Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
When the police seize a computer for forensic examination, it's not uncommon for the owner to be without it for a year or more (apparently there's a huge backlog at the examining laboratories). Do you think that people would be happy to lose their laptop for a year over a (comparatively) trivial issue? It would be like having your car impounded for a year if you got a speeding ticket  . |
No I don't. It's not an ideal solution, in fact it's not a very realistic one. However, without police involvement I can't see how an IP can be accepted as sufficient evidence.
We need something in between.
There isn't really a call for a full forensic examination of a PC for IP cases. So perhaps there's a way to fast track police involvement that could allow searches to be carried out on site or images of HDDs take for later examination (might not be allowed if only the original can be used as evidence).
However just because it's currently unreasonable for the police to go seize computers over the accusation of a single mp3 being shared, that doesn't mean we should now allow a lower level of evidence (just the IP) to be grounds for finding someone guilty.
Government needs to look into how they could streamline the involvement of the police. The police could then select the cases where continual infringement is suspected (i.e letters issued and ignored) and act on just those few cases.