Tuesday, December 26, 2006

RIAA Submits 26-Page Curriculum Vitae for Its "Expert"

The RIAA, in further support of its motion to compel Ms. Lindor's son to turn over his personal computer and listening devices in UMG v. Lindor, the RIAA submitted a 26-page curriculum vitae for its "expert", Dr. Doug Jacobson, to Magistrate Robert M. Levy:

December 26, 2006, Letter of Richard L. Gabriel*
Declaration of Dr. Doug Jacobson*
Curriculum vitae*

This was despite the facts that the papers were due last week, that Ms. Lindor's son's attorney has objected to the use of expert testimony at all, and that the RIAA has never turned over a hard drive report to Ms. Lindor's attorneys.

Ms. Lindor's attorneys objected, and requested that the materials be stricken, that the plaintiffs' motion be denied, and that sanctions be awarded against plaintiffs:

December 26, 2006, Letter of Ray Beckerman Objecting to Use of Doug Jacobson materials*

Commentary & discussion:

p2pnet
Slashdot
Groklaw

* Document published online at Internet Law & Regulation

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

26 comments:

BasicTek said...

Interesting jobs this guy has. Not someone I'd expect rummaging through peoples computers looking for pirated music???

Usually people at this level have much lower level techs do the "dirty work". It's very rare that a CTO/University Professor would have a high skill level with this type of work. CTO's at companies where I have worked were all about budgets and P/L not searching registry entries??? RIAA just wants to flaunt his education and certs I'm not impressed.

He mentioned that he opened the Mr' Lindor's resume and read it. Now when did information in his resume become part of this case??? I suppose it could have been a pirated music file disguised as a resume???

The good news is the drive is clean, he found nothing. Case closed... or is it???

Alter_Fritz said...

"Any materials submitted by Dr. Jacobson should be
stricken; any motions predicated in whole or in part on any testimony of his should be denied;
and stern sanctions should be awarded against the plaintiffs for their sharp practice in this Court
"

Ray, based on what rules?

Anonymous said...

The question for me is, is this the hard drive used for the alleged activities and it is just clean as it was never used for what the RIAA says, or is it another hard drive altogether which is why there is nothing on it.

From reading his expert statement he seems to be suggesting that this is not the same hard drive used which if that is that situation is not very good for Ray, as it would be bad faith on the defendent's part although I am sure that it is simply bias on the experts evidence which suggests that.

What really concerns me is how mediasentry is watching and recording all our activities, surely that is not acceptable? its an invasion of privacy and there must be some US law preventing it? that is what really worries me!

raybeckerman said...

1. Alter_fritz, why on earth would you ask me that?

2. oli, your point is pretty weird too. They didn't find what they were looking for and you say that's bad for Ms. Lindor? Where I come from that's bad for the plaintiffs, whose whole case is smoke and mirrors to begin with.

What's the matter with you guys? Did Santa disappoint you, and put you in a bad mood or something? Go back to sleep and come back when you're not so cranky.

Alter_Fritz said...

Oli, the "expert" is oviously a moron with regards to drawing logical conclusions.
given the fact that KaZaA leaves traces as he claims and given the fact that there are no traces, he unlogically concludes that it must be not the HDD they want. Every logical thinking person that is NOT prejudiced(e.g. blindfolded Lady Justicia) with regards to an outcome would at that point conclude there was no KaZaA on the Lindor computer at all, but not that it is not the computer that they wanted to check.
But what do you expect from an "expert" that is selling a court that an ordinary defrag function is spoiling with evidence?!

"absence of proof is no proof of absence" is ovioulsy RIAA's motto too!
__

"What really concerns me is how mediasentry is watching and recording all our activities, surely that is not acceptable?"

Oli, MediaSentry just watches your activities if you use filesharing technology.
If you want all your activities watched and recorded you must ask the NSA for that.

raybeckerman said...

basictek is in a good mood. Santa must have treated him well. Either that, or his needs are few.

In any event, he's the only one who seems to have realized what a grossly humiliating and desparate thing it was for them to submit this joke of an expert witness declaration and embarrassing 26-page curriculum vitae. Don't you other guys realize this is a little bit of overkill to try to nail a home health aide who probably makes about $8 an hour changing elderly people's bed pans, and has never even used a computer in her life?

Judge Levy probably still hasn't stopped laughing.

raybeckerman said...

