This is great news folks and a very fair judgement.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061027-8095.htmlSony was dealt a setback by the court yesterday, as Judge Richard Schell ruled that the defendant's hard drive can only be examined by a neutral forensics expert, not the RIAA's own experts.
As the defendant is disputing Sony's allegations of copyright infringement, the record labels wanted to examine her hard drive for evidence supporting their case.
Arellanes doesn't trust her hard drive with the RIAA's experts. In a motion opposing the RIAA's request, she accused the RIAA of pursing "a campaign of secrecy and intimidation" against those accused of file sharing, noting that the labels have a history of "refusing to dismiss unfounded cases until the 11th hour."
In its Motion to Compel discovery, Sony et al argued that Arellanes should be forced to turn over the hard drive to an expert of their choosing. It called her privacy-related concerns "without merit" because while they would get access to all the information on her hard drive, including financial and possibly even privileged attorney-client communication, they would be bound via a protective order not to disclose it.
Judge Schell disagreed with the RIAA's reasoning, ordering the parties to find a neutral computer forensics expert who will look for evidence of infringement. Sony et al. will pay for the examination and will be able to suggest specific search methodologies to the forensics expert.
I like the idea that Sony are paying for this and also the fact that the expert will be neutral and therefore a safeguard for the alleged filesharers interests against discovery of other personal or embarrassing private emails etc that you can bet Sony would leak to gain an psychological advantage if nothing else.
The whole "sue em all" campaign is based on scaring millions from doing what in many cases is legal, downloading for personal use is more than legal in most countries , its uploading that brings problems , but hey whats the truth got to do with anything when your trying to operate an illegal price-fixing Cartel worldwide ?
