>
>Metadata is produced as part of systems, and depends on the parameters of
the system.  Sometimes its good information and sometimes its confusing. 
I'm thinking particularly of audit histories which can be accurate but can
also give erroneous and mixed messages.  If the courts accept metadata as
record they are also going to have to look into the systems that produce the
metadata and how those systems function to produce metadata.
>

I'm not sure that the courts are going to have to look into it, the burden
will be placed on the parties involved in the meet and confer to explain to
the court the challenges and effort required to additionally provide the
metadata and the concerns relative to what it represents and how it can
easily be misinterpreted.

The court acts as a sounding board in these meetings and will make a ruling
based on how well the arguments are presented by the two parties what is
adequate to meet the needs of each party and what may be deemed over
burdensome, and if one party still wants that, then they will have to pay
for it to be gathered and presented.

The concern here is as mentioned earlier, metadata isn't "bot generated" and
it all doesn't reflect the same things... it's highly subjective and can be
interpreted in ways that it can be beneficial or harmful, and it doesn't
take willful manipulation to make that happen.  As stated in the initial
post, it can be as simple as a bad clock in a system, transfer of files in
the course of normal business to new systems, files created/edited for
senior staff by administrators, any number of legitimate business reasons
that will make metadata reflect incorrect information to establish "intent"
or "actions" taken with respect to a record.

I understand what you (and others) have said that it's inherent content
related to electronically produced documents and records, but to go back to
the example of what you provide to support the validity and authenticity of
a paper format document/record, nothing is subject to the same level of
questioning.

Will an attorney potentially have to argue that "Mr. X couldn't have
generated that document on Oct. 31st at 2:31pm in Boston because he was in
Jakarta and I can produce the GPS records to support that from his
Blackberry associated with a phone call he made at the same time" ?   That
doesn't say that Mr. X hadn't talked to his assistant a day earlier and
asked him/her to prepare a document saying blah, blah, blah for his review
and signature and it actually WAS generated on a device that applied
metadata attributing it to him... but can you imagine having to go to that
level potentially for every item provided in a request that has metadata
associated with it?  

Every organization would need to determine what is automatically collected
through applications, and what is additionally applied by systems on
capture... when a document is created, drafted, revised, finalized, and
ultimately transferred to an RMA, different metadata is applied each time. 
They would additionally need to have documentation supporting what the
metadata is intended to represent, and have documented business practices to
support scenarios where work is done on behalf of individuals by others
(support staff) to explain why the metadata may have a different name or
node associated with it.  They would need to validate system and desktop
'clocks' to ensure they are in step with each other so documents/records
reflect accurate dates and times that are consistent with one another.

And how do you address things like an MS Office file opened up at 8:13am,
someone starts working on it, get a phone call, does something else, leaves
the document open, works on it for awhile, goes off to a meeting at 1:15,
leaves it open, gets tied up, goes home at 6:00 and finishes it the next
day?   Should this matter?  Maybe not, but the metadata will indicate that
someone worked on the document for 24 hours, made x keystrokes, etc. and if
this document is called into question at sometime in the future, someone
will have to explain they went to meetings, took calls, went home and failed
to close the document, all because the metadata accurately reflected
inaccurate information.  

Is this the future of RIM?  If so, the pay better improve drastically... and
soon. 

Larry
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