Judge Hixon rejects Meta's "no decision-maker" defense in piracy suit

The dispute turns on how Meta characterized its own early AI data practices. Meta told the court that leadership did not make "formal" decisions when acquiring datasets for early training on models like Llama 1 and 2, and that this "initial informal approach" only later gave "way to more structured review and approval processes." It also accused Entrepreneur Media of "speculation" for suspecting someone at Meta must have approved a seeding activity that specific mitigations were deployed to avoid.

Hixon's pushback was procedural rather than factual: the authors' request, the judge said, did not limit itself to formal decisions and did not presume a single decision-maker. That framing keeps Meta's executives — not just staff who downloaded torrents — inside the scope of the questions, including who "made, authorized, or approved any decision to obtain or download the shadow libraries."

One open thread is the fate of pirated works that were not used for AI training, which Hixon said Meta must also address. Meta and Entrepreneur Media's lawyer did not immediately respond to Ars' request for comment.