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Judge Says RIAA Can't Have Hard Drive 233

Posted by Zonk from the quite-a-large-beast-to-be-jumping-through-hoops dept.
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."
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Judge Says RIAA Can't Have Hard Drive More

Judge Says RIAA Can't Have Hard Drive

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  • woo, guess a few judges have read the law (Score:5, Insightful)

    by swschrad ( 312009 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @07:21PM (#16617210) Homepage Journal
    about time RIAA is held to the law.

    • Re:woo, guess a few judges have read the law (Score:5, Informative)

      by owlicks58 ( 560207 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @07:51PM (#16617544) Homepage
      This isn't a matter of legal debate, it's simply compliance with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In order to compel the defendant to produce the hard drive, the plaintiff (Sony) had to show that the information contained therein is relevant (under FRCP 26(a)). In this case it certainly was, as the court stated. The defendant brought up some legitimate concerns about privacy of documents not in dispute on the hard drive, and the judge agreed that to allow a mirror of the hard drive by Sony would be overly broad. This strikes a fine compromise between the concerns of both sides.
      • Yes, but the RIAA says this is the very first time this has happened to them. So I wouldn't diminish its significance. I predict that this decision will be the gold standard for future hard drive analyses in the RIAA v. Consumer litigations, and that the RIAA is not at all happy with it, since the RIAA's ability to manipulate the results of the analysis is greatly diminished. These are not the kind of lawyers that are on a quest for the truth.

        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)

          by thePowerOfGrayskull ( 905905 )

          Yes, but the RIAA says this is the very first time this has happened to them. So I wouldn't diminish its significance. I predict that this decision will be the gold standard for future hard drive analyses in the RIAA v. Consumer litigations, and that the RIAA is not at all happy with it, since the RIAA's ability to manipulate the results of the analysis is greatly diminished. These are not the kind of lawyers that are on a quest for the truth.

          Isn't waht your implying enough to get the lawyers in question

          • lawyers get paid to argue their point by any means necessary within a hair's-breath of breaking the law. It's tolerated in court because the other side also has a lawyer doing the same thing... so we let them all be petty and cruel and live with it.. you never know when the other side is honest, or just a pathological lier.
          • I do believe that they have had communications with the hard drive experts which they have never disclosed to their adversaries, which they were required to disclose. They have an erroneous conception of (a) what communications with their experts are "privileged" and (b) what it means for a communication to be privileged. They think anything they're afraid of getting out there is privileged; the law doesn't agree with that. They think that if they think something is privileged it doesn't have to be mentioned at all; the law is that even if you think a communication is privileged, you are supposed to disclose its existence in a privilege log, and let your adversary know about it, and let the Court decide if it's privileged or not.

            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.

        • Yes, but the RIAA says this is the very first time this has happened to them. So I wouldn't diminish its significance.

          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.

      • I could see some big money here being a "movie and music inspector" as well as a little precedent that could make the cases less destructive. This third party could make the court's job easier by allowing quicker access to the drive under more balanced conditions.. with an impartial third-party judges would accept the evidence more readily, and investigation would be more consistent for plaintiffs because this company would develop standards of inspection the court would sign-off on, the RIAA would be cut

        • 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

    • about time RIAA is held to the law.

      When you represent enough wealth/power, the you hold the law, not the other way around.

  • Defendant's terms (Score:5, Funny)

    by Firehed ( 942385 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @07:23PM (#16617236) Homepage
    "Okay, you guys can have the music back. Just let me keep the pr0n!"
  • 1) Buy/Pay-off "neutral expert"
    2) Resume "business" as normal
    3) ???
    4) Profit!

    • Re:Money can't buy love... (Score:5, Funny)

      by ClickOnThis ( 137803 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @07:43PM (#16617466) Journal
      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!

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by 42Penguins ( 861511 )
        7) Prison! You must be new here...

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Firehed ( 942385 )
        That's money buying "love" if I've ever heard of it.
      • 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!

        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)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
      I don't know about the USA, but in the UK things get interesting when one side calls an expert witness. If the BPI (the British version of the RIAA) call an expert witness who backs up their case then there is an assumption that the witness is biased, and the defendant is allowed to bring in their own expert. Ideally, both experts will agree on the evidence and it's then up to the court to interpret the evidence. If, however, the defendant doesn't bring their own expert then very little, if any, weight i

  • Precedent - Probable Cause? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SonicSpike ( 242293 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @07:25PM (#16617274) Journal
    So, does this shift things back to a higher level of probable cause now? Or is that even relevant in a civil case such as this?

    • Re:Precedent - Probable Cause? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ari_j ( 90255 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @07:35PM (#16617388)
      No, probable cause is not relevant in a civil case. However, this does strike the balance that the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure are supposed to provide between a plaintiff's ability to use discovery procedures to get access to the evidence he needs to prove his case and the defendant's interest in keeping his private information private. This is a very common-sense decision that probably has no real precedential value (because it's what most lawyers agree on anyhow), and it's good to see a judge using the rules and common sense to tell the RIAA that it is just like any other plaintiff in any other case, and just because it can bully Congress around doesn't mean that it can ignore the civil procedure rules and bully a court or civil defendant around.

