Tim Lee

She Did It

Ars Technica’s Eric Bangeman has been doing some great on-the-spot reporting on the first file-sharing trial in my home state of Minnesota. Assuming his summary of the evidence is accurate, it’s awfully hard to believe her claims to innocence:

After establishing that she has accounts with Match.com, MySpace, plays games online, and has an Internet account at home, Gabriel then asked her if she posted to the “anti-RIAA blog” Recording Industry vs. The People under the username “tereastarr.” After answering in the affirmative, questioning then turned to whether there was another PC in her home the night Media Sentry discovered the tereastarr@KaZaA account. She said that there was not.

On a number of occasions during her testimony, Gabriel asked Thomas to refer to her depositions, reminding her that she was under oath when she gave the depositions and was under oath on the stand. Gabriel then proceeded to show the jury the ubiquity of the tereastarr username in Thomas’ online persona. The jurors saw screenshots of her pogo.com and match.com profiles and the Start menu from her Compaq Presario PC, all of which had the tereastarr username…

Gabriel then turned to her eclectic music collection, comparing some of the bands seen in the KaZaA share to found in her My Music folder upon forensic examination of her hard drive. He rattled off bands such as Lacuna Coil, Cold, Evanescence, Howard Shore, Green Day, Black Sabbath, Creed, Belinda Carlisle, A.F.I., Dream Theater, Sheryl Crow, and Enya, concluding by asking, “Does it surprise you to learn there are more than 60 artists you listen to in the shared folder?”

…Under cross-examination by her attorney, Thomas explained the date discrepancies. She originally had said that she bought the PC from Best Buy in 2003 and that the hard drive was replaced in January or February of 2004. After her forensic expert inspected the hard drive and found that it wasn’t manufactured until January 2005, she then said that she bought the PC in 2004 and that the hard drive was replaced in March 2005. “I was a year off on everything in my deposition,” she said. He also said that the “jury could do the math” on whether it was possible for her to rip 2,000 or so tracks over a two-day period given the demonstration earlier in the day.

Either that’s an incredible series of coincidences, or the woman is guilty as charged. Whether you agree with the law or not, it sure looks like she broke it. Which makes me wonder what she thinks she’s accomplishing. All she’s likely to accomplish is to give the RIAA its first scalp.

October 3, 2007 | Comments |

Viewing 9 Comments

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    Under normal conditions, I'd say that's pretty damning evidence, except that its a very odd coincidence that she writes for RIAA v. the people. Although it would shock me if she was really singled out as a target, I wouldn't put it past the RIAA, and its technologically very possible. I'd like to see a detailed report of their methodology: how they knew what they knew at what points.

    In the much more likely chase, its a shame that the first person to real fight the RIAA head to head would choose to do so when they're not actually innocent.
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    She also testified she never had Kazaa on her computer. This could be verified forensically? If she's perjuring herself, that's worse than distributing music. OTOH, if Kazaa software was never on the computer, it raises interesting questions.
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    Eric, she had her hard drive replaced (for legitimate reasons, apparently) after the alleged file-sharing incident.
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    Looks like she didn't have her ducks in a row before she decided to take them on. A pretty stupid move. If the RIAA ends up winning, they could land some devastating damages on her that would, in effect, ruin her life.
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    What kind of damages are they going to put on this woman? If the RIAA tries to lay $1,000,000 on her, does this do any good for public relations? Would people feel the punishment fit the alleged crime?

    Looks like a lose-lose for the RIAA publicity-wise. Another self-inflicted black eye. Yes, the defendant loses too. Everyone loses.
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    You are forgetting that the copyright registrations don't match the names of the plaintiffs and the case hinges on the tenuous "making available" theory of copyright infringement. Even if an irresponsible jury were to find for the plaintiff in spite of a lack of proper copyright registration, there are appealable elements including the jury instructions.
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    It is difficult to understand the "making available" theory, though some judges have endorsed it. It seems akin to "intent to distribute" which is another thing entirely from actual distribution. Since many people don't understand their computers and how to set up or restrict sharing functions on P2P programs, there may have been no conscious intent, let alone actual distribution. (On the other hand, if she was running KaZaa at all, then the defendant lied under oath.)
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    sccarper, that might be a valid defense under the law, but judging from the media coverage so far, but it's not the defense she's raising. Her defense is that she didn't do it.

    And you're telling me that none of the several dozen songs she's accused of sharing had been registered properly?
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    I don't think it's so clear that she did it.

    As a home user, her computer probably does not have security settings that require a password and probably boots into the account of whatever user first set up the computer. It's reasonable to assume she'd use the same Windows username as she has for all her online accounts.

    Kazaa, when installed, uses the Windows username of the account it is installed under. It doesn't require you to specify the username, it doesn't even ask you.

    So, it's possible that someone else, possibly a friend, ex-boyfriend, child, friend of a child, etc installed Kaaza. She might not have noticed or realized it was still running.

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