Dave Horvath
25 Aug 2006 10:03
US Federal District Court had been trying to go forth with a case of Arista Records v. Tschirhart, which brought up charges of illegal file sharing of songs owned by Arista. In a recent development, the user Tschirhart, knowing she would have had to hand over her hard drive for evidence, used a "wiping" software on the hard drive to clear any incriminating evidence off.
In response, Arista filed a pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(b) which basically states that the courts allow the strictest of punishment allowable by law due to the desctruction of evidence. The courts, in turn, approved the plaintiff's request if they can come up with a summary of damages within 30 days.
Arista claims that there were allegedly 200+ songs from their label on her hard drive and is set to pursue recovery of up to $150,000 per infringement.
By pushing the case into default, coupled with the fact that the defendant herself destroyed the evidence vital to the case, the judge awarded the ability to pursue the maximum damage reimbursement possible and felt that lesser punishment was not warranted.
In an unfortunate turn, it appears that the courts and Arista records are setting out to make an example out of one lowly file sharer.
Source:
InternetCases.com