This is story is serious and comical, a fine combination for a great discussion I,m sure.
http://www.p2p-blog.com/item-619.htmlGerman lawyer Chrstian Solmecke, who has been defending more than a thousand file sharers against lawsuits by local entertainment companies, explained on his blog this week that one of his clients got visited by the police after he shared music on a file sharing network. The police confiscated his computer, found 3500 MP3 files on his hard disk, and handed over his personal information to the music industry - a controversial but common practice that should end any day now.
But the police didn't just take a quick look at the content of his hard disk. It also examined the whole machine in detail and found it to be faster and better equipped than anything at its disposal. From the police report:
"The computer is equipped with a Pentium D processor from Intel. This is a dual core processor with a maximum speed of 2 * 3000 MHz, which makes it 250 percent faster that the computers used in our office.""The machine is relatively quiet and doesn't heat up significantly even after using it for several hours (to erase data)."
So there you have it: A fast, quiet machine, and all the unnecessary data on its hard drives has already been deleted. Why not just use it for police work, for example to hunt down other file sharers?
"The external hard disk would be great to secure forensic evidence in cases of Internet crime."
What can I say
Whilst I have sympathy for the alleged filesharer it does of course create a legal "wrong" in that we now have a case where this man was treated differently to somone owning a pentuim 133Mhz machine and a stack of floppies, of course you have to tip your hat to the police in this case for their cheeky report.
