Computers, Software, & Technology: July 2009 Archives

Jurors were not convinced that a former Forsyth County, GA, Sheriff's deputy was not guilty of viewing child pornography on his work and home computers.  A federal jury found Milton Scott Pruitt guilty July 22 on two counts of receiving child pornography. Witnesses for the prosecution had previously argued that Pruitt used his work-issued account to tap into the county server to look at images of child pornography kept in another investigator's case file.

Tami Loehrs, a computer forensics expert for the defense, testified that she did not find images of child pornography on Pruitt's county-issued laptop computer. No evidence that Pruitt had downloaded the images was presented, but witnesses said the officer opened the files in March 2007.  Pruitt was fired from the sheriff's office in May 2007.

Excerpted from ForsythNews.com.

The second full trial of a US peer-to-peer file swapper begins next week.  Joel Tenenbaum, a Boston College grad student, will face RIAA lawyers who are fresh from a $1.92 million victory in the Jammie Thomas-Rasset case and eager to go 2-0 in such prosecutions.  The record label companies want willful statutory damages of between $750 and $150,000 per infringement against Tenenbaum for 30 songs.

Iowa State computer science professor Doug Jacobson will testify as a computer expert while the defense has Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson.  The defense expert will argue that the 816 songs in Tenenbaum's KaZaA share folder back in 2004 were simply a "fair use" of the recording industry's protected work. 

Excerpted from ArsTechnia.com.