Court: labels can't inspect Tenenbaum's parents' computer

A federal magistrate judge in Rhode Island has denied a motion by the record label plaintiffs to inspect a computer owned by the parents of accused peer-to-peer infringer Joel Tenenbaum and allegedly used by Tenenbaum to infringe the plaintiffs' copyrights:

Plaintiffs have not shown enough of a likelihood of relevant evidence to warrant the intrusion of privacy arising out of a forensic computer analysis of a home computer utilized for years by non-parties to the underlying case.

The order also emphasizes that the labels have plenty of other sources of evidence of Tenenbaum's p2p activities:

In addition to the analysis of Joel Tenenbaum’s computer, he admitted engaging in music downloading during his deposition and Plaintiffs have obtained the electronic file-sharing records from KaZaa attributed to the Tenenbaums’ IP address and the “sublimeguy14” user name admittedly utilized by Joel Tenenbaum.

Certainly a loss for the plaintiffs, but I doubt it will impair their case in any significant way.

(h/t Recording Industry vs. The People)