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Court Rejects RIAA's Proposed Protective Order
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "You may recall that a few weeks ago the Court rendered a detailed decision providing for safeguards in connection with the RIAA's proposed inspection of the defendant's hard drive in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum. The decision instructed the RIAA to submit a proposed protective order consistent with the Court's decision. The RIAA submitted a proposed protective order yesterday, which attracted some thoughtful commentary by readers of my blog, but today the Court rejected the RIAA's suggested order, explicitly rejecting many of the 'enhancements' included by the RIAA, including production of 'videos' and 'playlists' which might be found on the hard drive. Instead the Court entered an order the Court itself had drafted. The Court explained that 'the purpose of compelling inspection is to identify information reasonably calculated to provide evidence of any file-sharing of Plaintiffs' copyrighted music sound files conducted on the Defendant's computer. Once this data is identified by the computer forensic expert... any disclosure shall flow through the Defendant subject to his assertion of privilege and the Court's authority to compel production, just as disclosure would occur in any other pre-trial discovery setting... (1) As should have been clear from the Court's May 6, 2009 Order, although the Plaintiffs may select experts of their choosing, these individuals are not to be employees of the Plaintiffs or their counsel, but must be third-parties held to the strictest standards of confidentiality; (2) the inspection is limited to music sound files, metadata associated with music sound files, and information related to the file-sharing of music sound files — it shall not include music "playlists" or any other type of media file (e.g., video); (3) the Examining Expert shall be required to disclose both the methods employed to inspect the hard drive and any instruction or guidance received from the Plaintiffs.'"
I typed some queries for lyrics into Wolfram alpha, and now they have to fight the RIAA!!
It seems as though that the judges in these cases are becoming more educated as to the technical aspects of this case and P2P filesharing in general. This can only mean that the RIAA's tactics will be scruntized more closely by the court than ever before. This can only be a good thing for defendants in these cases. If the defense prevails, this is the start to the end of this mess for once-and-for-all. Thanks to NewYorkCountryLawyer for keeping us on top of this.
Sig this!
+5 Funny.
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Any lawyer that can't come up with a production order that sticks to court ordered criteria should be sanctioned on the spot. I.E. you have a list of things that your order MUST satisfy, yet you think that there quite a bit of flex in it. Its like getting a shopping list with milk, eggs, butter, bread and coming home with cheese, quiche, marjoram (not margarine) and chips. How daft must the RIAA lawyers be to do this? In my experience as a COMPUTER FORENSICS EXPERT I have never seen attorneys flaunt a court order and attempt to come up with new criteria. I guess I'm in the wrong circuits.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
SO, someone scans the drive, maybe comes across a few music files. They log said files and each file might have meta data information. But what about file sharing data? Does the fact that I have uTorrent ensure a copyright infringement or me a distributor? Do such programs keep logs of all the files shared or distributed? And what would be in the meta data that would also label me as the above mentioned. If any music files WERE found then if you can produce the original disk great, if not then your up the creek with out a paddle I guess. I am glad to see the RIAA not get their way on this front. Letting them choose the company would have been WAY out of line and far to great a possibility of abuse. Also glad to see a court that actually seems like it knows what it is doing.
Not having actually read any of Ray's excellent references he cites, the proceedure he outlines sounds reasonable. Just because a person stands accused in court (civil or criminal) does not mean they are automaticly guilty or that they should lose the protection of the law. In fact IMNSHO, they should receive greater protections. Just out of curiosity,Ray, if one were so inclined, how could an individual (or group) file an amicus brief with a court? Is there a boilerplate example to reference?
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
people have started storing their music as ".mov" files for saft er quality.
If they're only allowed to examine music files, then what if:
You came up with your own file extension (eg. .ffm - file for music) and renamed all your mp3's to .ffm.
Then, configure Windows to open .ffm files with WMP, Mediamonkey, or whatever.
A forensics expert isn't going to have the option of booting the Windows install on the HD, and since .ffm isn't a standard music file, and they can only examine music files, you've just completely hidden all your music from investigation.
Not secure, by any means, but I can't see how they'd get any evidence without breaking the court order.
And then, you can prove they broke the court order, because everything they claim was an mp3 file was examined thinking it wasn't an mp3 file.
Interesting, no?
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
At what point does a song lose copyright? For example, lets take an artist who has not legally released any music for digital downloads only for CDs. Because an MP3 of the song sounds different than the CD version can you argue that copyright has truly been violated? Or lets say that MP3 was then transcoded with some loss of quality, at what point can it be said that it wasn't the original recording? The case is rather cut and dry with purchased music (everything sold on iTunes is the same file minus some metadata) but with ripped music, there can be significant differences. Also, with metadata what happens if you legally obtain a copy of a good cover of a song by a different band, label it as the original band, can they then get you for copyright infringment based on the fact they can sue for a low-quality MP3?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
What's all that mean in English?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
A judge used the term "metadata" correctly. That is a good technical concept to grasp. We geeks and our friends like NYCL (who may also be a geek - not trying to exclude) have been bandying it about for years, but to 99% of the population it is a pretty foreign term.
Each example like this implies that the judicial is growing more familiar with technical concepts. That makes me happy. :)
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
It never bodes well. I remember when Microsoft was giving the EU court hell behaving as if it were a US court where they can appeal everything ad infinitum and eventually end up with whatever they want AND an official apology to boot.
But here it's the plaintiff and the court butting heads. I'm not a lawyer... definitely not. But I have got to say, that when you give the people who are making a decision either for or against you a difficult time, it can't be terribly wise... it just can't be. Even the lay-people know the courts systems aren't completely fair. What manner of arrogant do you have to be to behave in this way?
Someone plugs in their iPod to your system, you play their music off it, the iPod goes away with the music still on.
No copyright infringement.
Entry in a playlist.
And in 4/4 time at 90bps, that's less than 1 second, isn't it?
Who ever tagged this fifthamendment needs to read the fucking fifth amendment.
This is akin to saying that you can't use ballistics info from my gun to prove I shot someone. That the blood and dent on the front of my car can't be used against me in a hit and run case.
I find being offended by me offensive.
Would anyone care to use chaos theory to predict the outcome of the many cases involving the RIAA? All these random judgements pretty much excludes logic as a reasonable tool in predicting the outcome.
So...what does chimes.wav have to do with filesharing?
God damn it people! Get your phrases right! ~brought to you by your local friendly grammar nazi~
O Tenenbaum