Meta tries to scapegoat staff who downloaded torrents to spare execs

We’re all wondering who did this Meta ordered to name execs who approved torrenting for AI training Meta argues nobody “decided” to pirate books to train AI.

10 Credit: JOAO LUIZ BULCAO / Contributor | AFP Credit: JOAO LUIZ BULCAO / Contributor | AFP Text settings Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only Learn more Minimize to nav In copyright lawsuits over AI training, Meta has spent weeks blaming staff for downloading torrents. The company has now been ordered to name executives who authorized decisions to pirate books from shadow libraries like Anna’s Archive and LibGen, TorrentFreak reported.

In a discovery order impacting a class action raised by book authors—including Richard Kadrey and Sarah Silverman—as well as a lawsuit from publisher Entrepreneur Media, Magistrate Judge Thomas Hixon largely agreed that Meta must clearly identify key decision makers. Following testimony from Meta staff who downloaded torrents, the order could expose a wider range of supervisors, managers, and executives whom staffers said greenlit the piracy.

Meta had been hoping to avoid detailing the chain of command, particularly for leadership involved in early AI training. According to a Meta court filing, its initial efforts to compile massive AI datasets were managed through an “informal approach” where supposedly nobody with authority made any decisions. Instead, Meta insisted that a “decision” was “made only in the sense” that some staffers “technically” downloaded torrents.

Authors and publishers have argued that Meta made a willful choice to induce infringement by downloading and illegally distributing their copyrighted works. Since torrenting depends on a swarm of users, Meta could not have quickly downloaded 80.6 terabytes of data from LibGen or 35.7 terabytes through Anna’s Archive if the company wasn’t also seeding, authors have argued. (Meta has argued that it relied on “mitigations” to prevent seeding.)

Meta’s efforts to scapegoat staff seem to ignore that staff expressed discomfort in being directed to pirate work. In the past year, authors’ lawsuits have exposed internal messages where staff pushed back or rejected directions on torrenting, including one worker who commented that “torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn’t feel right.” Another staffer testified that he initiated downloads that “required some director or VP level approval to use for training,” a joint letter from Entrepreneur Media and Meta noted. There was also a time when leadership halted, then resumed, downloading torrents sourced from Anna’s Archive, another staffer testified.

And while Meta has argued that communications that might identify who specifically authorized certain torrenting instances are privileged, at least one string of unredacted messages unsealed early last year allegedly showed that the decision to download from LibGen, for example, occurred after “a prior escalation to MZ” (Mark Zuckerberg).

“Approval was thus required; Meta’s answer is that none occurred,” Entrepreneur Media argued in the letter. Accepting Meta’s “construction” that “no one at Meta decided to torrent anything” ignores that “Meta torrented shadow libraries repeatedly from 2022-2024,” they told the court, while alleging gaps in Meta’s arguments.

Under a contributory infringement claim, all authors need to prove is that Meta facilitated transfers of their works. Hixon’s order arguably brings them the closest to smoking gun evidence they’ve gotten yet, additionally compelling Meta to finally produce long-sought “command history files for every server Meta used to torrent, including its virtual machines and AWS instances,” as TorrentFreak previously covered. Those log files could give authors the evidence they need to prove that Meta seeded certain works. It could also reveal more about Meta’s alleged seeding “mitigation” methods.

Authors and publishers asked Meta to identify “each natural person who made, authorized, or approved any decision to obtain or download any Shadow Library Dataset containing” their works. For every person identified, authors asked Meta to provide their “dates of involvement and which decision he or she made, authorized, or approved, as to which dataset.” Otherwise, they asked Meta to make a statement under oath that Meta identified no one, Hixon’s order said.

In the joint letter, Meta claimed that plaintiffs were demanding that it “canvas every Meta employee who knew about the use of BitTorrent,” including anyone who ever spoke of torrenting. The tech giant seemingly did everything it could to scale back the discovery request, including contesting the way that plaintiffs described “identify” and “decision.” Meta seemed particularly cagey about identifying anyone who decided to seed the disputed works.

Responding to a request for information on uploads, Meta claimed that it “is not currently aware of any persons who made, authorized, or approved any decision to upload or distribute any ‘Shadow Library Dataset.” According to Meta, that should settle that, since Entrepreneur Media’s “dissatisfaction with that response does not mean that there is further information to provide here—there is none.”

Going further, Meta accused Entrepreneur Media of “speculation,” claiming there is “no basis” for suspecting that “someone at Meta must have ‘approved’ a ‘decision’ to perform a seeding activity that specific mitigations were deployed to avoid.”

Instead of naming staff and providing specifics like their “role, approximate dates of involvement,” and “whether the person made or contributed to the decision and/or authorized, ratified, directed, permitted, or approved it,” Meta suggested that it only provide names. (Hixon disagreed that would be appropriate.)

To avoid naming executives, Meta explained that it wasn’t common practice for leadership to make “formal” decisions when acquiring datasets for early AI training on models like Llama 1 and 2. Only later on, Meta claimed, did that “initial informal approach” give “way to more structured review and approval processes.”

Not buying Meta’s arguments, Hixon said that authors did not limit their request to formal decisions, while agreeing that Meta must do more to answer questions about who “made, authorized, or approved any decision to obtain or download the shadow libraries.”

Another tactic Meta used was to claim that torrenting approvals came from “collaborative” talks, so there isn’t “a single decision maker.” Again, Hixon suggested Meta was too narrowly reading authors’ request. Their motion did “not presume that Meta had a single decision maker; it asks about all the decision makers,” Hixon said.

Finally, Meta must also answer questions about what happened to pirated works that were not used for AI training, Hixon said.

Meta and Entrepreneur Media’s lawyer did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment.