File sharing case technically stuffed up

Found on The Inquirer on Monday, 07 February 2005
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A so-called expert witness in an Aussie anti-file sharing case has admitted that some key prosecution evidence does not show piracy taking place.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the music industry got a court order to see all the log files from the file sharing outfit. In court they claimed that these were proof that music had been illegally swapped.

However, during cross-examination the prosecution's expert witness Gilbert & Tobin IT consultant Shane Pearson conceded that the logs did not show anything.

All they proved as that people actually visited the site and searched for files, it did not indicate that they had shared music.

Any download would happen from other sites via links and the log would not show this happening, Pearson said.

He said that log files could also be skewed by certain factors including proxy cacheing and dial-up failure.

Remember all those strange lawsuits, where the music industry sued children and dead people. Now that the logfiles are questioned as a valid evidence, the industry doesn't have much left to harass users.