A federal judge has ordered OpenAI to reveal internal communications about why it deleted two massive datasets of pirated books, a ruling that could expose whether the company knowingly built its products on stolen creative work. For filmmakers whose content may have been scraped without permission, this case establishes critical legal precedent about AI training practices. The November 2025 ruling by U.S. Magistrate Judge Ona T. Wang requires OpenAI to hand over Slack messages and attorney communications explaining why it destroyed datasets called “Books1” and “Books2” containing over 100,000 books downloaded from the pirate library LibGen. The decision arrives just months after competitor Anthropic settled similar claims for a record 1.5 billion dollars, as we reported in our coverage of Sora 2’s copyright reckoning. While this case involves text, the legal principle matters for all creators: courts are finding that obtaining copyrighted content from pirate sources is “inherently, irredeemably infringing” regardless of downstream use. The same framework applies to films, cinematography, and visual effects harvested from torrent sites or pirate platforms. Sam Altman speaking at TED. Image credit: Steve Jurvetson, license CC BY 2.0 What the court is forcing OpenAI to reveal Judge Wang’s ruling centers on datasets an OpenAI employee downloaded from Library Genesis in 2018, later deleted in 2022, one year before any lawsuits were filed. These are the only training datasets OpenAI has ever deleted. The company must now produce communications from Slack channels named “project-clear” and “excise-libgen” where employees discussed the deletion. OpenAI initially claimed the datasets...
Published By: CineD - Tuesday, 2 December