Meta ordered to identify executives behind pirated book torrenting

A US federal judge has ordered Meta Platforms to identify the executives and managers responsible for the decision to use BitTorrent to download copyrighted books for AI training. The discovery order, issued by Magistrate Judge Thomas Hixson, follows allegations in a class-action lawsuit filed by authors including Sarah Silverman and Richard Kadrey.

The plaintiffs allege that Meta unlawfully ingested vast repositories of copyrighted works from shadow libraries such as Anna’s Archive and Library Genesis (LibGen) to train its Llama models. While Meta previously argued that the torrenting was conducted by lower-level staff through team consensus without formal high-level approval, the court has compelled the company to name the specific decision-makers involved.

In addition to naming personnel, the order requires Meta to produce internal communications and server command history files for the machines used in the process. The legal dispute also involves allegations regarding whether Meta engaged in seeding—uploading file pieces to other users while downloading—which would further impact the copyright claims.