AI Signal 460
Court Blocks Subpoena for OpenAI and Anthropic Torrent Logs in Meta Piracy Case
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A federal magistrate judge ruled that rightsholders cannot compel OpenAI and Anthropic to disclose their torrent client configurations to challenge Meta's defense that seeding pirated books was an unavoidable characteristic of the BitTorrent protocol.
This ruling closes one evidentiary path for disproving Meta's claim that uploading during torrenting was technically unavoidable, forcing rightsholders to test that claim by examining the BitTorrent client itself rather than rival practices. Meta's own server command histories remain accessible, so the case continues on narrower technical grounds.
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Meta argues that seeding pirated books during torrent downloads was an inherent characteristic of the BitTorrent protocol and therefore fair use.
Rightsholders subpoenaed OpenAI and Anthropic for their torrent configurations to show seeding could be prevented, but the court blocked this.
The court said the technical capabilities of torrent clients should be tested directly, and Meta's own server data remains accessible to plaintiffs.
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