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AI copyright news, graded by source

Court rulings, company filings and allegations in the copyright cases against AI companies and pirate libraries, over books, articles, music, images, video and code. Checked for new filings every three hours; items are posted after review, so some appear later. Get these by e-mail · Court filings, free to read

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Company filingAugust 29, 2025In re OpenAI, Inc. Copyright Infringement Litigation · S.D.N.Y. 1:25-md-03143

OpenAI's corporate witness: one LibGen book set was a direct download, the other was torrented, and the 2022 decision to delete them was led by its lawyers

OpenAI filed excerpts of the deposition of its corporate designee on the Books1 and Books2 datasets. He testified that a researcher obtained the first set by direct download from a site associated with Library Genesis, and that he believes a second employee, Benjamin Mann, torrented files associated with the same site to build the second. He testified that the datasets were deleted in mid-July 2022 after discussions that "was led by legal," involving the then general counsel and a product lawyer, who brought in several technical staff; that one engineer carried out the deletion; and that models already trained on the data were still operating at the time. One copy later turned up in old cloud storage and was produced. He declined, on privilege grounds, to give the reasons. OpenAI's cover letter says the last model trained on LibGen books was GPT-3.5. Mann later co-founded Anthropic. This is OpenAI's own witness; only excerpts are public.

OpenAI's letter (Dkt. 505) ↗Excerpts of the Rule 30(b)(6) deposition of Michael Trinh, July 25, 2025 (Dkt. 505-1) ↗

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What the labels mean

Every item says what kind of source it rests on. A court ruling or order is the court's own statement. A company filing is what a defendant says about itself. A government filing is a statement by a government agency that is not a party to the case, such as a statement of interest; it is the government's position, not a ruling. An allegation is what a complaint or motion claims and has not been decided. Reported means press reporting we have not confirmed from the primary document. Summaries are our own; follow the links for the source.

This page is general information, not legal advice. An allegation is not a finding. Whether any of this matters for a particular work or claim is a question for a lawyer.