Meanwhile if you guys want to do something constructive, get questions for me to ask Dr. Doug at his deposition. This might be the first time he's been deposed in one of these cases.

Alter_Fritz said...

Ray said why on earth would you ask me that?"

Because I want to understand if the judge has a realistic posibility to to what you ask him to do.
Lets say FRCP 0815(a) would provide something like if the judge is pissed off of a plaintiffs behaviour he can send him to hell or something like that,

Anonymous said...

I just meant that if the court was to believe "dougs" opinion that it is not the same hard drive then it would be bad for her... but if the judge doesn't believe him then its good!

I didn't mean mediasentry was watching my every move - I meant if I use any filesharing program I still don't want some company invading my privacy - that's not right - if your neighbour kept looking in ur house you may get an order against him - why is it any different with mediasentry? its not their business to look at what I am doing Im allowed to do what I want - if its wrong then let the government come and bug me not some company working for the RIAA!

Anonymous said...

by the way- I wish my CV was 26 pages long!

raybeckerman said...

1. Alter_fritz, do you think I would ask for something if it wasn't based on sound legal principles?

2. Do you want me to put my legal authorities here, even though you know that Richard reads this blog all the time. He loves it so much he's constantly asking the judge to read it too.

3. oli, you're assuming Ms. Lindor was guilty of something in the first place. Don't you know that when they have a shared files folder screenshot in Kazaa it could be from a combination of 25 different computers, and that some of those computers may have zero files. Didn't you read Zi Mei's affidavits in the John Doe cases? Didn't you read the independent experts' report submitted in the Netherlands?

4. oli, someone who submits a 26-page CV has something wrong with him.

Anonymous said...

That was English sarcasm the 26 pages long CV comment! But you didnt know I was from England so now you do watch out for the wit!

I have not read everything you listed there (there is quite a lot to read all at once to cover every case!) and that is why I am here trying to learn from your authority and knowledge! so thanks for all your feedback - even if we are more annoying that the RIAA lawywers you deal with!

Anonymous said...

Ray;

As well as my experience in the music industry, I have also a technical background in systems administration.I am not an expert in hard drive analysis but there are some things you would expect from a REAL expert report. You should have:

1. Total number of files found on the hard drive.

2. Total number of undamaged files.

3. Total number of deleted files you were able to recover.

4. Expect the files to be broken down into file types. i.e. text file, application files (binaries), media files (images, video, audio, midi etc.)

Beore this list I would expect to find listed the manufacturere of the drive, its serial number, its type (i.e. IDE, SCSI or other type), its file system (FAT, FAT32, NTFS, EXT2, EXT3, HFS+}

Were there any viruses or trojans on the drive, if so, what were they?

All of the above just prove that he has at least looked at the drive in question. Unless there are other reports which I have not seen, then this isn't a report at all. This boils down to absolutely nothing except his C.V.

All this can be done without violating Ms Lindor's privacy because he would not have to actually look at the contents of any file himself. There oare tools to do that which spit out paper reports. He should have documented which programs he used as well.

No one needs to call anyone any names here, Just asking the right questions at the right time will expose who ever isn't what he claims to be.

I've done all this within just a few moments, but there are many more questions that could and should be asked of this so called expert before he is accepted as any kind of expert except as an expert puppet of the RIAA.

Cheers,
David

BasicTek said...

"Meanwhile if you guys want to do something constructive, get questions for me to ask Dr. Doug at his deposition. This might be the first time he's been deposed in one of these cases."

1) Why the heck was he opening and reading a personal doc (the resume) in order to search for music files??? It seems to me that an "expert" would know that you won't find music files in the text of a document.

2) What affiliation and experience does he have installing, using, uninstalling, searching for registry settings, shared folders, etc with Kazaa??? It's hard for me to imagine a college professor/CTO sitting at a computer and playing with kazaa to great lengths. My guess is an average 15 year old may have more hours logged using kazaa than this guy...

3) Did he examine the hard drive himself or have others do it for him?

4) The killer question... Was the owner of said hard drive guilty of copyright infrindgement based on the evidence he's seen/examined?

5) Here's a good one while you have this expert up there. Does the evidence gathered by the RIAA prove that any defendant has shared copyrighted music with anyone other than the RIAA/mediasentry???

raybeckerman said...

Good stuff, David and basic. Thank you very much.

Unknown said...

