Judge Says RIAA Can't Have Hard Drive 233
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "A Texas judge has refused to allow the RIAA untrammelled access to the defendant's hard drive in SONY v. Arellanes. The court ruled that only a mutually agreeable, neutral computer forensics expert may examine the hard drive, at the RIAA's expense, and that the parties must agree on mutually acceptable provisions for confidentiality."
woo, guess a few judges have read the law (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:woo, guess a few judges have read the law (Score:5, Informative)
Re:woo, guess a few judges have read the law (Score:5, Informative)
A similar, slightly more restrictive, decision was handed down awhile back in Atlantic v. Andersen [riaalawsuits.us] in Oregon, but the RIAA fought it, kicking and screaming. The judge wound up letting the RIAA have the hard drive. They found nothing, but still haven't turned in their report and still haven't dropped the case either. Most likely they'll claim that Ms. Andersen, a disabled, impoverished woman who never even used file sharing in her life, switched the hard drives on them, as they're now claiming [blogspot.com]with Marie Lindor, a home health aide who has never even used a computer.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't waht your implying enough to get the lawyers in question
Re: (Score:2)
Re:woo, guess a few judges have read the law (Score:5, Informative)
In UMG v. Lindor, they were supposed to disclose all documents concerning MediaSentry's investigation. They turned over some printouts MediaSentry had made, and a privilege log falsely claiming privilege [blogspot.com] for three engagement agreements between the RIAA and MediaSentry. They never turned over a single memo, email, invoice, letter, or any other form of communication between MediaSentry and the RIAA or its counsel. Do you really believe that there was no such communication? I don't.
I have seen a great deal of sharp practice and frivolous conduct by the RIAA's lawyers, and I do expect it to start catching up with them, now that a handful of litigants are starting to push back.
Re: (Score:2)
Then the RIAA is very good at playing stupid or lying. In one of the cases that Sony cited Arista vs Tschichart, Sony says the defendant "accepted" their motion to inspect the hard drive when in reality the defense filed at least two objections to the motion. It's not a bold lie, but it comes close to the SCO misrepresentations that we have seen recently.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Downside is that if you've got Kazza or other stuff installed and sharing you're nailed...
So go off of public P2P altogether and get on I2P [i2p.net], TOR [eff.org], or some other anonymous network. Sure, it's slower, but it will probably be too costly from a computing standpoint for the a given adversarial organization to nail you. The more they harass people, the more people will be driven underground to these "anonymous" networks. As of right now, it isn't illegal (in most places) to participate in one of these networ
Re: (Score:2)
When you represent enough wealth/power, the you hold the law, not the other way around.
Defendant's terms (Score:5, Funny)
Money can't buy love... (Score:2, Insightful)
2) Resume "business" as normal
3) ???
4) Profit!
Re:Money can't buy love... (Score:5, Funny)
2) Resume "business" as normal
3) ???
4) Profit!
5) Money trail is uncovered by journalist/FBI/whatever
6) ???
7) Prison!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
2) Resume "business" as normal
3) ???
4) Profit!
5) Money trail is uncovered by journalist/FBI/whatever
6) ???
7) Prison!
8) Appeal case to the Supreme Court.
9) Judge Alito is sworn to the bench ahead of time.
10) ???
11) Conviction overturned!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Precedent - Probable Cause? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Precedent - Probable Cause? (Score:5, Informative)
If this were a criminal matter, then things would be different.
Actual Rule (Score:5, Informative)
Rule 26(c) provides that, when certain prerequisites are met, "the court
Long story short - like I said, the court is just applying the rules and common sense. The RIAA is going to kick and scream about it, but there's nothing out of the ordinary about what just happened.
Re: (Score:2)
Consider a family computer where data is stored and relates to more than one individual. When the civil case is against one individual, neither the civil court nor the RIAA h
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That is why when they request a "mirror" of the harddrive you give them a "mirror." You go out an buy a new harddrive that matchs the one that you are going to have to cough up. After you clean off the master, then you copy each file over with the copy command. Make sure you use the archive option so it copies the correct file date and permissions.
There, they have thier mirror that they requested. There are no "holes" in the file table because there where never any incriminating files on the drive to
Re: (Score:2)
And given the size of hard drives nowadays, you'd need a humongous amount of data to properly overwrite everything in a way that doesn't seem suspicious
DV footage is still big; about 10GB per hour. If you dump a few home video tapes onto your disk you can quickly overwrite a lot of evidence, especially if you then play with it in a non-destructive editor.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
All this means... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Usually there's something else in hand. Reminds me, I'm out of hand lotion.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Surely you mean hand in... uhh, nevermind.
An Easy Win Here Would Be... (Score:5, Funny)
My suggestion... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A - If you don't have the CDs in your possession (still) you don't have any right to the mp3s.
