The recent amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (Amendments) have transformed procedures for the discovery and production of e-information by promulgating protocols for digital data. In addition to recognizing digital data as its own discoverable entity, the amendments allow more effective management of e-information.
Digital data differs from traditional, hard copy data with respect to the way it is created, modified, communicated, stored and destroyed. Understanding the underlying technology of digital data is useful in applying the amendments. Digital data allows data copies to be as good as original data, consequently digital data is rarely moved; rather it is remotely replicated. Sending digital data normally results in one computer sending a signal which causes other computers to duplicate the data. A copy of the data is replicated on the recipient’s computer and an image of the data is displayed on the recipient’s screen. Thus, viable copies of documents can be produced from multiple locations.
