Howell Loses To RIAA... But For Evidence Destruction
from the well-that-was-just-dumb dept
One of the more well-publicized lawsuits involving the RIAA was the Howell case, which got a lot of press when some folks misread the RIAA's filings against Howell. Either way, that point became meaningless when the judge ruled in Howell's favor that "making available" is not infringement by itself. Of course, that argument was just for the RIAA's attempt at a summary judgment. So the case still went on, and it turns out that Howell was caught destroying evidence -- a big no-no. So, despite all of this, it's no surprise that the RIAA has prevailed in the overall case. It does make you wonder why people who have strong evidence against them still end up fighting the RIAA. It's completely admirable to fight the RIAA if they're using faulty or flimsy evidence and you're innocent, but when the evidence suggests otherwise, what good does it possibly do to fight them in court? In the meantime, the RIAA will certainly talk up this "victory" but will skip over the part that it wasn't on the actual issues, but over Howell's decision to destroy evidence.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: evidence destruction, howell
Companies: riaa
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Flimsy
However, I find it disturbing that the mere act of formatting a hard drive can be seen as malicious destruction of evidence. With the 9 people and 15 computers in my household, it is a rare month that I don't reformat and reinstall one of our PCs.
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Re: Flimsy
also, if his computer was evidence in the case, why wasn't it held by a third party when it was entered into evidence so such things couldn't happen? if however he had formatted it before it was submitted as evidence, how is is "destroying evidence"?
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Re: Flimsy
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Re: Re: Re: Flimsy
I'm about to reformat my server. Do I have to worry about the police coming a knocking? I've been sharing Linux distros for a while now. I'm sure my IP address is on the RIAA's watch list since we know they don't pay attention to what you do on the P2P sites, only that you are on them.
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Re: Flimsy
People really need to get the hint that they need to talk to a lawyer immediately when they get these letters. While there's all sorts of information about the RIAA's campaign on the web so people can inform themselves, there are so many other things that only a professionally trained attorney would tell someone that would prevent a case like this ending this way. Any good attorney would say don't wipe your harddrive clean, but you don't often see that in what's available online.
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Oh come off it....
This isn't the case where you needed to reformat mom's computer cuz it quit running bridge.
Howell knew the RIAA was seeking his PC as evidence, and any judge will tell you, that if you KNOW that what you are doing is WRONG, then you are out of luck, sorry, play again later.
Personally, I think the RIAA is just a bunch of over-caffinated jerks, but even jerks get it right once.
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Re: Oh come off it....
Given that the RIAA have a habit of suing people who have done absolutely nothing wrong on the flimsiest of evidence, the next person who gets caught formatting the hard drive may be doing so for entirely innocent reasons. The concern is that this person may be liable for destruction of evidence even though that was not their intent.
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was it TorrentSpy?
If you're being sued with the MafIAA's flimsy "evidence", any good attorney can get that BS tossed, so you're bullet proof. Even if you're caught red handed, they can't do much. Don't make things worse by destroying evidence. The judge will throw the book at you for that alone, so don't do it.
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I mean, I hate the RIAA as much as anyone, but I do think you should pay for the products you get.
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"two" words...
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Re:
Huh? A retraction of what?
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Most people think that when they delete something or do a "quick" format, that it erases the data. It doesn't, and that's why you hear stories about the police or RIAA getting information off a "formatted" drive. A true format WILL erase all the information on the drive. Once that's done, the only way to pull anything off the drive is to disassemble it and put the platters into highly specialized, hugely expensive machines that can read the left-over magnetic traces on the 1/1000000 of an inch on the edge of a track that might not have been recorded over.
If you don't believe me, contact a professional data-recovery service and tell them that you accidentally formatted your drive using a "zero-fill" option and want to know how much it will cost to recover all your data. Tell them that the data was only written over once and they should be able to read the left-over magnetic patterns on the drive. They'll tell you that it can't be done. If it could, wouldn't they be happy to take your money?
The problem with destroying computer evidence is that most people don't have a clue how to do it. Just formatting the hard drive, even if you do zero-fill it, is a dead give-away, since you intentionally erased it. If you don't zero-fill it, all the data can still be accessed. If you only delete certain files, they can usually still be recovered. If you use a secure-delete or file shredding program, the data will be gone but there will probably still be references to those files in the registry, in the registry backups, in the list of most recently opened files in Media Player, etc. Not to mention that the use of a file shredder program can look suspicious itself, unless you properly cover the tracks to that as well.
It is possible to securely erase all evidence from a hard drive while leaving all your other stuff untouched, but most people don't have a clue how to do this.
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more to this
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Re: more to this
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sigh
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