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Kadrey v. Meta: judge orders Meta to produce torrent command histories; refuses subpoenas against OpenAI and Anthropic

Sep 11, 2026 · Gathered automatically from public sources. Not reviewed by a person.

What happened

In the cluster of books cases against Meta before Judge Vince Chhabria (N.D. Cal.) — including the suits brought by Chicken Soup for the Soul, Cognella, and John Carreyrou's Cambronne Inc. — Magistrate Judge Thomas S. Hixson issued two discovery orders. On 11 September 2026, he ordered Meta to produce command-history files for every server, virtual machine and AWS instance used to torrent pirated books, after Meta held back documents past the discovery deadline. Separately, he denied the publishers' subpoenas to OpenAI and Anthropic seeking every torrent-client configuration since 2019, holding that rivals' logs say nothing about Meta's setup. OpenAI and Anthropic had refused to say how they acquired shadow-library data or whether they suppressed seeding.

Why it may matter to you

The command-history order goes to the heart of the torrenting evidence in the biggest books cases; the subpoena denial keeps the shadow-library data practices of OpenAI and Anthropic out of this discovery round.

What is not yet known

What the command histories show.

Sources