RAM data needs to be presented as evidence

The bizarre ruling has come from one of those MPAA and RIAA cases across the pond.

Jacqueline Chooljian, a federal judge in the Central District of California in Los Angeles was told by the music industry that an electronic trail was briefly left in a computer server's RAM by each visitor to a site. Since it was "stored information" and must be turned over as evidence during litigation, the RIAA and MPAA briefs claimed.

According to News.com, Chooljian who is presiding over a court fight between the studios and TorrentSpy, the BitTorrent search engine accused of copyright infringement in a lawsuit filed last year by the film industry.

Chooljian ordered TorrentSpy to begin logging user activity, including IP addresses, and turn the data over. It is the first time that data within RAM has been identified as subject to the rules of evidence. TorrentSpy, believed they need only to switch off their servers' logging function to avoid storing user data, which it had done.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation said that the judge's decision was "troubling" as it could mean that any Web site operator could be compelled to log user activity anytime they faced a lawsuit. Chooljian said that information survived on TorrentSpy's server RAM for about six hours and this meant that the outfit could get access to it if wanted.

More here. µ