adult films, mostly by VMG.^[1] In mid-2017, Strike 3 hired the lawyer Emilie Kennedy, who had previously represented Malibu Media in copyright infringement lawsuits against Internet users who had allegedly downloaded its pornographic films via BitTorrent.^[1][2]

In September 2017, Strike 3 began a similar litigation campaign, which is continuing as of November 2025^[update]. In United States district courts, it sues unnamed defendants who are identified only by their IP addresses, alleging that they used BitTorrent to upload and download Strike 3’s pornographic films and, in so doing, infringed the company’s copyright. Strike 3 then files a request to issue a subpoena to the defendants’ Internet service providers (ISPs) to obtain their personal information. The ISPs then provide notice to the defendants, informing them of potential statutory damages for copyright infringement.^[1][3] Strike 3 then offers to settle for just under what a basic defense would cost.^[1] As of July 2018, according to the Miami Herald, this was typically between $1,000 and $8,000.^[2]

The attorney Steve Vondran—who has defended over 500 cases against Strike 3—was quoted in a November 2025 article by The Guardian as saying Strike 3 generally settles for $750 per film, with settlements for dozens of films totaling from $20,000 to $30,000.

Strike 3 initially identified defendants using German detection services, but claims it began using its own tracking software, VXN Scan, in 2018. Intellectual property lawyer J Curtis Edmonson, who has litigated multiple of Strike 3’s cases, says the software is a “black box” and disputes whether it can accurately be used to identify an individual based on their IP address. Strike 3 has never disclosed VXN Scan’s source code nor otherwise submitted the software to outside scrutiny.^[1]

Strike 3 also contracted with xTakeDowns.com to send approximately 50,000 daily take-down notices to free pornography websites.^[2]

As of November 2025, only about 10 out of Strike 3’s more than 20,000 cases had resulted in litigation, rather than being settled or withdrawn, and no cases have gone to trial. The largest victory against Strike 3 was $47,777.26 in attorneys’ fees.

Strike 3 states that it engages in litigation to defend itself against piracy.^[1] In one case, the United States district court judge Royce Lamberth characterized its business model as “a high-tech shakedown” and said that it was treating the court “as an ATM.”^[4]

Strike 3 sued Meta Platforms in July 2025, alleging that they had used at least 2,396 of their films for training artificial intelligence^[1] and that Meta had illegally distributed and seeded thousands of its videos on torrenting websites to more efficiently download other torrents.^[a][5][6] In response, Meta blamed employees, contractors, and visitors for their use, denied planning to produce AI-generated pornographic videos, and stated their terms prohibited generation of adult content.^[7]