On October 19, 2026, U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas S. Hixson ordered Meta Platforms, Inc. to identify people involved in specified decisions to obtain or download shadow-library datasets containing Entrepreneur Media, LLC’s works. The order includes people who took part in a team decision and addresses separate discovery requests about torrenting and seeding.
Who Meta must identify
The court granted Entrepreneur Media’s Interrogatory 22, a formal written question in the case. Meta must identify each person who made, authorized, or approved a covered decision to obtain or download the datasets, along with approximate dates of their involvement and details about the decision and dataset.
The request covers participants in a group or team decision, not just a single decision-maker. The order is Document 874 in a group of five copyright cases against Meta.
What the order says about torrenting and seeding
The court granted parts of Interrogatory 23. Meta must provide specified information about people involved in torrenting particular materials and decisions about whether or how to seed files or mitigate seeding. The court denied a separate request about searches of specified custodial materials and supervisors because that interrogatory did not ask for the information.
The order also requires Meta to explain what happened to plaintiffs’ works that were downloaded but not used for model training, and to supplement its response about how specified data was acquired.
The ruling orders discovery responses. It does not determine whether Meta seeded works or resolve copyright liability.
