RIAA's Watchdog Affidavits For Your Reading Pleasure 22
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "MediaSentry, in an attempt to stonewall discovery in UMG v. Lindor, has turned over nothing other than a collection, apparently a complete collection, of its publicly filed affidavits. However, these do make interesting reading indeed, and as comments started trickling in on my blog, I realized that for the technically minded among you there are probably a number of good laughs in these materials. So in keeping with the Slashdot community's analysis of the RIAA's not very expert, 'expert' witness, I thought you might like to take a shot at its not very factual, 'fact' witness."
They need to prove their methods. (Score:1, Insightful)
I know there's such a tactic as to bombard your opponent with unreasonable requests to wear them down and keep them distracted, but shouldn't forensic analysis of peer-to-peer traffic have to pass the same sort of examination as any sort of new or experimental technique? There's no kind of official certification of the process, so what's to differentiate a company specializing in this (such as MediaSentry) from a group of Computer Science freshmen churning out a polished but entirely inaccurate report detailing an individual's illicit filesharing?
When you think of the kind of effort it took to get DNA testing accepted it's laughable, really. Why computers get their own pedestal -- when anybody who uses the things knows they're anything but foolproof -- I'll never understand. And I program the things.