Two Judges Split on the GTA 6 Subpoenas on the Same Day

On 24 August, in the same courthouse, on the same day, on two near-identical applications from the same petitioner, two judges did opposite things. Judge Analisa Torres granted Take-Two Interactive's request for a subpoena to X Corp. and directed the clerk to issue it. Judge John P. Cronan did not issue the Google subpoena. He entered a memo endorsement telling Take-Two that it had not explained how it identified the online personas it wants Google to name, and directed it to supplement its application. Read that second sentence carefully, because it is the one that will be misreported first. A memo endorsement asking for a supplement is not a denial. It is not a ruling on the merits. It is not a finding about anybody's conduct. It is a judge asking an applicant to show its work before he signs. Both matters remain open. Neither docket carries a Date Terminated field. First, a correction to what we published yesterday On 25 August we told you that a judge had acted in each of the two open matters on 24 August, that both documents sat behind the PACER paywall, and that we had not read either one. That was accurate when we wrote it. It is half wrong today. The X Corp. order turned out to be free in the RECAP document store, and we have now read it in full. The signed PDF of the Google memo endorsement is still paywalled, and our fetch of its RECAP path returned HTTP 404 at 334 bytes. But its docket text is public, and on a memo endorsement the docket text is where the substance sits, because the endorsement is written on the face of the application and transcribed into the docket. So: yesterday we said we could not tell you what those documents said. Today we can tell you what one of them says in full and what the other one says in the court's own summary. We are not dressing that up as anything other than what it is, which is our own earlier line no longer standing. What did Judge Cronan actually write? CONFIRMED. Editor fetch of the CourtListener docket page for 1:26-mc-00425, HTTP 200 at 87,390 bytes, no Date Terminated field, matter still open. The docket text of entry 5, verbatim: MEMO ENDORSEMENT on re: 1 Request for Issuance of Digital Millennium Copyright Act Subpoena, filed by Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. ENDORSEMENT: Petitioner has not provided any information as to how it identified the online personas that it seeks to subpoena from Google, including its basis for believing that those users are associated with the posting of [video address redacted by us]. Petitioner shall promptly supplement its application with any further information. SO ORDERED (Signed by Judge John P. Cronan on 8/24/2026) The docket text as the court published it contains the full web address of a specific YouTube video. We have replaced it, because printing it would point readers straight at material we have a standing policy of not sending anybody to. Everything else in that paragraph is the court's own wording, unaltered. Note what the judge did and did not say. He did not say the application was deficient, improper or rejected. He did not throw anything out. His words are that the petitioner "has not provided any information as to how it identified the online personas". We are quoting him rather than characterising him, and we would ask other outlets to do the same, because the gap between those two things is the whole story. Is a memo endorsement a rejection? No. In the Southern District of New York a judge often disposes of a request by writing directly on the paper submitted and having that annotated page docketed. That is a memo endorsement, and it is routine for administrative applications of this kind. An endorsement can grant a request outright, grant it in part, modify it, or, as here, direct the applicant to come back with more before the judge decides anything. The application is still live. Take-Two can file the supplement, and Judge Cronan can then issue the subpoena, narrow it, or decline it. None of those has happened yet and we are not predicting one. What it does tell you is that one judge of the four looked at the identification step and wanted it explained. Section 512(h) exists to let a copyright owner learn who an alleged infringer is, so a judge asking how the applicant already knows who to ask about is asking a question that goes to the centre of the mechanism. Every image on this page is official Rockstar material. Nothing on this page comes from leaked material, and we did not view any. What did Judge Torres do? CONFIRMED, and we read this one in full. Editor fetch of the RECAP path for document 5 in 1:26-mc-00426, HTTP 200 at 121,884 bytes, a genuine PDF 1.6, one page. The ECF stamp reads "Case 1:26-mc-00426-AT Document 5 Filed 08/24/26 Page 1 of 1". It is captioned "ORDER GRANTING PETITIONER TAKE-TWO INTERACTIVE SOFTWARE, INC.'S REQUEST FOR ISSUANCE OF SUBPOENA TO X CORP.". It recites the ex parte application and the Declaration of Rachel Bandli, finds "good reason to issue an order directing the clerk to issue said subpoena", and orders that "the clerk of this Court shall issue the Subpoena for X Corp. as sought by the petitioner." It is dated August 24, 2026. As sought by the petitioner. No narrowing, no conditions. The X Corp. subpoena is issued. One more difference between the two orders CONFIRMED. On 25 August we reported that the Microsoft and Discord orders carried a caption error inherited from Take-Two's own draft, reading "[PROPOSED] ORDER GRANTING ... RULE 7.1 DISCLOSURE STATEMENT", which describes something the body of the order does not do. The Torres order's caption is correct. Different counsel filed it: Ruttenberg IP Law on the Google and X matters, Kirkland and Ellis on the Microsoft and Discord matters. We draw no conclusion from that. It shows only that the four filings were not all assembled by the same hands. Where do all four matters stand? CONFIRMED, all four docket pages fetched at HTTP 200. CaseRecipientFiledTerminatedJudgeEntry dated 24 August 1:26-mc-00421Microsoft, for GitHub20 Aug 202621 Aug 2026Jennifer L. Rochonnone 1:26-mc-00422Discord, Inc.20 Aug 202621 Aug 2026Andrew L. Carter