      If this were a criminal matter, then things would be different.

      • Actual Rule (Score:5, Informative)

        by ari_j ( 90255 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @07:53PM (#16617564)
        I checked the court's order here and it looks like Rule 26(c) was invoked, oddly by the plaintiff RIAA. Apparently the defendant refused to produce her hard drive and the RIAA claimed that a mirror image of it was necessary, and that any privacy concerns could be dealt with under a Rule 26(c) protective order. Normally, a plaintiff makes a motion under Rule 26(c), so this looks a tad unusual to me but it works. The judge did not explicitly rely on Rule 26(c) in making his order, but everything about the order says it's a Rule 26(c) order.

        Rule 26(c) provides that, when certain prerequisites are met, "the court ... may make any order which justice requires to protect a party or person from annoyance, embarrassment, oppression, or undue burden or expense, including ... that the disclosure or discovery may be had only on specified terms and conditions ...; that the discovery may be had only by a method of discovery other than that selected by the party seeking discovery; that certain matters not be inquired into, or that the scope of the disclosure or discovery be limited to certain matters; [or] that discovery be conducted with no one present except persons designated by the court[.]" See the text of Rule 26 [cornell.edu] for more.

        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)

          by rtb61 ( 674572 )
          There is still the difference between a request for documents and a hard disk drive. The RIAA still should be bound to define exactly what documents they are after and provide relevance, not the whole hard disk drive. The independent expert then should only provide those documents that fulfil those conditions as ordered by the courts.

          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

  • All this means... (Score:4, Funny)

    by posterlogo ( 943853 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @07:29PM (#16617306)
    ...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?
    • ...pornaholics go hand in hand?

      Usually there's something else in hand. Reminds me, I'm out of hand lotion.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by QuantumFTL ( 197300 )
      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: (Score:2, Funny)

      by risk one ( 1013529 )
      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: (Score:2)

      by Dunbal ( 464142 )
      music pirating and pornaholics go hand in hand?

            Surely you mean hand in... uhh, nevermind.

  • An Easy Win Here Would Be... (Score:5, Funny)

    by punxking ( 721508 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @07:34PM (#16617382)
    As a a mutually agreeable, neutral computer forensics expert, my only acceptable choice is CowboyNeal.

  • My suggestion... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by chill ( 34294 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @07:43PM (#16617460) Journal
    An open-source program along the lines of "file" that can identify file types. It can scan the drive and output and matches to music files. Those are the only files they get access to at all. No documents, pictures, movies, programs or anything else.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by arth1 ( 260657 )

      An open-source program along the lines of "file" that can identify file types. It can scan the drive and output and matches to music files. Those are the only files they get access to at all. No documents, pictures, movies, programs or anything else.

      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)

        by chill ( 34294 )
        No, the judge's order gives them rights to access it. That part was already established, they were just arguing about HOW to get access.

        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.
    • Reasonable...Now, is this going to report every mp3 or other format music file inculding all my transcribed 1890s Edison wax cylinder recordings? I may be wrong but I do believe these might be past their copyright due date...
      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)

        by chill ( 34294 )
        No, that would be step #2.

        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 /. crowd seems to love the "all or nothing" approach -- if they can't identify the exact files, including MD5 hash of the exact downl
      • The way that this sort of thing tends to work is that a basic search is run, and then humans go through all of the positive matches, trimming that down to just what is relevant in the specific case. A couple of rounds of human level review are normal, since you start off erring on the side of inclusiveness, but you do want to get rid of non-relevant matches in each round, and you get more precise as to what matches and what doesn't as you go through. Digital signatures will only be used in the first round,

    • An open-source program ... It can scan the drive and output and matches to music files. Those are the only files they get access to at all.

      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)

    by blue l0g1c ( 1007517 )
    With the constant erosion of privacy laws, this is indeed refreshing.

    I'm looking forward to the rootkit jokes. :)

  • RIAA defence? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @07:51PM (#16617534) Journal
    Here is a thought:
    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.
    • Except the fact that if you can recover a file, you can usually recover the date of creation/deletion of the file. So, unless you're going to lie about the date you purchased the hard drive, this may not help a whole lot.

      • Re:RIAA defence? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @08:09PM (#16617724) Journal
        if you can recover a file, you can usually recover the date of creation/deletion of the file.
        Can the RIAA show that the previous owner had the date correctly set on his/her computer?
        • To the standards required by a civil case? Yes, almost certainly. And probably also beyond a judge or jury's reasonable doubt.
        • All of this will be circumstantial evidence. Can they show 100% that it was the user that downloaded/deleted a file? No, but they only need to show a preponderance of the evidence, which is, statistically speaking, 51%. Can they show 51%, yes, very likely.
    • Better solution: download to an external drive, then hide that drive (give to friend) when the RIAA comes knocking.

