said by howrman:The "loss" of the hard drive is very bad for the defendant. It allows the jury to infer that she destroyed the hard drive because it contained incriminating evidence. That helps the RIAA establish liability and, perhaps more importantly, it makes the defendant look bad to the jury. Moreover, the story about Best Buy replacing the drive without the defendant's permission shortly after she received a letter from the RIAA just doesn't ring true to me. As a result, ny guess is that, this case may make some good law for the RIAA.
Pretty big assumption, since you don't know if the Geek Squad will testify that the drive was replaced and destroyed because it was defective, and they had a "blanket" repair order! I wouldn't allow the plaintiff to assert the absence of evidence is itself "evidence" of wrongdoing without substantial proof that the "missing" evidence was knowingly destroyed by the defendant.
