| This is already done, at least with many modern courts. Substantiating your evidence has to happen via a pretty specific process, and there is an entire process for entering stuff into evidence with rules regarding chain of custody, validation, etc. When it comes to evidence, it's not a specific claim against anyone, it's an item that is being introduced to support a claim. That should be validated and checked before it even gets to the court room. If either counsel believes it to be fraudulent, they need to review it and make the claim. From the article, this was not really the case; instead, a video of a conference with many attendees and participants showed Musk making the claim in question.[0] Tesla's (or Musk's? Not sure) lawyers made a very weak statement: "[Musk], like many public figures, is the subject of many ‘deepfake’ videos and audio recordings that purport to show him saying and doing things he never actually said or did,” Tesla said" This is not really an argument towards anything about the video; it doesn't outright say it's a deepfake (likely because it's not), it doesn't provide any evidence to a claim that the video in question is a deepfake, it does nothing to establish who would have produced this deepfake, it doesn't question the YouTube channel owners, Recode, on if they are ready to stand by their statement, etc. In this instance, the lawyers defending Tesla/Musk are trying to muddy the waters; they aren't bold enough to say Recode made a deepfake, they aren't trying hard to position that the video _is_ a deepfake, they're just trying to sow doubt into the minds of the court about whether to consider normal evidence like recordings or screenshots as valid given that Musk is a public figure. (not sure if there's a jury, but if there is, they want to confuse the jury also) The judge was right in my opinion to slap the defense counsel on this, as it's transparent and pithy. It was a bad-faith statement to make for a legal team in my opinion as they weren't trying to _say it was a fake_, they just wanted to sow doubt without any proof. It's even a bit hopeful in my opinion as to me it says the court is holding Musk and the businesses he associates with accountable for Musk's actions and statements; Musk has tried this before when he "joked" about buying Twitter and the courts didn't take on any of the arguments they put up. As I see it, it's another instance of Musk and counsel representing his interests trying desperately to escape culpability. 0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsixsRI-