Court orders X to reveal the identities of Genshin Impact leakers

A California court has ordered X to reveal the identities of four Genshin Impact leakers to publisher Cognosphere, saying the company's concerns about First Amendment protections are unwarranted.

As reported by TorrentFreak, in November 2023 Cognosphere obtained a DMCA subpoena compelling X Corp to «disclose the identity, including the name(s), address(es), telephone number(s), and e-mail addresses» of the person or people behind four Twitter accounts: @HutaoLoverGI, @GIHutaoLover, @HutaoLover77, and @FurinaaLover. 

X refused to comply, essentially saying it wanted more than a DMCA subpoena signed by a clerk to compel it to take action, and asking for a court ruling to determine whether the claim is «sufficient to satisfy any First Amendment free speech safeguards applicable to the anonymous speakers.»

Now a court has, and it is. In a ruling released last week, the judge on the case said the speech in question—that is, the leaked Genshin Impact material—is not «core First Amendment expression,» and that Cognosphere acted in good faith and «has sufficiently shown a prima facie case of copyright violation» in its request for the DMCA subpoena.

X's request to quash the DMCA subpoena is thus denied, and it will have to comply with the request.

This isn't the first time Cognosphere has moved aggressively to uncover the identities of Genshin Impact leakers on social media platforms. In 2021, after dataminers began sharing information about an upcoming Genshin Impact update, Cognosphere warned it would "increase its efforts to deal with illegal disclosures," and in 2022 it followed through, filing suit against Discord to compel it to reveal the identity of the leaker known as Ubatcha.

The denial in this particular case comes with what strikes me as a rather unusual rebuke of X's lawyers, effectively calling on them to stop wasting the court's time. «Finally, the Court notes that X Corp. has expressed the view that, in the face of a DMCA subpoena, X Corp. is unable to