Jr.none 1:26-mc-00425Google, for YouTube21 Aug 2026not terminatedJohn P. CronanMemo Endorsement 1:26-mc-00426X Corp.21 Aug 2026not terminatedAnalisa TorresOrder granting Docket page sizes as fetched: 94,099 bytes for 421, 93,972 for 422, 87,390 for 425 and 90,110 for 426. We print those because they are how you know we held the page rather than repeating somebody else's summary of it. What are the compliance dates, and an upgrade to a label CONFIRMED, read off the AO 88B form fields at source. Microsoft and Discord must produce on 4 September 2026 at 10:00am, to Kirkland and Ellis, attorney Joshua L. Simmons. Google and X Corp. must produce on 8 September 2026 at 10:00am, to Ruttenberg IP Law, attorney Rachel Bandli. On 25 August we labelled the 4 September date REPORTED, because the form fields would not extract from the PDF and we could not read them ourselves. They have now been read at source. We are upgrading that label from REPORTED to CONFIRMED and telling you that we are doing it, rather than quietly restating the date as though we had always had it. The Google date sits four days after Judge Cronan asked for a supplement. Whether that date moves depends on what Take-Two files and when, and we have no visibility into either. Has anybody moved to quash any of this? CONFIRMED NEGATIVE, by three independent methods. We are printing the methods because a negative finding is only as good as the search behind it. A CourtListener HTML search for q="DMCA Subpoena", court=nysd, filed_after 18 August 2026. HTTP 200, 144,398 bytes. It returns "4 Cases and 21 Docket Entries". Exactly our four. A widened sweep for "Take-Two Interactive" across all courts, filed after 18 August. HTTP 200, 147,082 bytes. Exactly 4 cases, the same four. No fifth matter anywhere in the system. SDNY's own live PACER RSS feed. HTTP 200, 1,083,906 bytes, 2,327 items covering 25 August 01:06 GMT to 26 August 01:00 GMT. Zero hits on any of the four case numbers, on "Take-Two", on "DMCA" or on either law firm. This is court-of-record data and it is fresher than CourtListener's crawl. So there is no motion to quash, no third-party intervention, no fifth matter, and nothing filed in any of the four in the twenty-four hours to the evening of 25 August. METHOD HONESTY. The CourtListener v4 REST API, which is the check we ran last week, was not available to us today. It returned HTTP 429 with "Rate limit exceeded: 125/day", twice. We could not run it. The two HTML sweeps and the SDNY feed are what we ran instead, and the feed is the stronger source for freshness because it is the court's own publication rather than a third party's crawl of it. Two things we can see and cannot explain CONFIRMED, and we are not speculating past it. The YouTube video named in the Google application is unavailable. Our fetch returned HTTP 200 at 786,744 bytes with a playability status of ERROR and the message "Video unavailable". We do not know why, we are not saying it was taken down by Take-Two, and we have redacted the address. CONFIRMED, same treatment. The GitHub repository named in Take-Two's takedown notice is no longer under the account named there. We do not know why. Deletion by its owner, a rename, a transfer and platform action are all consistent with what we can see from outside. We print the uncertainty rather than a cause, and we have redacted the address. What is and is not established Confirmed (editor fetch, HTTP 200, 87,390 bytes): 1:26-mc-00425 carries no Date Terminated field and its entry 5, dated 24 August, is a memo endorsement signed by Judge John P. Cronan directing Take-Two to supplement its application with information as to how it identified the online personas. Confirmed (editor fetch, HTTP 200, 121,884 bytes, one-page PDF read in full): Judge Analisa Torres signed an order on 24 August 2026 directing the clerk to issue the subpoena to X Corp. as sought by the petitioner. Both open matters remain open and neither shows a Date Terminated field. Our own correction: on 25 August we wrote that we had not read either 24 August document. We have now read the X Corp. order in full and have the Google endorsement's docket text. The signed Google PDF remains paywalled and our RECAP fetch returned HTTP 404 at 334 bytes. Explicitly not claimed: that Take-Two's Google application was deficient, improper, rejected or thrown out. A memo endorsement seeking a supplement is not a denial, not a ruling on the merits and not a finding about anybody's conduct. Confirmed: the Torres order's caption is correct, unlike the caption we reported on the Microsoft and Discord orders. Ruttenberg IP Law filed the Google and X matters, Kirkland and Ellis the Microsoft and Discord matters. Confirmed, upgraded from reported: Microsoft and Discord must produce on 4 September 2026 at 10:00am, and Google and X Corp. on 8 September 2026 at 10:00am. Yesterday the AO 88B form fields would not extract and we labelled the earlier date reported. They have now been read at source. Confirmed negative, three methods: no motion to quash, no third-party intervention, no fifth matter, and no filing in any of the four in the twenty-four hours to the evening of 25 August. Method limit, printed: the CourtListener v4 REST API returned HTTP 429, "Rate limit exceeded: 125/day", twice. We substituted two HTML sweeps and the SDNY PACER RSS feed. Confirmed but unexplained: the YouTube video named in the Google application is unavailable, HTTP 200 at 786,744 bytes with playability status ERROR, and the GitHub repository named in the takedown notice is no longer under the account named there. We attribute no cause to either. Editorial policy: we have redacted the video address in the court's own docket text, the repository address, all server names and guild IDs, and all account identifiers. Explicitly not claimed: that anybody named in any of these filings did anything. A subpoena is a request for records. Being named in one is not an accusation. We will re-pull all four dockets daily and report any supplement, any order following it, and any motion to quash on our news page, with the document shown. If you would rather spend the wait somewhere useful, our servers list is the place to start.