RIAA Wins Case of Hard Drive Wipe

Filed in archive Legal , RIAA, IFPI on August 28, 2006

Delina Tschirhart was sued by the the recording industry for allegedly downloading and sharing unauthorized music files in San Antonio, Texas. She wiped her computer hard drive. Now that is not an unreasonable response. Many people are sufficiently scared by RIAA's terror tactics that they resort to extreme measures ... even when they're innocent.

But Delina had two strikes against her.

1. RIAA cases are weak to begin with. The hard drive is the only hard proof available. Indeed the judge called RIAA's evidence "scant and piecemeal" without the hard drive. The court ruled RIAA's case was irreparably prejudiced by the hard drive cleaning and ruled for RIAA.

2. The plaintiff was not helped by self-serving and inconsistent statements and untimely and inept behavior. The wipes occurred immediately after receiving legal notices and did not remove evidence of iMesh and BearShare P2P file sharing software.

Read more about Arista v. Tschirhart.