RIAA Doesn't Like Independent Experts

Krishna Dagli writes to tell us Ars Technica is looking at the latest in the comedy of errors that is the RIAA's crusade against supposed pirates. From the article: "As one might expect, Arellanes isn't too keen on the idea of sending her hard drive (PDF) to an RIAA star chamber for examination. Citing the RIAA's numerous missteps in its ill-conceived crusade against music fans, she requests that the court require a "neutral computer forensics expert and a protocol protective of non-relevant and privileged information" be used to conduct the examination."

Comments

How can you allow such treatment?

[elh_inny]

I live outside US, in an EU country and I constantly see how many basic freedom rights are violated in US.
With all the recent actions of NSA, RIAA, MPAA, it seems like you hardly care about things like:
-freedom
-what is not explicitly banned should be allowed
-all citizens should be considered innocent unless explicitly proven otherwise, within US agencies, it seems the assumption is the other way around
Perhaps your life is still very bearable with those restrictions, but I would firmly rebel against such treatment...
I can't provide you a withsimple solution, but it seems nothing is being done to counteract the wrong-doings of your government, it can only deteriorate form that point :(
I don't know how many people have changed their minds recently, but I don't want to go to USA anymore.

Re:How can you allow such treatment?

[oclawgeek]

I agree with you, somewhat. First, however, copyright violations are explicitly forbidden, so that argument does not seem terribly relevant. However, the people currently in control of the federal government (as opposed to the governments of at least some of our states), are people who have decided that they prefer safety to liberty, and are perfectly willing to trade most or all of the latter for the illusion of the former. In this Faustian bargain, they will end up with neither - which is only just, as Benjamin Franklin famously (in the U.S., at least) observed. There is a simple word for this, naturally: cowardice. These same people tend to now populate the courts, but with the added vice of intellectual dishonesty so that the rights expressly granted to the citizenry in our Constitution are simply interpreted out of existence; any who dare acknowledge them are branded as "judicial activists" or traitors. But don't give up hope, world: we have a rich heritage of eventual rejection of the kind of nincompoopery you see in our federal government today. Let us hope we reject them soon.

And searching a hard drive proves what?

[Mia'cova]

I'm currently using six machines solely to myself between work and personal use. If I were acused of specific infringement, I could easily submit the drive from another machine (assuming that the accusation was true)... I don't see how that evidence is even admissable. Add on friends who use their laptops on my wireless network... I think it all just gets back to the point that there really isn't any proof. Using IPs are certainly going to be accurate most of the time but that's a long shot from proof. I still don't understand how they get away with all this.

I imagine that they will change their tactics. More deals to deliver bundled music subscription services with internet access, for example. Or perhaps we'll see something like myspace clean up in the next few years. Really, how long does it take to steal market share online?

Privileged communication

[Anonymous Coward]

This makes me wonder, what if you had a large amount of communication with your lawyer, letters and emails and such on your computer. Then if the RIAA conducted a search of the computer, would that render the entire search inadmissiable because of the presence of the communications?