In SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, the RIAA's motion to compel the defendant's parents in Rhode Island to produce their home computer for inspection and mirror imaging has been denied.
The motion took place in the District Court of Rhode Island.
Decision denying RIAA motion to compel production of defendant's parents' computer
Commentary & discussion:
Copyrights & Campaigns
Keywords: lawyer digital copyright law online internet law legal download upload peer to peer p2p file sharing filesharing music movies indie independent label freeculture creative commons pop/rock artists riaa independent mp3 cd favorite songs intellectual property portable music player
2 comments:
Quote:
"As noted above,
Judge Gertner has found that the original home computer allegedly used by Joel Tenenbaum at his parents’ house for the music downloading in question has been “discarded or destroyed.” Thus, the Tenenbaums’ “eMachine” would contain at most peripheral evidence. Plaintiffs have not shown enough of a likelihood of relevant evidence to warrant the intrusion of privacy arising out of a forensic computer analysis of a home computer utilized for years by non-parties to the underlying case.[...]For the foregoing reasons, Plaintiffs’ Motion to Compel (Document No. 1) is DENIED and this miscellaneous action is CLOSED."
well reasoned and explained decision by Judge Almond! Good to see one more judge that seems to has understood the privacy issues that arise out of the overbroad demands of SONY-BMG, Warner Music, EMI and Vivendi Universal through their IMO unethical behaving lawyers from Holme Roberts & Owen, Robinson & Cole and others.
This man is amazed to see the RIAA actually lose a discovery motion, no matter how unreasonable and distant from the actual case it might be.
This man is pleased that there is a court actually willing to realize that computers do get damaged, destroyed, lost, stolen, given away, or simply discarded on occasion and that such actions are not a call to rule in favor of the RIAA on a spoliation of evidence charge.
This man has wondered in the past and continuously continues to wonder how, when the RIAA Plaintiffs maintains that they have "identified" a single computer and user performing P2P filesharing, that they can feel that they have the right to perform computer forensic anal examinations on any number of computers in the process. That action strikes this man as not only wrong since they maintain that only a single computer owned by the named Defendant would be the offending computer, but outright harassing based on the private things we all keep on our personal computers that may well have nothing at all to do with filesharing overall. It is especially troubling when the RIAA Plaintiffs contend that any computer that the still innocent Defendant may have ever touched in his life they are now allowed to inspect down to the last bit on the hard drive—not to mention other digital devices such as memory sticks, external hard drives, every CD and DVD in your possession, MP3 players...the list seems endless—and abusive!
What, for example, would happen if they found posting to this blog on the computer being examined?
Of course, this is only a Magistrate Judge's decision, but this Magistrate Judge is improving this man's opinion of Magistrate Judges overall at the moment.
{The Common Man Speaking}
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