Overview
- Magistrate Judge Ona Wang held that OpenAI put its state of mind at issue, waiving attorney–client privilege over communications about the deletions of Books1 and Books2.
- Her order requires production of materials she reviewed in camera, all written exchanges with in‑house counsel about the reasons for deletion, and previously redacted internal references to LibGen.
- Plaintiffs allege an employee downloaded titles from LibGen in 2018 and that the datasets—deleted in 2022—held more than 100,000 books allegedly used to train earlier models.
- OpenAI said it disagrees with the ruling and intends to appeal, and the court did not apply the crime‑fraud exception.
- The fight sits in a consolidated MDL involving the Authors Guild, prominent authors, and multiple news organizations, with commentators disputing the decision’s reading of Bartz v. Anthropic on fair use.