Geohot To Turn Over Computers To Neutral Third Party 117
Posted
by
timothy
from the small-victories-are-still-good dept.
from the small-victories-are-still-good dept.
intellitech writes "This will make a lot of you feel better. Groklaw is reporting that both parties have come up with a stipulation in Sony Computer Entertainment American v. Hotz regarding what Hotz must do about handing over his computers. The new Preliminary Injunction (PDF) now says that he is to turn his materials over to a 'neutral' third party, not to SCEA's lawyers, and after the neutral party combs through them, it all is returned to Hotz. All but whatever they 'segregate' out of them. He won't get that back until the end of the litigation, should he prevail, which this court at least currently thinks is less likely than that Sony will. There will be a hearing on Hotz's motion to dismiss on April 8, 2011."
Re:Hope They Hurry (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Give the systems to Sony (Score:4, Informative)
I believe that would be classified as willful destruction of evidence, which is a criminal act.
I hope not (Score:4, Informative)
Would he not just have deleted anything to do with Sony along time ago? Or better yet, worked from removable media.
This is a civil case, however deleting evidence after being told to hand it over is a criminal offence
Re:I hope not (Score:4, Informative)
Hi MR AC! The problem is the MFT [pcguide.com] bites you in the ass every single time without fail. I have a friend that works in the state crime lab and it is ALWAYS the MFT that gets you. It is almost impossible to remove file traces from the MFT (I know of a few cleaners that will, but the vast majority won't touch it for fear of making the machine unbootable) and they can tell what you had on the drive simply by doing a search of the pointers in the MFT.
Now since I doubt he is using an OS where it is trivial to clear files from the file system like FAT (they also have tools to hunt for files in EXT 2/3 and ReiserFS) and in all likelihood he is running XP or later, well then the odds he could pull off erasing the MFT without making it obvious the MFT was tampered with (remember willful destruction is a felony IIRC) are pretty much zip. It is always the MFT that gets them, especially since so few understand how the MFT works.