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RIAA's Watchdog Affidavits For Your Reading Pleasure
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "MediaSentry, in an attempt to stonewall discovery in UMG v. Lindor, has turned over nothing other than a collection, apparently a complete collection, of its publicly filed affidavits. However, these do make interesting reading indeed, and as comments started trickling in on my blog, I realized that for the technically minded among you there are probably a number of good laughs in these materials. So in keeping with the Slashdot community's analysis of the RIAA's not very expert, 'expert' witness, I thought you might like to take a shot at its not very factual, 'fact' witness."
Investigator: "They did it. I found out about it."
Defense Attorney: "How did you find out?"
Investigator: "Sorry; can't tell you that. It's a secret."
Defense Attorney: "Then, how do we know it's valid or legal?"
Investigator: "I'm a professional - you can take my word on it."
Defense Attorney: "Do you have a professional license or certification that backs up your word?"
Investigator: "Sorry - I don't see how that's relevant."
Sure this isn't something from a Monty Python sketch?
The little guy just ain't getting it, is he?
The current mess is partly as a result of the difficulties with DNA and other scientific evidence. In the 1920s, SCOTUS created the Frye standard, which required that any scientific method presented in court needed to be accepted by a majority of experts in the field. This was a very conservative standard, and it meant that investigators couldn't develop new methods ad hoc because those methods couldn't have been widely accepted at the time of use. In the 1990s, SCOTUS instituted a new Daubert standard which allows any scientific evidence -- regardless of its general acceptance -- to be presented at the judge's discretion, and it leads to the "competing experts" situation that we have today.
IMO, Daubert is a horrible precedent, as it forces non-experts to decide how to treat expert testimony. With the older Frye standard, some prosecutors might have a hard time prosecuting some individuals in difficult cases, but it does a much better job of maintaining the integrity of the system.
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
Yes and some more good comments just went online as well there. The 'regulars' who comment on my blog are really quite a good group of thinkers.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
And there's nothing in the affidavits about them having licenses, which would normally be included if they had a license.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Methinks thou doth protest too much. You seem to show up on every RIAA litigation thread, seeking to fan the flames of disinterest.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Yeah, Anonymous Coward is a regular poster around here. Most of us just ignore him.
Redundancy is good And also good.
MediaSentry claims to have verified that the names of the files they downloaded contained descriptions of music copyrighted by the plaintiffs. That they didn't bother to play the music and check the contents is very suspicious. It's true that the RIAA has been seeding fake torrents with damaged files and that filenames don't necessarily describe the content, so it's conceivable that the files didn't really contain what the names suggest, but I doubt that and I don't think you could sell this to a jury working at the "preponderance of the evidence" standard (I'm not even sure about "beyond reasonable doubt"). That said, it shows extreme incompetence on the part of MediaSentry. In my opinion this should be used to impeach their credibility: "if you didn't take this elementary step, what other important steps did you gloss over?" -- suggesting it's possible the files weren't song files is to "conspiracy theory"-like to work (the Thompson case reeked of such attempts).
Beware of that. They have a special way of spotting their own spoofs that we know about thanks to the Media Defender leaks. Specifically, Media-Defender spoofs had hashes that were divisible by 137, while MediaSentry had file sizes that were divisible by some large prime (for multi-file archives, though, only the last file was made divisible). I'm sure that they've changed some parts of their scheme after the leak (it's been very well known for a long time now and I've seen all this info brought up before), but I don't doubt that they still have sneaky tricks they use to identify their own fakes.
Still, you have a point that they haven't tested the files very well. Especially because of the way MediaSentry/SafeNet modified only the LAST file of multiple file sets, well, who knows? But they probably do have a database with all the hashes of all the spoofs they ever made. What would be more fun, though, would be to ask them how they know they're not someone *else's* spoofs. After all, that same archive I linked to mentions that SafeNet & MediaDefender had trouble interfering with each other at times...