This is really very sad....28 (26 pages & two of his own) detailed pages of how wonderful Mr. Export Witness is...pat him on the back! And all he can tell us is that the plaintiff was living in Brooklyn at the time of said infringement. Well, so were a million other people...am I the only one who finds this amuzing?

Alter_Fritz said...

" 1. Alter_fritz, do you think I would ask for something if it wasn't based on sound legal principles?"

RIAA does exactly THAT all the time! (stuff not based on sound legal principles) Maybe I confused something because of this ;-)

"Do you want me to put my legal authorities here, even though you know that Richard reads this blog all the time."
Why not? If the authorities are strong, he in return might have a bit of a headache to counter them. If not he can just write "the plaintiff's object to this motion on the grounds that defendant can cite no authorities and that it is frivolous."
and this 26 page CV (that btw says NOTHING about his qualification as an "computer forensic expert" beside one line "certified bla bla bla") was already attached in the papers from April.

Instead of value up that pile of papers by asking to not look at it, it would be much more helpfull to ask for HIS credentials as computer forensic experts.
Helping the campus police because you are the only one that know the difference between AC/DC bit/byte (he is an engineer!!) does not give you expertise as computer forensic guy! That he got millions from AT&T in laboratory value is nonrelevant for example.
And that he has much time at hand to review books and write articles only shows that he has much time for Theory but not for practice oviously.
What are his qualifications as computer forensic "expert" witness of plaintiffs?
I can only read 2 (two) lines regarding that in the 26 pages:
1) that he works since 09/03 for the university police as their "specialist" (I assume you are their "expert" if you can use a programm to be able to see the HDD content below filelevel layer that I linked for example)
2) that he got in 2004 a "certificate" that says he is a "certified Computer Forensic Examiner" [read: he showed a guy in the company that produce IT forensic software that he knows how to push button "B" and listened 4 hours to a boring presentation how powerfull their software is, and after that he got this nice "certificate") maybe like this: http://www.guidancesoftware.com/training/index.aspx

And come on Ray, this guy states himself that he is just a hearsay witness that reads some paper from other guys. His testimony should be totally useless with this 2 lines of forensic expertise in 26 pages. If the judge himself would be interested in technology he could become an expert that can do what Dougy alledgedly did in less then a day if the company that produce this expensive analysing software tell the judge how to use it!

So with regards to questions: ask him what he did himself, with what software, what is only hearsay from 3rd persons and so on for example. Since we also have not yet read the "harddrive expert report" that probably state as FACT "no signs of copyrightinfringement found" we can't tell you what to ask.
I guess you are smart enough with your 28 years as litigation attorney to advise him not to testify about speculations ("absence of proof of copyrightinfringing files" is no proof of noninfringement") but only about facts he found in his ability as 2 CV lines "Computer Forensic Expert".

Alter_Fritz said...

virtualchoirboy wrote: "Call me paranoid, but if I were testifying, I would want my testimony to count as more than just an "opinion". I'd like to be able to back up my claims by knowing how the reports were generated. Otherwise, I could have been handed anything and I'm just another mouthpiece for a bullying organization."

You are NOT paranoid, in fact you have just discovered what this "hard drive expert" in their cases is all about!

He is just a mouthpiece that serves the only purpose to give a flawed "evidence" gathering system the look of credability.

He himself has stated that he just looks at the "logs" he got from MediaSentry. And because this "logs" are inconsistent with the physical evidence he then concludes some illogical "opinions".

Thats why RIAA need to clutter the court with such a CV that says NOTHING about his qualifications as "certified Forensic Examiner".
Why would a court in a question of alledged copyrightinfringement would want to know that he wrote dozends(hundreds?) of books/articles about networkstuff from an engineerical point of view? No judge needs to know electrical specs in computer network wireing and such stuff.

Anonymous said...

This sounds like good news to me. What I read is:

1) Based on the MediaSentry information, someone shared copyrighted material.

2) The disk drive that belongs to the defendant is not the disk drive that shared files.

Seems to me that the prosecution is your own best witness.

Unless someone gave the wrong hard drive to the Plaintiff (which would be just plain wrong!), then I'd say this case is going nowhere.

Good Luck

raybeckerman said...

Thanks. Good input. Much appreciated. Any further ideas, keep 'em coming.

Anonymous said...

Ask the expert how he can be sure about the wireless access. MediaSentry could not record that information because it can not be learnt from remote.