Not quite true. If you have given away or sold the CD, then you don't have a right to the MP3s. If, however, you have lost it, then this is another issue. Some of my CDs are in my attic, some are in my parents' attics, basements, or may have been lost when they moved house. The RIAA would have to prove, in the balance of probability, that I never bought the corresponding CDs. Since I can easily produce CDs
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Last I checked, "file" could not identify music files. That it can identify an MP3, like the one I taped from last Tuesday's business meeting, doesn't mean that RIAA should get access to it.
Regards,
--
*Art
Re: (Score:2)
I'm talking about a way to help preserve some privacy for the defendant by using a neutral tool to filter out all obviously unrelated material -- the stuff not covered by the warrant.
"File" was an example. It could be modified and a "court approved" version could be put into escrow for use when authorized.
Re: (Score:2)
Does this process look for some "digital signature" for "their music" vs "My Music"? if so, may I please see this signature?
Does it differentiate any of the legal backup rips of my CDs from "their music" and flag which is not or which is "pirate"? If there is such a way of t
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Step #1 would require a court order to begin with. After they get the list of audio files, you then identify them: your own recordings, legal rips, out of copyright, etc. The point was they didn't have rights to access the entire drive, but had a court finding to look for certain -- infringing -- files. This weeds out 90% of the chaff up front.
The
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I take it by "music files" you mean "sound files", which could conceivably be anything. I'm sure everyone's seen "interesting" sound files online... and what about audio journals and/or voice notes? I think assuming a sound file is music is pretty ridiculous.
Better, I think, would be a program that meaningfully hashes sound files to compare with a hash d
Good to see... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm looking forward to the rootkit jokes.
RIAA defence? (Score:4, Interesting)
Always buy used drives: never new.
Then, if one has to surrender a drive for discovery, point out that deleted files could have been created and deleted by the prior owner of the drive.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:RIAA defence? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Except... (Score:3, Informative)
It would actually be pretty difficult to run a system that used media files but accumulated no traces of them. Every app that touches media in any way would need to be run in
Ok Smarty (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
While that might get you off the hook in a criminal case, this is a civil case, where the burden of proof is substantially lower, I can't imagine such a defense working unless your lawyer has the jury in the palm of their hand already. I think the odds of finding the files as described by the RIAA on a compu
Re: (Score:2)
Be careful when you buy used drives. You may not know how they have been (mis)handled before they got to you. Also, some sellers (such as those on eBay) can be surprisingly naive about the amount of packing protection that is needed to ship a drive safely.
Then, if one has to surrender a drive for discovery, point out that deleted files could have been created and deleted by the prior owner of the drive.
IANAL, but I wouldn't depend on that defense. I think you'd still be
Re: (Score:2)
So, do you think that lying to the court is an acceptable defense, then?
Man, what a total lack of personal honor.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't forget that you're in the middle of an entire thread that's focused on the art and science of being too cheap to pay an artist a buck for a song. So, yeah.
Re:RIAA Defence? (Score:4, Insightful)
If we could pay the artist a buck a song, that would be honorable. If we could pay the artist $5 for a CD, that would be even more honorable.
But I'm not going to pay a buck a song while the artist only gets 16 cents. I'm not going to buy another major label record until the RIAA stops suing people and makes a public apology for being such assholes. I'll support the artists I like by buying tickets to their show when and if they come to town.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Put plainly, market forces have not been put into play in an effective manner, primarily due to ITMS' DRM restrictions and the popularity of the iPod.
Anyone with any sort o
Re: (Score:2)
Who says he's lying? The files _could_ have belonged to the previous owner too. Maybe he had the same taste...
Re: (Score:2)
Here is another thought:
Federal judges are not known for their humerous indulgence of the Geek. You make a game of the discovery process, you get caught in a lie, you are going to find yourself in a world of hurt.
What I do (Score:2)
So what I do is run a cron job: dd if=/dev/random of=/WASTE; rm
This is run until it errors, on a weekly basis. Generally, 90%+ of all clues as to data contents are going to be destroyed by this.
Going further, inodes can be easily destroyed as well: say by creating new filenames until the system fails, then erasing them.
Ratboy
They don't need to use the courts... (Score:5, Interesting)
What they did instead was hack my HTTP daemon, FTP daemon or some Windows vunlerability on my one Windows machine (HTTP and FTP installs both admittedly being out of date), install some server scripts to download / edit / see my files, and eventually use those scripts to install a rootkit or trojan on the machine. If they hadn't done that last step, I may have never noticed. After looking at my web server's access logs, they were certainly poking around in places that they had no business being in. I mean, apart from poking around in the first place... but I don't think files with names like 'bank.txt' and the like are any of their business.
How do I know it was the **AA? The investigator they had who scp'd my entire
I don't see the RIAA stepping down with this court decision. If this guy primarily uses Windows, they can just do what was done to me. And if they don't find anything, they can surely plant it.
