Should RIAA Investigators Have To Disclose Evidence?

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "A technology battle is raging in UMG v. Lindor, a court case in Brooklyn. The issue at hand is whether the RIAA's investigator SafeNet (the company that acquired MediaSentry) now needs to disclose its digital files, validation methodology, testing procedures, failure rates, software manuals, protocols, packet logs, source code, and other materials, so that the validity of its methods can be evaluated by the defense. SafeNet and the RIAA say no, claiming that the information is 'proprietary and confidential'. Ms. Lindor says yes, if you're going to testify in federal court the other side has a right to test your evidence. A list of what is being sought (pdf) is available online. MediaSentry has produced 'none of the above'. 'Put up or shut up' says one commentator to SafeNet."

Comments

Please, keep digging your grave. :)

[urcreepyneighbor]

Keep playing little games like this, RIAA & MPAA, and you will find yourselves facing the Supreme Court.

Disclose to defence at least

[saikou]

While they certainly don't want to disclose anything, they will probably be forced to disclose it to defense, so claims can be validated and/or rebutted properly. Otherwise it's the same claim as SCO -- "I have tons of evidence you did very bad thing, but I won't show it to anyone, not even a judge"

Great!

[CyberData4]

That's one way to make sure they're all guilty....don't allow em to defend themselves....

Re:Discovery rules in Civil vs. Criminal cases?

[nomadic]

IANAL, so obviously don't take my word as legal advice, but I was under the impression that discovery rules only pertained to criminal cases, not civil cases? Any lawyerly types care to chime in on this, maybe shed a bit of light on the subject?

Nope, the amount of discovery in civil cases often dwarfs that of even the largest, most complex criminal cases, and the rules are similar. You can refuse to produce documents on certain bases, including that it involves proprietary information or business secrets, but you have to convince the judge of this, which can be tough. A lot of times the parties will enter into confidentiality agreements, where only the lawyers (and possibly expert witnesses) will gain access to the produced information, not the clients. I think it would be tough to convince the judge that a confidentiality agreement wouldn't protect them.

Similar to Drunk Driving defense...

[MozeeToby]

I remember a similar argument being used a while back by people convicted of drunk driving. They argued that their defense required access to the technical information about the breath-a-lizer, including the source and testing documentation.

If I remember right the judge in the case (Florida AFAIK) ruled in favor of the defendent. If the Breath-a-lizer company didn't turn over the requested documents, the defendent was off the hook. Don't know if the case has been overturned though.

Re:Similar to Drunk Driving defense...

[ScrewMaster]

I'm not sure it's the same case, but in the one I read about, the company that produced the unit was required to turn over the source code for independent verification and analysis. Apparently, it was a joke ... with comments like "this section is just for testing and shouldn't be shipped", with some major design flaws as well. It didn't even do a proper baseline measurement, and it's results could have been off by something like +/- 50 percent or something like that. I should go Google that case and see what eventually happened with it.

In any event, proprietary software shouldn't be when people's lives are on the line. That includes losing judgments on the order of a quarter million dollars (as happened in a recent RIAA case.)

What do you think?

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

This motion may well come up for a conference or oral argument, or further briefing, so it would be interesting to see what you folks think about why these kinds of items are (or are not) necessary to test the validity of MediaSentry's methods and procedures.

Re:What do you think?

[Deanalator]

Whatever technologies that companies are using to look for people are incredibly sketchy. I have received 6 threatening letters from the MPAA. Four of them were legitimate (overbugeted hollywood crap anyway), but two of them were completely bogus. When I got my second completely bogus threat, I attempted to track this company down.

It turns out that between the time when the alleged sharing occured, and when I got the letter, the company had changed names 3 times (or there were a large number of dummy companies that had contracted eachother out or something, it is really hard to tell the difference in these situations). When I finally tracked down a phone number for the building that these guys were supposedly working in, I called it. A machine picked up (customized with the name of the company and everything), but no one was in and the voicemailboxes on every extension were full.

Just take a look at the Media Defender leaks. These companies are often engaged in illegal activity, from fraud to extortion. They are not an industry that you want to trust to give you accurate information. These people have nothing to gain by making their scanners have more accurate results, they just want to see more results, so of course you should be able to assess their techniques (especially their source code) to make sure everything is in order.

Re:Discovery rules in Civil vs. Criminal cases?

[Rich0]

Yup - at work we have lots of systems that are subject to various government regulations, and which contain data that could become evidence in a lawsuit.

We take all kinds of care to document everything about these systems and their reliability, and we have retention schedules for everything and we follow them. While in a court case we might attempt to limit the scope of discovery we ultimately would be prepared to defend our data. Otherwise a computer log isn't evidence any more than a piece of paper typed up on a typewriter 10 minutes before the trial.

Looking at the laundry list, I saw one or two items that might have been a little broad, but most of this stuff is directly limited to the scope of the issues at hand and the reliability of the evidence. If there were 25 precedents that this particular software was bulletproof the plaintiffs might get the scope of discovery narrowed down a little further (maybe just to demonstrate that the software is the software that is considered reliable), but as things currently stand I'd be surprised if the judge didn't order the plaintiff to produce the supporting evidence or have their documentation ruled inadmissible (which would pretty-much gut their case).

IANAL though...

Exhibit A - Tom Mizzone declaration

[rboatright]

You know, I've read this piece before, but just now noticed that he claims that the TRACEROUTE that they ran from media sentry TO the ip address in question was stored on the computer that they are investigating....

which is silly on face. The computer (that they claim was Lindor's) didn't have a traceroute TO it from Media Sentry ON it...

So, clearly, the people producing these documents are -- just plain not competent.

In fact, DEFG and H all aren't on "lindor's computer"

uh.... And I'm sure that's been commented on before, but I just noticed it.