Slashdot | Safeguards For RIAA Hard Drive Inspection
Slashdot | Safeguards For RIAA Hard Drive Inspection is an article about the procedure whereby an RIAA court case goes about forensic checking of your hard disk for "infringing files".

Let's ignore for a moment whether possession of files is equivalent to sharing. My problem with this is the question of where a specific file came from. Someone I Know (SIK) has 10,000 MP3s in their collection. This is a big mix of:-
- Files ripped from CDs bought years ago and now stacked in the attic or just plain lost.
- Files ripped from CDs bought from Amazon.
- Files ripped from CDs bought 2nd hand on eBay.
- Files bought from legitimate places like eMusic
- Files bought from questionable places like AllOfMp3
- Files ripped from Last.FM streams
- Files collected from friends via portable hard drives
- Files downloaded by things like Soulseek.
Now SIK is an obsessive so the tags have all been cleaned up with anything identifying where it came from removed.

How would the RIAA go about proving where any single file came from. And equally how would SIK go about proving that a specific file was obtained legitimately and legally?

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[ 22-Apr-07 11:17am ] [ , ]