Friday, October 27, 2006

Court Refuses to Allow RIAA Access to Defendant's Hard Drive in SONY v. Arellanes; Only Neutral Expert May Examine

In SONY v. Arellanes, the Court has refused to allow the RIAA untrammelled access to the defendant's hard drive, holding instead that only a mutually agreeable, neutral computer forensics expert may examine the hard drive, and that the parties must agree on mutually acceptable provisions for confidentiality:

October 27, 2006, Order, Restricting Hard Drive Inspection to Inspection By Mutually Agreed Upon Neutral Computer Forensics Expert*

Ms. Arellanes is represented by John G. Browning, of Browning & Fleischman, located in Dallas, Texas.

* Document published online at Internet Law & Regulation

EDITORIAL COMMENT: "This ruling is of great importance, and should be considered a model to be followed in all future RIAA v. Consumer litigations. The chicanery and gamesmanship that is going on behind the scenes with the hard drive report in the UMG v. Lindor case, which my office is handling, demonstrates that it is not safe to permit the RIAA to conduct its own, behind the scenes hard drive analysis by its own so called expert. The SONY v. Arellanes decision balances and protects the rights of both sides in a fair and evenhanded manner, which is usually anathema to the RIAA."
-R.B.


Further commentary and discussion:

p2pnet.net
Internet Cases
groklaw
Digital Music Weblog
digg
Slashdot
Ars Technica
Tech Dirt
TechSpot
BroadbandReposts.com

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Keywords: digital copyright online download upload peer to peer p2p file sharing filesharing music movies indie label freeculture creative commons pop/rock artists riaa independent mp3 cd favorite songs

3 comments:

Alter_Fritz said...

That's a good to hear decision for a fair and balanced judicial procedure!
It is bad enough that this Plaintiff, as a well-known and respected record company could -more or less without serious judicial consequences for them so far as I know, infect computers of good faith legaly buying Customers with malware! Those kind of plaintiffs these well-known and respected Record companies should not be allowed to snoop uncontrolled around the harddisks of the people they sue!

Oviously not every Richard that is somehow involved in this Cases is a "RIAA-Richard" (who is -according to the german to english online translation of systranbox.com- a Smelling pool of broadcasting corporations) who is paid by the plaintiffs and that way unable to act resonable

Thank you very much your honorable UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE RICHARD A. SCHELL for this wise decision. You gave me a bit faith back that america isn't jet fully enslaved by German-Japanese corporate terrorists!

Saskboy said...

My heart breaks for the poor RIAA.

StephenH said...

I think this judge followed the case of Atlantic v Andersen. I feel that the inspector should be a neutral party in all cases.