RIAA Security Expert's Quest For Reliability

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In the ongoing case of UMG v. Lindor, Ms. Lindor has now moved to exclude the trial testimony of the RIAA's 'expert' witness, Dr. Doug Jacobson. Jacobson is the CTO and co-founder of Palisade Systems, Inc, and a teacher of internet security at Iowa State, but in his February 23rd deposition testimony she argues he failed to meet the reliability standards prescribed by Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Federal Rule of Evidence 702. The Groklaw and Slashdot communities participated in both the preparation of the deposition questions, and the vetting of the witness's responses."

Moderately Amused

[Mateo_LeFou]

That it required two very large combined communities to refute this sham expert. Still, that makes me hopefuly that mechanisms like this might rescue part of our judicial system from the money game.

Awesome.

[EaglemanBSA]

I think it's good to see not only someone continuing to fight back, but that we can make a difference as a technical community (hopefully).

2cents I also think that the RIAA and everyone from them can fornicate themselves with an iron stick. /2cents

I can see the troll/flamebait mods coming already.

Re:Am I the only one

[Dachannien]

imaginary documentation detailing an absense of evidence

When there is a search space of a size small enough that the entirety of it can be searched, one can produce evidence documenting that something is not present within that space.

But yet..

[wanax]

It's still very much news for nerds, stuff the matters. The the RIAA cases deal with an activity that many of us have participated in the past, present or future, and regardless of your opinion of the state of copyright law. It's important to know how one might respond if served.

More importantly though, these cases indirectly impact many other activities, many of which I think the great majority of the community feels are not unethical, which involve limits of copyrights, security, DRM, etc.

And speaking as somebody who's a US citizen who knows a fair amount as an amateur about the law and constitution as written documents, these cases, as well as the SCO entries, are certainly educating me greatly about how the law is actually practiced outside of my personal reading of it. Routine trial motions are relevant when they deal with something that is important to track, especially when most of the community doesn't know what's a routine motion and what isn't. I personally hope that at the very least everybody from the US learns from these, since being able to describe with accuracy and detail the problems we have with the current state of the laws is the only way that all the letters, e-mails etc to legislators are going to have any measurable impact.

Re:Why exclude? No real problem with his testimony

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

You do not understand the law, or what the case was about, or what the deposition was about, or what the motion is about. The deposition was about what his methods were, and whether they were sufficiently "reliable" under the Daubert line of cases. His deposition testimony negated any possibility of his testimony being admissible at trial because he flunked all of the "reliability" standards.

Your comment makes no sense. He was not "supposed to investigate" anything; he was "supposed to" testify about the investigation that was done three (3) years earlier.

As to whether he was "out of his area", he probably was... but that's not my fault, that's his, for pretending to be something he's not, and it's the RIAA's, for inducing the man to pretend to be something he's not. While I may have been asking him things he couldn't answer, they were not irrelevant to his report and his proffered testimony; they were directly relevant to what he falsely claimed.

I'm sorry to have to tell you that your knowledge of law is quite limited. There is no "prosecution"; this is a civil case. There is no concept of "reasonable doubt" in a civil case.

Yes his testimony is helpful to defendant. But this is not a game; this is a federal trial where one side is suing someone for tens of thousands of dollars. Under clear standards of law his testimony is inadmissible and must be excluded. I would be a pretty dumb lawyer if I allowed the RIAA to bring this guy anywhere near a courtroom.

Re:Routine Motion

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

This sounds like an RIAA troll to me.

This was the first time in 25,000 cases that the RIAA's expert was deposed.

The RIAA says he is their only witness to copyright infringement.

They used the same expert in all the cases.

And it turns out his testimony would be inadmissible at trial.

I think that's pretty important and not at all "routine".

In fact in 32 1/2 years of working in the litigation field, I've never even heard of anything quite like this.

Re:Unreadable

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

That's a good point. I hadn't thought of it before. It is indeed a part of my training to produce citations to authority for what I am saying. (And I don't understand objecting to that : (a) those who want to read further click the link; (b) those who don't, don't.)