Judge Orders Meta to Name Employees Who Approved Torrenting

A federal magistrate has ordered Meta to identify all employees who approved or took part in decisions to obtain books from LibGen and Anna’s Archive via BitTorrent, extending beyond the engineers who ran downloads to anyone who decided whether to seed or mitigate seeding. This follows an earlier order to produce server command histories that could show torrent client settings. A separate publisher, Entrepreneur Media, alleges Meta contributed to piracy by uploading works to third parties and sought names to support contributory infringement and distribution claims. Meta acknowledged using BitTorrent for LibGen’s Scimag collection and Anna’s Archive, said some actions were reviewed by in-house counsel, characterized torrenting choices as technical and made by consensus, and asserted steps were taken to limit seeding. An internal log reportedly recommended avoiding torrents because seeding could share content externally and be legally problematic, and Meta’s expert estimated uploads may have been as much as about 30% of downloaded data in a sampled period.

Judge Hixson found Meta’s responses insufficient, ruling the interrogatory covers informal and group decisions so everyone involved in the 2023 LibGen download discussion, the April 2024 Anna’s Archive download, and any decisions about seeding must be named. Those identities are central to assessing willfulness and the publisher’s infringement theories. The orders narrow discovery on who made or participated in acquisition and seeding choices, while the larger questions of fair use and whether pirated books were actually distributed remain to be decided.