      • Except... (Score:3, Informative)

        by RareButSeriousSideEf ( 968810 )
        There are probably references galore to those files' existence on your sys drive. Do you run a media player from your sys drive? Do you run a p2p app from your sys drive? If on MS Windows, do you browse to your media files using Windows Explorer? All of these activities will leave a history trail as evidence of a media file's existence.

        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
        • How about you only download files and share files from a virtual machine that you have on an external hard drive?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by maeka ( 518272 )

      Here is a thought:
      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.

      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

    • Always buy used drives: never new.

      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
    • 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.

      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)

        by ScentCone ( 795499 )
        Man, what a total lack of personal honor.

        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)

          by MacWiz ( 665750 ) <gzieman54&gmail,com> on Saturday October 28, 2006 @12:39AM (#16619610) Journal
          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.

          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)

          by kthejoker ( 931838 )
          I'm sorry, but the RIAA has been found guilty of price fixing twice in civil court. A buck a song is outrageous given the low overhead of online hosting + the fact that iTunes is making large bundles of money off music produced 10, 20, 30, and even 50 years ago. To suggest somehow $1 is the appropriate value for these songs is ridiculous.

          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)

        by Dunbal ( 464142 )
        do you think that lying to the court is an acceptable defense, then?

              Who says he's lying? The files _could_ have belonged to the previous owner too. Maybe he had the same taste... :P
    • Here is a thought. 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.

      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.

    • After erasing files, we want to destroy them -- at least make it very difficult and expensive to recover.

      So what I do is run a cron job: dd if=/dev/random of=/WASTE; rm /WASTE

      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)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 27, 2006 @07:53PM (#16617560)
    When a certain **AA which deals with movies sued me, they wanted access to my server and all of my computers. I gave in to the server bit, under supervision - I was innocent after all - but didn't let them touch my home machines (again, I am innocent and these requested searches were prior to going to court).

    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 /home and /var/log from my server under the guise of investigation had the same IP as in those access logs. I'm baffled at why he didn't even attempt to cloak it.

    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)

      by artifex2004 ( 766107 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @08:30PM (#16617954) Journal
      I hope you countersued. Sounds like they were contaminating evidence and also possibly stealing computer resources if they ran anything themselves. The last is probably a crime, not just a civil matter.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by evanrandael ( 1008873 )
      The proper way to examine a hard disk for evidence of a crime is to image it to another hard drive without TOUCHING the data on the original hard disk. Once the original has been tampered with, it is arguable that any evidence found may have been falsified and is not admissible in court. Also, if they planted spy software on your machine, you can sue them for invasion of privacy. I am pretty sure there is a law somewhere that prohibits unsolicited internet traffic to a computer.

      Usually, professionals will u
      • There's no reason to use military grade wiping? It used to be that forensic experts could use a more sensitive instrument than a hard drive read/write head to examine the platters and reconstruct data even after it had been written over. If you're just duplicating the drive and the RIAA never gets to see the original, there's no need for that. Heck, they can't even access data in bad sectors that your hard drive accounts for.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by polyomninym ( 648843 )
      Wouldn't what they did be considered Breaking and Entering? I know they had some permission, but would what they did be seen as a technicality in your favor?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hxnwix ( 652290 )
      I can hear the RIAA's defense now:

      "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)

    by jtwronski ( 465067 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @07:56PM (#16617584)
    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: (Score:2)

      by sofar ( 317980 )

      someone mark this as funny please, it cracked me up for a minute! hahahahaha, a well-trained MSCE? ROFL!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by glwtta ( 532858 )
      I think this is less about evidence installing and more about protecting your giraffe videos.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dunbal ( 464142 )
      see what the checksum is when the drive gets back from the RIAA's expert evidence installer guy.

            Oh you think you get the drive back, do you?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by iNetRunner ( 613289 )
      Funny.. Though a simple checksum wouldn't be very good. A simple log entry would through it off. A checksum per directory would be better. *If one was to nitpick about the details..*

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hoggoth ( 414195 )
        > Funny.. Though a simple checksum wouldn't be very good. A simple log entry would through it off. A checksum per directory would be better. *If one was to nitpick about the details..*

        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)

    by Ten24 ( 974324 )
    Who does this really side with? The RIAA or the individual? Does it not give more concrete evidence against that individual if files are found by a 3rd party? You would think any files 'found' by the RIAA would not hold up well in court. What about files that were deleted long ago, how about used HDDs that have previous owners files on them? Sounds like the RIAA would have to request files from very specific dates and times to me.
    • I think it doesn't side with either; it fairly balances the rights of both parties. But since the RIAA wants everything to be one-sided, and this is, instead, even-handed, I chalk it up as a win for the good guys.
  • 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 manufacture

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cpt kangarooski ( 3773 )
      A few points.

      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
  • When the Empire wins the LUCRETIVE CASH SETTLEMENTS from these actions, how do they disperse them to the artists?

    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)

    by jt418-93 ( 450715 ) on Friday October 27, 2006 @11:11PM (#16619072)
    so i had a though. say i have a linux firewall box that sees the world, all my windows boxes are safely behind it. if they request the computer attached to the ip, would that not be my linux box, with nothing but the firewall on it?

    just a question

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