Judge orders Meta to name everyone who approved torrenting pirated books for AI training

On October 19, 2026, U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Hixson (N.D. Cal., Case No. 23-cv-03417-VC (TSH), Document 874) issued a discovery order in the consolidated Meta book-training cases requiring Meta Platforms, Inc. to identify every natural person who made, authorized, or approved any decision to obtain or download shadow-library datasets - specifically Library Genesis and Anna's Archive - for AI training. Meta's position had been that dataset decisions were made informally through team consensus and that no one with authority formally approved the torrenting, describing download choices as 'technical' decisions; the court held the interrogatory is not limited to formal decisions and that collaborative team decisions require naming everyone involved. The order also covers everyone who decided 'whether or how to seed, or to mitigate seeding' when Meta downloaded LibGen's Scimag collection and Anna's Archive via BitTorrent. Meta has admitted using BitTorrent for the downloads but says it is unaware of anyone who authorized uploading/distributing the data and that it took measures to avoid seeding. The order does not decide whether Meta infringed copyright or whether an executive authorized the downloads. It also addresses a separate dispute over a confidential Meta-Fox Corp. license agreement for multimedia content used in AI training, ordering plaintiffs to destroy inadvertently produced unredacted copies. The order spans five jointly managed cases: Kadrey v. Meta (23-3417), Entrepreneur Media v. Meta (25-9579), Chicken Soup for the Soul v. Meta (26-2333), Cambronne v. Meta (26-3725), and Cognella v. Meta (26-4053) (TorrentFreak, Oct 20, 2026, with order PDF verified).