Judge Says RIAA Can't Have Hard Drive

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."

Defendant's terms

[Firehed]

"Okay, you guys can have the music back. Just let me keep the pr0n!"

Re:This sounds like a good precedent

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll stick the RIAA with something hard....

All this means...

[posterlogo]

...is that you pr0n collection is potentially safe from scrutiny. Can you just imagine if those RIAA people could tell the media how music pirating and pornaholics go hand in hand?

An Easy Win Here Would Be...

[punxking]

As a a mutually agreeable, neutral computer forensics expert, my only acceptable choice is CowboyNeal.

Re:Money can't buy love...

[ClickOnThis]

1) Buy/Pay-off "neutral expert"
2) Resume "business" as normal
3) ???
4) Profit!

5) Money trail is uncovered by journalist/FBI/whatever
6) ???
7) Prison!

definition of expert:

[jtwronski]

If they ever try to nail me (not that they'd have a reason to), I'll make sure that my linux box is only examined by a well-trained MCSE with lots of experience with the ntfs and fat32 filesystems.

    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:this means nothing

[blue l0g1c]

It coul mean the RIAA can have only the information relevant to their lawsuit.

I wonder if that means they have to basically play "Go Fish" now.

Sony: "Do you have any Christina Aguilera?"

Neutral guy: "Go Fish!"

Stipulations

[Debug0x2a]

Stipulation #1: They must listen to EVERY SONG IN ITS ENTIRETY to make sure its not a legal demo copy with that damned message at random points. Stipulation #2: They must preview EVERY MEDIA FILE (Including horse porn) IN ITS ENTIRETY to insure that there is no copyright infringement there such as music videos or demo images. Stipulation #3: They must reference EVERY SONG 'illegally obtained' with a list of music legally owned by all users, past and present, of the hard drive, including the manufacturers and the techies at Dell. Oh, and the company charges at least $120/hour for the service... hope they like to spend their money on guys watching horse porn.

Re:This sounds like a good precedent

[Anonymous Coward]

... duck season! FIRE!

Re:All this means...

[QuantumFTL]

Can you just imagine if those RIAA people could tell the media how music pirating and pornaholics go hand in hand?

Why you think the net was born?

Re:Money can't buy love...

[Firehed]

That's money buying "love" if I've ever heard of it.

Re:All this means...

[risk one]

I think you're forgetting that a computer expert will be examining the hard disk. There'll be plenty of scrutinizing going on with that porn collection.

Re:Precedent - Probable Cause?

[rHBa]

Right, that's decided it then, I'll keep using the neighbours wirless ;-)

Re:Precedent - Probable Cause?

[Lord Apathy]

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 start with. Just to make things interesting write a script that will copy and delete random files. Get the fucker good and fragmented, then defrag the son of a bitch. If you got some real balls then encrypt the fucker, use the windows encryption shit. Its weak enough to be cracked but strong enough to be annoying.

If you are really brave use strong encryption and use the password "go fuck yourself." When they order you to cough over the password you can give it to them and tell them what to do with it.

Re:This sounds like a good precedent

[scotch]

Did somebody steal something?