RAM Ruling Portends a New E-Discovery Brawl
By Jesse Seyfer from The Recorder:
A federal magistrate’s order that stops a Web site from routinely tossing relevant data could, if replicated, carry broad e-discovery implications.
Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Chooljian’s May 29 order requires TorrentSpy to turn over customer data only ephemerally kept in its computers’ random access memory, or RAM. It could result in floods of similar requests in other civil cases, according to Ira Rothken, the Novato, Calif.-based attorney for the TorrentSpy site.
The Los Angeles magistrate’s order also has privacy watchdogs concerned.
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It’s worth noting that the technical methodology used to accelerate the bits of movies is at issue in the case. “Bit torrent” technology is unique and likely a relevant issue given the claims. How the the defendant’s model for torrents use RAM to move/manage data may well substantiate the specific claims here. The notion that data stored in RAM would be at issue generally isn’t a conclusion that one should draw from this one …