arstechnica.com — Ars checks in from the federal courthouse with the latest from the first file-sharing case filed by the RIAA to go to trial. The morning session consisted of jury selection, opening statements, and testimony from the first witness.
Oct 2, 2007 View in Crawl 4
deathfiredOct 3, 2007
"She had the hard drive replaced in March 2005 at a Best Buy store, and Gabriel said that both the RIAA and Thomas' forensic expert agreed that it wasn't the drive in use when the alleged infringement took place. Pointing out that the defendant was not planning to call her own forensic expert, Gabriel intimated that the hard drive was replaced to cover the defendant's tracks, saying that she said it was replaced in March 2004, not March 2005 as was actually the case."I guess Bestbuy isn't bad all the time.
fordiOct 3, 2007
Keep in mind, they used it in court; it's now publicly available in evidence records, and is therefore public domain.
smoothmannOct 3, 2007
RIAA can lick my BALLS mr. garrison
zetavuOct 3, 2007
Sadly I agree, there is no hard drive evidence, there is no proof that the media sentry or whatever method works, but the tracing does not reveal a router was used, and the username being used by the defendant other places makes it too much of a coincident. Sadly, with a civil trial only nine guilties are needed, and so far this defense has been mediocre at best. If lucky they could demonstrate that the mediasentry (or their new safegay whatever name) are not using reliable methods or proven methods, that the Iowa expert does not even know these methods, and that the RIAA was reaching about destruction of evidence (she replaced her hard drive a month before she was alerted about the subpoena). However, the coincidence of the same user name in Kazaa and the ip address being registered to her, that is too much. If the username could not be traced to her, then you can argue the ip address is not concrete evidence. One can hope that maybe the arrogance of the RIAA executives is enough to anger 4 jurors, I think that is their only hope.
ronnieOct 3, 2007
Hey I'm with most who think the IRAA is a pack of feckless bastards. But the truth is. If you download for free what was created, promoted, distributed, manufactured and intended to be sold you are stealing. If you tell yourself that "well the artist never sees any of that money any way" you are disillusioning yourself. Without the business end of it that we all despise you would probably have never heard of that Metalica song you stole Yea screw the IRAA but if you like someones music enough to steal it maybe you should buy it directly from the source....</SOAPBOX>Http://www.ronnierecords.com
eatbeefjerkyOct 3, 2007
if you like someones music enough to steal it maybe you should buy it directly from the source...Except that.. you can't, for the most part.