Atlantic v. Howell: What Does It Mean, Lovey?

The RIAA and Atlantic Records have won a legal decision in a case entitled Atlantic v. Howell. The case was going to be about whether simply making a file available for P2P download was a copyright violation. At issue in part was whether Mr. Howell had actually been responsible for the transmission of copyrighted material.

But instead, the record boys asked for an expedited decision because Mr. Howell (not of Gilligan fame, BTW) had deliberately tried to eliminate electronic records of his P2P activities. Specifically, he reformatted his drive, used a file "shredding" program, deleted his Kazaa account, and eliminated all his Kazaa log files. Here's an excerpt from Ars Technica's story on the subject:

The order in Atlantic v. Howell was issued at the end of a pretrial conference held in an Arizona courtroom. Jeffery Howell, the defendant who represented himself throughout the case, was accused of copyright infringement for sharing music over the KaZaA P2P network. Howell denied the charges, saying that the music MediaSentry saw in his shared folder was for his own private use.

...

at the end of July, the record labels filed a motion seeking judgment in their favor due to what they characterized as Howell's attempts to cover his tracks. According to the RIAA's brief, Howell destroyed evidence on four separate occasions after first receiving the prelitigation settlement letter and later being served with the lawsuit. The RIAA's forensics experts found that Howell uninstalled KaZaA and deleted everything in the shared folder, reformatted his hard drive, downloaded and used a file-wiping program, and then nuked all the KaZaA logs on his PC. "Defendant's intentional spoliation of computer evidence significantly prejudices Plaintiffs because it puts the most relevant evidence of their claim permanently beyond their reach," argued the RIAA. "The deliberate destruction... by itself, compels the conclusion that such evidence supported Plaintiffs' case."

Score one for the record biz. Mr. Howell is being sent to the other side of the island.

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