Meta has accused Entrepreneur Media of "speculation" in a lawsuit over its use of pirated datasets, arguing there is "no basis" for suspecting that someone at Meta must have approved a decision to seed torrents. The company has pushed back on demands that it name staff involved, including each person's role, the dates of their involvement, and whether they approved the decision.
Instead, Meta has suggested it should only provide names. Hixon, representing the authors, disagreed that this would be appropriate. To avoid naming executives, Meta said it was not common practice for leadership to make formal decisions when acquiring datasets for early AI training on models like Llama 1 and 2. According to Meta, that informal approach only gave way to more structured review and approval processes later.
Hixon rejected that argument, saying the authors never limited their request to formal decisions. The lawyer agreed Meta must do more to answer who made, authorized, or approved any decision to obtain or download the shadow libraries. Meta has also argued that torrenting approvals came from collaborative discussions, so there is not a single decision-maker. Hixon said the motion does not assume one decision-maker, but asks about all of them.
Hixon also said Meta must explain what happened to pirated works that were not used for AI training. Meta and Entrepreneur Media's lawyer did not immediately respond to Ars Technica's request for comment.
Source: Ars Technica · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing