Capitol Records, LLC v. Redigi Inc.

Filing 289

DECLARATION OF JONATHAN LIN IN SUPPORT OF DEFENDANTS' MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT. (This document was previously filed under seal in envelope #53 and unsealed on 12/20/2016.)(mro)

Gary P. Adelman (GA-7138)
MEISTER SEELIG & FEIN LLP
Attorneysfor Defendants
Two Grand Central Tower
140 East 45 th Street, 19th Floor
New York, New York 10017
[phone]
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK

------------------------------------------------------------)(
CAPITOL RECORDS, LLC,
Civil Action No: 12 CIV 0095
(RJS)
Plaintiff,

-against REDIGl , INC. ,

Defendant.

------------------------------------------------------------)(
DECLARATION OF JONATHAN LIN IN SUPPORT OF
DEFENDANTS' MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT

I, Jonathan David Lin, pursuant to 28 U.S.c. § 1746, declares under the penalty of perjury, as follows:
I.

I am a Software Developer at ReDigi Inc. and am in charge of the code which makes

up the ReDigi proprietary "Media Manager" software that runs on all supported Windows platforms.
(the "Windows Media Manager")
2.

I have held this position for over 6 months.

3.

Previously I was pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and

Computer Science (Course 6-2) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In addition to my

studies, I worked with the MIT EECS department as a 6.01 Lab Assistant, with the MIT
Cathode/Anode Satellite Thruster for Orbital Repositioning (CASTOR) Project as an undergraduate
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researcher, and with the MIT Kerberos Consortium as a student programmer.

In September of2011 I

took a leave of absence from MIT, and on January I " of2012 I joined ReDigi .
4.

The ReDigi Media Manager performs multiple functions allowing for the discovery,

transfer, and management of eligible music files as well as the continual scanning for marketed songs
to enforce compliance with the ReDigi Terms of Service.
5.

The Windows Media Manager uses either of two distinct algorithms to migrate music

files from the user's computer to the ReDigi Cloud depending on whether the user purchased the music
file before or after installing the Windows Media Manager.
6.

In either case, the Eligible File l is never copied or reproduced and in both cases, the file

ends up in ReDigi Cloud.

This is achieved through the use of our own written file migration

procedure that does not involve the use of copying or reproduction.
FILE TRANSFERS FROM THE REDIGI
WINDOWS CLIENT TO THE REDIGI SERVER
fA) Introduction to the ReDigi Windows Client

7.

The purpose of the software is to manage the relationship between the music files on a

user's computer running Microsoft Windows operating system (the "Windows Computer") and the
contents of the user's ReDigi account.
8.

The Windows Media Manager performs four mall1 tasks: First, it scans a user's

permanent hard drives, attached drives, and any mounted removable media for mUSIc files (the
"Searchable Drives") and makes a preliminary evaluation of each music file that it finds.

Information

about music files that may be eligible for storage on ReDigi servers (the "ReDigi Cloud") and sale on
the ReDigi marketplace is stored in a ReDigi database and updated whenever any changes are made to

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"Eli gib le File(s)" so lel y refers to the ori ginal so urce tile purchased ITom iTunes by the user as determined by Media

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the user's Searchable Drives.

Second, the Windows Media Manager alerts the ReDigi server (as well

as the user) if a music file is found that has already been sold or set-for-sale by him or her through
ReDigi . Third, the Windows Media Manager migrates Eligible Files from the user's computer to his
or her ReDigi Cloud.

Fourth, the Windows Media Manager provides the ability to manage Eligible

Files that have been migrated to the user's ReDigi Cloud account.

A user can download copies for his

or her personal use (the "Personal Use Copy) anda user to set his or her Eligible Files for sale or cancel
existing sale.
9.

The Windows Media Manager uses either of two distinct algorithms to migrate Eligible

Files from the user's computer to the ReDigi Cloud, depending on whether the user purchased the
Eligible File before or after installing the Windows Media Manager.
(B)

Eligible File migration and sale of Eligible Files purchased after
the Windows Media Manager was installed (ReDigi 2.0)

10.

Since June 11,2012, after the Windows Media Manager is installed, the music files that

a user purchases from iTunes are no longer downloaded directly to the user's hard drive.

ReDigi has

developed a method to store the Eligible Files output from iTunes directly onto ReDigi's Cloud, instead
of the user's hard drive.
II.

Normally, music files purchased from iTunes are downloaded to the user's hard drive in

a temporary directory inside the iTunes Media folder.

However, when the ReDigi Windows Media

Manager software is installed, it replaces the iTunes Media folder with a link to a ReDigi user level file
system which intercepts Eligible File downloads and re-routes them to the ReDigi Cloud where it is
assigned a unique key that is solely associated with that user and that Eligible File (the "Key").
12.

The ReDigi user level file system communicates with the Windows Media Manager via

a direct socket connection, and with iTunes indirectly via Dokan, an open-source operating system

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library module that allows special user level file systems to co-exist with regular fixed and removablemedia file systems that are also attached to the user computer, ego an ipod, ipad, external drive.
13.

Normally, when a software program, such as iTunes, writes to a file system location, a

system request is made to the operating system to write data to the physical device - ego hard drive, dvd
drive, external hard drive - corresponding to that file system.

The purpose of the Dokan kernel

module I library and the ReDigi user level file system is to take that system request and forward it to
the ReDigi Windows Media Manager, which itself responds to the request.
14.

The ReDigi user level file system remains transparent most of the time, forwarding file

system requests and piping the Eligible File directly from iTunes to the ReDigi Windows Media
Manager software, which directs the purchased Eligible File directly to the ReDigi Cloud.
15.

Because the iTunes ' file system request(s) to write the Eligible File, meta data and

acoustics are intercepted before they reach the user's hard drive, the Eligible File is never written or
saved to the user's computer.

As a result, the original source iTunes music file, that is, the Eligible

File, that the user purchased from iTunes is saved directly, for the first time anywhere, on the ReDigi's
Cloud servers.
(C) File migration of Eligible Files purchased before
the Windows Media Mana er was installed

16.

A ReDigi user may migrate an Eligible File from his or her hard drive to the ReDigi

Cloud, if the music file passes an initial validation check.

When the ReDigi user, who has now

downloaded the Windows Media Manager, makes a request to migrate an iTunes music file, the
Windows Media Manager looks up all copies of that particular Eligible File in the local database of the
user's Searchable Drives, egoall copies if the David Bowie song, "Life on Mars".
17.

The Eligible File is migrated in many small pieces (hereafter "Blocks") by lifting the

blocks from the user's hard drive and migrating them to the ReDigi Cloud.

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(Note that the word Block

here refers to an arbitrarily small (about 4000 bytes) section of the music file, as opposed to a file
system block, (defined as the minimum length of a section of data stored in a particular file system
type.)
18.

The Eligible File Blocks are transferred in reverse (starting at the end, ending at the

beginning) order: one by one, blocks are chopped off of the end of the file, reversed, and migrated to
the ReDigi Cloud.
19.

Each Block is processed in exactly the same way.

First, the position of the Block is

defined so that the end of the Block is aligned to the current end of the Eligible File, and the contents
are read into memory.

The Block is removed from the end of the file by truncating the Eligible File,

so that the file shrinks by an amount equal to the length of the Block. The "SetEndOfFile" command,
which is part of the Windows file system management functions, is used to truncate the Eligible File.
20.

The contents of the Block are migrated to the ReDigi Cloud via a binary HTTP post

request.
Each Block is taken from the current end of the Eligible File as it shrinks. Thus, each

21.

successive Block contains the data content just prior to the previous one.

Since the ReDigi Cloud

receives the Blocks that make up the Eligible File in reversed order, the ReDigi Cloud receives the
original whole Eligible File in reverse order without any discontinuities.
22.

As each Block is migrated from the user's hard drive to the ReDigi Cloud, and saved to

the ReDigi Cloud, the user's hard drive fil e shrinks in size and the server Eligible File grows in size
accordingly.
23.
migrated.

It is still the original file and the Eligible File has never been copied, it has been
When all of the Blocks, have reached the ReDigi cloud server they are re-assembled

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in

the Cloud Locker and are in a format that is perceivable and can be played using an Mp3 player or
other program.
24.

This is all achieved without copying and without reproduction and without deletion of

the Eligible File.
CD) Management of music files that have been migrated to the ReDigi Cloud

25.

When an Eligible File is migrated to the ReDigi Cloud, it is assigned both an identifier

that specifies whether the file is stored in reverse or normal order and a unique key that is solely
associated with that user and that Eligible File (the "Key").
26.

A user can download a copy for his or her personal use (the "Personal Use Copy").

If

at some point, the user wishes to sell the Eligible File, he or she informs the Windows Media Manager,
which deletes all of the user's Personal Use Copy(ies) of the Eligible File before setting it for sale on
the ReDigi website.
27.

Eligible Files that have been set for sale cannot have copies downloaded.

If at some

point, the user wishes to cancel the sale of a Eligible File, he or she informs the Windows Media
Manager which removes the listing from the ReDigi website.
28.

When the Eligible File is sold to the other user, no copy, no reproduction and no transfer

is involved - the Key to that specific Eligible File is simply transferred on the ReDigi database from
one user's ReDigi Cloud account and added to another user's ReDigi Cloud account.
I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct.
Executed on July 20, 2012 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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