A federal magistrate judge has ordered Meta to disclose the identities of employees and decision-makers who were involved in using BitTorrent to download copyrighted books and academic materials from shadow libraries to train the company’s Llama artificial intelligence models. The ruling marks the latest development in a high-stakes legal battle over intellectual property, shedding light on internal corporate deliberations and the fine line between technical execution and legal responsibility in the tech industry.
The dispute stems from ongoing copyright litigation initiated by authors and publishers who allege that Meta improperly acquired and utilized unauthorized datasets. While a court previously ruled that training AI models on copyrighted books constitutes fair use—a bittersweet victory for the tech giant—claims centered around BitTorrent usage and contributory copyright infringement remain very much alive.
Last month, Magistrate Judge Thomas Hixson ordered Meta to hand over the comprehensive command histories of the servers it used to torrent pirated books. Those server logs are expected to reveal how Meta’s torrent clients were configured, including any modifications made to upload settings. However, the legal pressure extends beyond technical log files. Publisher Entrepreneur Media, which publishes Entrepreneur magazine and is pursuing a related lawsuit against Meta, has aggressively sought to uncover who exactly greenlit and managed the torrenting operations.
To get answers, the publisher asked Meta to identify every individual who "made, authorized, or approved" the decisions to acquire shadow library datasets via BitTorrent. Meta responded by naming several personnel believed to have been involved in broad data-related decisions. Yet, the company maintained a defensive posture, asserting it could not pinpoint anyone who "formally" made or approved decisions to acquire or use books for its first two Llama models. According to Meta, those initiatives were the result of organic team consensus rather than top-down corporate mandates.
When pressed specifically on the mechanics of the torrenting itself, Meta pointed toward the engineers who actually executed the downloads, characterizing their actions as routine technical decisions. Furthermore, the company noted that the acquisition of data from Anna’s Archive underwent an internal legal review in early 2024, involving the organization’s in-house legal counsel. By framing the actions this way, Meta avoided pointing to any high-ranking executives who explicitly ordered the use of BitTorrent networks.
Entrepreneur Media quickly challenged this narrative. "On that construction no one at Meta decided to torrent anything, yet Meta torrented shadow libraries repeatedly from 2022 to 2024," the publisher argued in court filings.
The question of corporate accountability becomes especially pronounced when examining internal discussions surrounding data seeding. One of the engineers who handled the downloading of data from Library Genesis (LibGen) previously testified that the controversial issue of seeding—which inherently involves sharing downloaded content back out to the broader peer-to-peer network—was actively discussed internally, prompting some employees to take precautionary steps to limit outbound data flow.
An internal Meta logbook reviewed by an employee prior to initiating a download from Anna’s Archive explicitly highlighted these legal sensitivities. "Decided 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," the logbook read, as cited in Entrepreneur Media’s legal filings.
Meta does not dispute that it utilized BitTorrent protocols to download LibGen’s Scimag collection alongside data from Anna’s Archive. However, the company maintains that it remains unaware of any individual who specifically "made, authorized, or approved" a decision to upload or distribute the copyrighted material to third parties. Meta’s legal representatives have emphasized that technical safeguards were deliberately implemented to mitigate and avoid active seeding wherever possible.
The exact volume of data redistributed by Meta during these peer-to-peer sessions remains a point of contention. Last year, an expert retained by Meta estimated that uploads originating from the company’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) servers accounted for roughly 30 percent of the total data volume downloaded during torrent operations conducted between April and July 2024.
Facing a stalemate, Entrepreneur Media brought the discovery dispute before Magistrate Judge Thomas Hixson. Two weeks prior to the judge’s ruling, Meta informed the court that it possessed no additional information regarding the origins of the torrenting decisions.
Judge Hixson was unpersuaded by Meta’s explanations. In his ruling, the judge noted that the interrogatories submitted by the plaintiffs were not strictly limited to formal, top-level corporate decisions. He also pointed out that Meta’s previous responses primarily focused on how the acquired data was ultimately utilized, rather than addressing how it was originally obtained and downloaded in the first place.
Addressing Meta’s defense that decisions were made collaboratively through team discussions, Judge Hixson clarified that the interrogatories specifically requested the identities of all decision-makers. Consequently, if a course of action was determined by a collective group or team, every individual involved in that consensus must be formally identified.
Under the terms of the new order, Meta must identify all individuals who participated in the internal discussions preceding the 2023 LibGen torrent download. Additionally, the company is required to name the personnel who approved the decision to proceed with BitTorrent technology, as well as anyone who gave the green light to the April 2024 download from Anna’s Archive.
Crucially, the magistrate judge’s order extends to everyone who weighed in on "whether or how to seed, or to mitigate seeding," during the acquisitions of the LibGen Scimag collection and Anna’s Archive.
For Entrepreneur Media and the broader legal teams representing copyright holders, these names are vital pieces of the evidentiary puzzle. The publisher argues that the identities of these individuals bear directly on the question of willfulness, which could heavily influence the outcome of contributory copyright infringement and distribution claims.
While this latest procedural battle has revolved largely around corporate transparency and the naming of personnel involved in the data acquisition pipeline, fundamental questions regarding liability remain open. The courts have yet to definitively determine whether Meta’s utilization of BitTorrent networks qualified as fair use under copyright law, or whether the tech giant can be held legally liable for the distribution of pirated books to external parties on the network.
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