{"id":87929,"date":"2026-10-21T09:05:43","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T09:05:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/?p=87929"},"modified":"2026-10-21T09:05:43","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T09:05:43","slug":"judge-orders-meta-to-name-employees-who-approved-torrenting-annas-archive-and-libgen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/?p=87929","title":{"rendered":"Judge Orders Meta to Name Employees Who Approved Torrenting Anna\u2019s Archive and LibGen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"meta-logo\"Last month, Magistrate Judge Thomas Hixson ordered Meta to hand over the command histories<\/a> of the servers it used to torrent pirated books.<\/p>\n

These logs would presumably reveal how Meta\u2019s torrent clients were set up, including any changes to their upload settings.<\/p>\n

The order is one of many discovery battles in the lawsuits over Meta\u2019s use of shadow libraries. In the class action<\/a> filed by authors including Richard Kadrey and Sarah Silverman, the court already ruled that training AI models on the books was fair use<\/a>. That left the BitTorrent claims as the last live part of that case.<\/p>\n

The server logs could reveal what happened on Meta\u2019s machines. However, publisher Entrepreneur Media also wants to know who approved the torrenting activity.<\/p>\n

\u2018Technical\u2019 Decisions<\/h2>\n

Entrepreneur Media, which publishes Entrepreneur magazine, filed one of the related lawsuits where it accuses Meta of contributing to piracy by uploading (seeding) works to third parties, similar to the authors\u2019 contributory infringement claim<\/a>. <\/p>\n

To find out more, the publisher asked Meta to identify everyone who \u201cmade, authorized, or approved\u201d the decisions to obtain the shadow library datasets, and to do so via BitTorrent.<\/p>\n

Meta\u2019s answers named several people who are believed to have been involved in data-related decisions. However, Meta said it couldn\u2019t identify anyone who \u201cformally\u201d made or approved decisions to acquire or use books for its first two Llama models. Those decisions were often the result of team consensus, Meta argued.<\/p>\n

When it came to the torrenting itself, Meta pointed to the employees who ran the downloads, describing their choices as technical decisions. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Decision?<\/em><\/center>
\"Only<\/center><\/p>\n

Meta added that the acquisition of data from Anna\u2019s Archive went through an internal legal review in early 2024, which involved its in-house lawyers. <\/p>\n

In other words, the company didn\u2019t name anyone higher up who approved the use of BitTorrent.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn that construction no one at Meta decided to torrent anything, yet Meta torrented shadow libraries repeatedly from 2022-2024,\u201d Entrepreneur Media countered.<\/p>\n

\u2018Legally Not Okay\u2019<\/h2>\n

The question becomes more concrete when it comes to seeding. One of the engineers who torrented LibGen data previously testified that the issue of seeding was raised and discussed internally, and that steps were taken to limit it.<\/p>\n

An internal Meta logbook, which one employee reviewed before starting a download from Anna\u2019s Archive, mentions a decision not to use torrents.<\/p>\n

\u201cDecided to go with direct file uploads without using torrents for the following reasons: Using torrents would entail seeding the file such as sharing content outside. This would be legally not okay,\u201d the logbook reads, as quoted in Entrepreneur Media\u2019s filing.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u2018Legally not okay\u2019<\/em><\/center>
\"Legally<\/center><\/p>\n

Meta does not deny that it used BitTorrent to download LibGen\u2019s Scimag collection and data from Anna\u2019s Archive. However, it says it isn\u2019t aware of anyone who \u201cmade, authorized, or approved\u201d a decision to upload or distribute the data. Meta\u2019s lawyers also added that measures were implemented to avoid seeding.<\/p>\n

How much data Meta shared with others is not clear either. Last year, Meta\u2019s own expert estimated that uploads from its AWS servers didn\u2019t exceed roughly 30%<\/a> of the data downloaded during torrent downloads between April and July 2024.<\/p>\n

Everyone in the Group<\/h2>\n

Yesterday, Judge Hixson ruled on the dispute. Two weeks earlier, Meta informed the court that it had no additional information to provide on the torrenting decision.<\/p>\n

This didn\u2019t convince the judge. He noted that the interrogatory isn\u2019t limited to formal decisions, and that Meta\u2019s answers were mostly about using the data, not obtaining or downloading it.<\/p>\n

Meta\u2019s argument that decisions were often collaborative doesn\u2019t change that. The interrogatory asks about all decisionmakers, so if a decision was made by a team, everyone involved has to be named.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Everyone in the group<\/em><\/center>
\"Everyone<\/center><\/p>\n

Meta must also identify the people who took part in the discussion that preceded the 2023 LibGen torrent download. In addition, it has to name the people who approved going ahead with BitTorrent, and whoever greenlit the April 2024 download from Anna\u2019s Archive.<\/p>\n

Notably, the order also covers everyone who decided \u201cwhether or how to seed, or to mitigate seeding,\u201d when Meta downloaded LibGen\u2019s Scimag collection and Anna\u2019s Archive through BitTorrent. <\/p>\n

For Entrepreneur Media, these names are important. The publisher says the answers \u201cbear on\u201d willfulness, as well as on its contributory copyright infringement and distribution claims.<\/p>\n

This dispute largely revolved around naming the people involved. Whether Meta\u2019s torrenting was fair use, and whether it actually distributed pirated books to others, has yet to be decided.<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/em><\/p>\n

A copy of Magistrate Judge Hixson\u2019s order is available here (pdf)<\/a>. The joint letter briefs filed by Entrepreneur Media and Meta can be found here (pdf)<\/a> and here (pdf)<\/a>. Meta\u2019s second supplemental interrogatory responses are available here (pdf)<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

From: TF<\/a>, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.<\/p>\n

Powered by WPeMatico<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month, Magistrate Judge Thomas Hixson ordered Meta to hand over the command histories of the servers it used to torrent pirated books. These logs would presumably reveal how Meta\u2019s torrent clients were set up, including any changes to their upload settings. The order is one of many discovery battles in the lawsuits over Meta\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87930,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[308],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-torrent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=87929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/87930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}