Alter_Fritz said...

dreddsnik, I have surely no intention to defend this "certified forensic examiner", and myabe my confusion comes from the fact taht english is not my native language, but as i read and understand it, he is NOT saying that it was either a wireless connection or a wired connection, (that he of course can't say) what he is saying is that he found no LAN setup at all in that installation of the OS, so thats why he draws the conclusion that there was no router connection at all.(no matter if wireless or not)

But to be sure what this "certified examiner" truly wanted to say, I guess Ray must ask him THAT when he is under oath.
His deposition is an open end shedule, so there are posibilities to grill him about his "examinator skills" more then just one or two hours.

Alter_Fritz said...

Dave asks: "How is it possible to establish that?"

it is just some conclusatory(sp?) thingy:

They argue if the mp3 they found somewhere have in the comment field of the tag the same infos like so many of the songs you find in the filesharing networks then that this 10% sample of the 100% copyrighted soundrecording, they have the LOC provided with, is downloaded from the internet.

They just draw one possible conclusion given these technical facts.
Of course a guy they accuse of having downlaoded soemthing can have used his own bought CD, can have ripped it himself and can have used the same values for naming it like all the "illigal" copies out there. (there are free services for that name your own mp3 for you like all the others out there.
So neither a hash value generated from the complete file including the tag nor a hashvalue generated lets say from an mp3 that has the tags removed is the same as DNA. The values are equal no matter if you have ripped it legally from your own bought CD's or else. This is because the source for the digital file is the same 1 Glass Master RIAA used to press tens of thousands of legit copies you and I and a judge can buy. All our songs are identicall when MediaSentry looks at them and no one has not you not me has downloaded our versions from the judge that is accused of uploading his version to us (or downlaoding from us if you will)

They just use technical confusing speech to sell technological illiterate Judges that hash values and metadata is like DNA. (we know that this is not the case! Even the RIAA knows that since they always complain about "perfectly digital copies". Since my bought CD has the same digital data as the CD you bought and if we both use a ripping programm that makes sure the copied Bitstream is 100% accurate like the legal master we both own, our copies have identical hashes. you put your self ripped one in your shared folder and i put my in my folder and now RIAA wrongly claims since we both have the same hashvalues and meatadata one of us must have downloaded it from someone else.
This is of course humbug! (but judges that are illiterate do believe that unfortunately")

BasicTek said...

I read through the 7 pages of "expert Doug's" declaration.

Paragraph 5 on page 4 he states that the defendant used a public IP address based on registry entries. The way that it was stated points to the defense indicating otherwise.

I did some quick research and IP addresses of all NIC's either wired or wireless are stored multiple times in the windows registry. There are entries of the current IP and some previous IP's. Also stored with these addresses are gateway, subnet, lease time, lease date, etc. The "expert" indicates the IP in these entries is public although the actual address or the ISP were not mentioned for some reason.

It seems to me their line of attack here is that the defense didn't provide the computer that they claim to have provided (i.e. a computer that was using a private IP on a wireless router).

Some questions regarding this would be...
What IP's were in the registry,
when were the lease times dated,
if the computer was plugged directly into the internet which ISP (the actual IP would indicate this)

Was the computer plugged directly into the internet at a later time then when originally accussed at which time it was using a private IP address???

It still looks like to me that a lot of assumptions are being made by the RIAA and their "expert", certainly not all the facts are clearly stated.

BasicTek said...

"And again, the point missed ...
This is smoke and mirrors.

They have been ordered to allow
the defense to examine the 'evidence'.

Ordered.

Instead, they provide a glorified
'resume' of their 'investigator',
presumably to convince the judge
to just 'trust them'.

They defy the judges orders as a
matter of routine.
The Judge seems to let it go as
a matter of routine.
Doesn't this seem strange to anyone ?"


Not being a lawyer myself I guess I'm not really sure what is strange.

Good point...

I get caught up responding to the literal meaning of these docs and sometimes forget what the RIAA and judge are supposed to be doing.

raybeckerman said...


dave said..."Thanks for the expo - that's pretty much what I thought but I don't have the technical background. The more I learn the more astonished I am that any of this RIAA nonsense is allowed to pass as fact in a court of law. It all paints a very grim picture of the system. I know Justice is supposed to be blind - but surely not stupid too.


So far, I haven't been able to find a single instance of Dr. Jacobson being deposed or testifying at trial. So let's not jump to conclusions about our justice system just yet. Its basic tool for truth finding is cross examination. And that tool hasn't been used on this guy yet.