A Second Discord Subpoena Was Granted Today, and Its Targets Are Sealed

Judge Andrew L. Carter, Jr. signed a one-page order today granting Take-Two Interactive a second subpoena to Discord in connection with the Grand Theft Auto VI leak. The list of accounts and servers it targets is sealed, at Take-Two's request, on the stated ground that naming them in public could prompt the people behind them to destroy evidence. We are going to describe what the public filings say and then stop, because the rest of this story is behind a seal and guessing at it would be the exact harm the seal exists to prevent. What was granted, and by whom CONFIRMED, from primary filings read at source. The case is In re DMCA Subpoena to Discord, Inc., number 1:26-mc-00422-ALC, in the Southern District of New York, filed 20 August 2026, before Judge Andrew L. Carter, Jr. We read the CourtListener docket page at HTTP 200, 116,617 bytes, at 2026-08-31T23:31Z, and three filings from it at 23:32Z: the letter motion to seal at HTTP 200, 500,198 bytes; the second subpoena request at HTTP 200, 373,586 bytes; and today's order at HTTP 200, 103,409 bytes. A note on how we read the order, because it affects how much weight it can carry. Judge Carter's order is a scanned signature image rather than a text-searchable document, so it could not be extracted with a PDF text tool. Researcher C viewed the embedded page image directly to confirm its contents and signature. Its operative line reads: ORDERED that the clerk of this Court shall issue the Subpoena for Discord, Inc. as sought by the petitioner. It is dated 8/31/26. Why this is a second subpoena and not a repeat of the first Take-Two obtained its first Discord subpoena in this same docket on 21 August 2026, which this desk covered at the time. The filing granted today is a materially new request, and Take-Two says so itself in a footnote, verbatim: This is Take-Two's second request for a DMCA subpoena to Discord. The Court granted Take-Two's first request on August 21, 2026, the Clerk of this Court issued the subpoena that same day, and the subpoena was promptly served on Discord... This second DMCA Subpoena request seeks different information than that sought from Take-Two's first subpoena and provides additional clarifying information regarding one of the user IDs specified in the first subpoena. The body of the request describes what has changed since 21 August, again verbatim: Take-Two has identified one additional Discord user and obtained additional identifying information for a previously identified Discord user, as well as additional information concerning the community servers identified in its prior subpoena for which it now seeks more targeted information. These additional accounts and server are believed to be involved in the same infringing activity as that described in Take-Two's first request. So: one newly identified user, sharper information on a user already named ten days ago, and a narrowed set of requests aimed at community servers that were already in scope. The filing was made through Kirkland & Ellis, counsel Dale Cendali. The sealing motion, and the argument behind it Alongside the request, Take-Two filed a letter motion asking the court to seal Attachment A, the schedule of specific document requests attached to the subpoena. Its argument runs on Lugosch v. Pyramid Co. of Onondaga, the Second Circuit authority governing public access to judicial documents, under which discovery-related materials carry what Take-Two characterises as a low presumption of public access. Its stated reason for sealing, verbatim from the letter, is the part worth reading: could compromise Take-Two's ongoing investigation and even tip off the alleged infringers as to the nature and progress of Take-Two's investigation... creating a substantial risk that the infringers will delete, destroy, or otherwise conceal evidence. The subpoena was granted after that motion was filed, and the schedule remains sealed. We did not read it and we cannot describe its contents. We are not going to guess at who or what is on that list, we are not going to repeat other people's guesses, and we would ask readers to treat any list circulating tonight as somebody's invention until a court unseals one. A sealed exhibit whose stated purpose is preventing evidence destruction is not an invitation to crowdsource the target list. What a granted DMCA subpoena actually does Less than most headlines will suggest, and the limits are worth spelling out because two of them are routinely collapsed. This is not a lawsuit. A subpoena under section 512(h) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is an ex parte identity-disclosure mechanism. There is no defendant, no complaint and no adversarial hearing. Nobody has been sued. Nobody has been accused of anything in a filed complaint. The proceeding is a request to a clerk, reviewed by a judge, to compel a service provider to hand over subscriber information. Granted means the clerk will issue the subpoena, and nothing beyond that. On this record, Discord has produced nothing. No individual has been identified, contacted, charged or accused. There is no timeline in the public filings for compliance, and a subpoena adjudicates no question of liability whatsoever. If the accounts belong to people who did nothing wrong, the subpoena is equally capable of producing their names. What the filings do establish, on Take-Two's own sworn characterisation, is the scope of the material it says is at issue: copyrighted work for "GRAND THEFT AUTO VI... includ[ing] but not limited to audiovisual content, artwork, images, dialogue, or other creative elements." That is a broad description, and it is the company's own words in a court filing rather than a paraphrase. Two orders, one day, opposite directions Today's grant landed on the same day that a different judge, in a different miscellaneous docket, closed Take-Two's parallel attempt to unmask three YouTube personas through Google, after Take-Two withdrew that application rather than answer a question about how it had linked the accounts to the video. We have written that one up separately on the news desk. Put side by side, the two orders are less contradictory than they look. One track was dropped without being decided. The other was tightened, narrowed and extended, with the targets hidden. A company that has stopped needing a particular set of Google records while simultaneously asking Discord for sharper information on a user it had already named is a company that has learned something in between, though the filings do not say what, and neither will we. What is and is not established CONFIRMED, from the docket read at 23:31Z and three filings read at 23:32Z: Judge Andrew L. Carter, Jr. signed an order on 31 August 2026 directing the clerk to issue a second DMCA subpoena to Discord, Inc. in case 1:26-mc-00422-ALC. CONFIRMED, verbatim from Take-Two's own footnote: this is its second request in the same docket, seeking different information from the first and clarifying one of the user IDs named on 21 August. CONFIRMED, verbatim: Take-Two says it has identified one additional Discord user, obtained further identifying information on a previously identified user, and now seeks more targeted information about community servers already in scope. CONFIRMED: Take-Two moved to seal Attachment A under Lugosch, arguing that disclosure could tip off alleged infringers and create a substantial risk that evidence is deleted, destroyed or concealed. The schedule remains sealed. Explicitly refused: any speculation about who or what the sealed schedule names. We did not read it, nobody outside the proceeding has, and any list circulating publicly is unsourced. Not established: that Discord has produced anything, that any individual has been identified or contacted, or that any person has done anything wrong. A section 512(h) subpoena compels identity disclosure and adjudicates nothing. Not a lawsuit: there is no defendant and no complaint. Nobody has been sued or accused in a filed pleading. Method note printed as a limit: today's order is a scanned image rather than searchable text, and was read visually rather than extracted. Our earlier reporting on what these subpoenas demand and how far their scope reaches is on the news desk, and the running record of what is actually established about the game sits on the wiki.