In cases where the sufficiency of the complaint is not being challenged, or has been accepted by the court, the RIAA serves a number of pretrial discovery requests, calling for examination of the hard drive and numerous other items. In some cases defendants' practitioners have fought back, demanding (1) protective orders against the RIAA's invasive and humiliating demands, and (2) discovery of their own. (See, e.g. UMG . Heard, SONY v. Arellanes, and UMG v. Lindor.)


There have been interesting discovery rulings in Elektra v. Santangelo in White Plains, Atlantic v. Andersen in Oregon, Motown v. Nelson in Michigan, and in UMG v. Lindor.

SELECTIVE PRETRIAL DISCOVERY RULINGS OR MOTIONS WHICH MAY BE HELPFUL TO DEFENDANTS' ATTORNEYS:

DEFENDANT'S HARD DRIVE
*Plaintiffs may not have access to the defendant's hard drive; the hard drive must be turned over to a mutually acceptable neutral computer forensics expert; and his report must be done at the RIAA's expense. (SONY v. Arellanes)

NON-PARTY'S HARD DRIVE
*Plaintiffs held not entitled to compel defendant's son, who did not reside with defendant, to produce his desktop computer, but may take limited deposition of the son as to whether he had any portable devices which he'd brought to his mother's house at the time of the screen shot. (UMG v. Lindor).

RECORD COMPANY COLLUSION/COPYRIGHT MISUSE
*The judge in Atlantic v. Shutovsky held that defendant is entitled to discovery on this issue. The Magistrate in UMG v. Lindor held that the defendant is not entitled to discovery on this issue.

DEPOSITIONS-CONFIDENTIALITY OF TRANSCRIPTS
*Record companies can't have a blanket advance confidentiality order for their deposition transcripts, but will have to move for a protective order as to sections they want to keep confidential. (UMG v. Lindor).

DEPOSITIONS-CONDUCT OF DEPOSITIONS
*If plaintiff being deposed by video conference, plaintiff's lawyer can't be in room with witness but must also appear by video conference; or in alternative RIAA must reimburse defendant's lawyer's travel expenses up to $500. (UMG v. Lindor).

RECORD COMPANY USE OF P2P
*On July 25, 2006, at a conference in UMG v. Lindor, Magistrate Robert M. Levy ordered the record companies to produce evidence, if any, relating to their employees' use of p2p file sharing to send music files to radio stations. The order was not reduced to writing, and subsequently -- when Ms. Lindor sought to enforce the order -- the Magistrate accepted the RIAA's response that the companies themselves had no policy of using p2p file sharing, and did not require them to disclose their employees' use of p2p. No explanation for the change was given other than that it was based upon the RIAA's opposition papers and upon the Magistrate's prior rulings.(UMG v. Lindor)

CONFIDENTIALITY OF MEDIASENTRY AGREEMENTS
*RIAA argued attorney client privilege, work product privilege, and confidentiality, in protective order motion in UMG v. Lindor. The Magistrate made no findings on either privilege or on confidentiality, but ruled that the agreements -- which were being sought for crossexamination of MediaSentry -- were not relevant and granted the protective order. Defendant has filed objections to the Magistrate's order, seeking a ruling from District Judge Trager.

WHOLESALE PRICES OF DOWNLOADS
*Defendant is entitled to "all relevant documents" and a deposition relating to the record companies' pricing of legal downloads, in connection with her affirmative defense challenging the constitutionality of the RIAA's damages theory. (UMG v. Lindor).

COPYRIGHT DOCUMENTS.
*RIAA ordered to produce 'chain of title' documents for any copyrights as to which the name of the plaintiff is not the name on the copyright registration, or as to which there has ever been any dispute of copyright ownership. (UMG v. Lindor)

DEFENDANT'S DISCOVERY INTO HARD DRIVE ANALYSIS.
*Defendant can take pretrial discovery into the plaintiffs' analysis of the hard drive, including contention interrogatories and depositions. (UMG v. Lindor).

PRECLUSION AS TO SONG FILES
*RIAA precluded from using any song files not produced in response to document request (UMG v. Lindor).

PRECLUSION AS TO DAMAGES
*In view of failure to set forth actual damages in response to interrogatory, plaintiffs precluded from introducing evidence of damages. (UMG v. Lindor).

DISCOVERY CUTOFF
*Discovery cutoff extended to 60 days after RIAA turns over hard drive expert's report to defendant. (UMG v. Lindor).

EXPERT WITNESSES
*In Atlantic v. Andersen, where the plaintiffs' hard drive expert had examined a mirror image, the Court ordered the RIAA to provide a detailed expert witnesss report regarding the hard drive inspection, including the expert's identity, qualifications, methodology, investigation chronology, notes, records, raw data, and informed opinion and conclusions of the investigation.


*In UMG v. Lindor, in an attempt to stave off discovery into its communications and agreements with MediaSentry, the RIAA argued that MediaSentry's investigator Tom Mizzone is not an expert but merely a paid fact witness, and that what he did to "investigate" did not require any expertise, but was what any other Kazaa user could have done. They said that at trial he would not testify to any conclusions about infringement, but would merely recite what he did, and that Dr. Doug Jacobson would be the only expert, and the one to connect the dots. Ms. Lindor's attorney disputes that argument. See, e.g., USA v. Ganier, 468 F.3d 920, 925-926 (6th Cir. Nov. 15, 2006). Meanwhile, Ms. Lindor's attorneys conducted a deposition of Dr. Jacobson on February 23, 2007. The transcript is available online. Likewise the transcript of the November 30th oral argument, at which the RIAA took the position that MediaSentry could not testify to any opinions or conclusions, is available online.


Reprinted with permission of Ray Beckerman from http://info.riaalawsuits.us/howriaa.html updated March 31, 2007.