(posting AC becuase the lawsuit is still in the works) - captcha: sneakier
Re:They don't need to use the courts... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Usually, professionals will u
So, (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
"IP addresses are not useful for determening identity!"
"Logs are easily falsifiable and can not be trusted under any circumstances!"
If what you say is true, dubious though it may be, I wish you the best of luck. May your pair of tassled loafers find their way into the nether reaches of the RIAA's rectum.
definition of expert: (Score:5, Funny)
In reality, I could always do a checksum of my partitions, and see what the checksum is when the drive gets back from the RIAA's expert evidence installer guy. I'd fear a real expert more that I'd fear the RIAA shill doing it.
Re: (Score:2)
someone mark this as funny please, it cracked me up for a minute! hahahahaha, a well-trained MSCE? ROFL!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh you think you get the drive back, do you?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
A simple checksum is exactly what he needs. If a single entry in a log file has changed that means the drive was booted into or otherwise changed. It's no longer admissible in court.
They have to make a copy and work off the copy.
Even booting the drive renders it 'tainted'.
Sounds like.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Stipulations (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
First, they don't have to review any file unless they want to, because the plaintiff gets to choose what it bases its case on. If they want to ignore a particular file then it only helps the defendant for them to do so. So your #2 is rather stupid. (Though from my own experiences, I would say that disguising a file adequately could work pretty easily unless the reviewer had some reason to look further, such as if disguised files became a commonly used tactic by infringers)
Second, for files the
How Are The Funds Dispersed, Once Won? (Score:2, Interesting)
Do they toss the money into a general bonus slush fund meated out in infinitessimal slicettes to each artist their various members represent? Like, does Michael Jackson get 0.0001 cents for every suit settled?
Or, conversely, do they pass the money on directly to the artists whose songs are found to have been shared? In this scenario they would audit a defendant's hard-drive, find lots of Ma
linux firewall question (Score:3, Interesting)
just a question
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:This sounds like a good precedent (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This sounds like a good precedent (Score:4, Insightful)
no, no, no, no. A judge saying that RIAA can't have the defendants hard drive does not mean that RIAA's crap is coming to a crashing halt.
Re:This sounds like a good precedent (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This sounds like a good precedent (Score:5, Insightful)
Want deniability? Just don't download the crap in the first place.
Re:This sounds like a good precedent (Score:5, Interesting)
It's cheap, legal, and if you get accused just bring in the box and dump it on their desk...
Re: (Score:2)
And well he should have been. That sort of destruction of evidence, if the case goes to a jury, typically leads to an instruction to presume the evidence would have been against the destroyer's case.
Anyway -- you don't deserve a flamebait at all. It is also bothersome to see all the ways people think of to try to avoid being honest (this relates to the GP talking
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Only because it's costs them real money up front (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Only because it's costs them real money up fron (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I wonder if that means they have to basically play "Go Fish" now.
Sony: "Do you have any Christina Aguilera?"
Neutral guy: "Go Fish!"
Re: (Score:2)
Or play "Find the Fish" (Monty Python's The Meaning of Life)
I wonder where that fish has gone.
You did love it so, you looked after it like a son.
And it went wherever I did go.
Is it in the cupboard? (Yes)
Wouldn't you like to know?
It was a lovely little fish.
And it went wherever I did go.
What do you mean, specifically? (Score:2)
After all there's no harm to the RIAA in requiring it to demonstrate it has reasonable cause to proceed. If they say the defendant
On staff lawyers (Score:2)
Burden of proof (Score:2)
you walk in with a empty drive, you are liable to appear guilty, AND you cant prove otherwise. You are also liable to get hit with a criminal charge of tampering if the judge is in a bad mood that day.
Re: (Score:2)
http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/200 6
I think you would be better off encrypting the data, having a third party examine it, and get the mutually agreed conditions to be that they only look for music files and signs that music files have been deleted, as nothing else pert
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
1. I commend you on reading the documents. That's impressive.
2. They accused her, in boilerplate, of downloading, distributing, and/or making available for distribution.
3. In fact all they had is a screenshot indicating that somebody using that dynamic IP address had a shared files folder, which the RIAA considers 'making available for distribution' or 'distributing'.
Re: (Score:2)
Why billions and billions of dollars, of course. Haven't you been paying attention?
Re:Okay... (Score:4, Insightful)
1. You're certainly not the only one that's confused. The reason I know that is that I'm confused, too. Were I a judge all these cases would have been bounced on day one. These guys have no evidence of anything when they start the case. And then if they can't find some evidence in their fishing expedition, they accuse the defendant of having hid the evidence. It's a joke.
2. All the cases I have seen are Kazaa, Limewire, Gnutella, or iMesh.... i.e. FastTrack clients.
Re: (Score:2)
Did you think up that one all on your own, or did you have help?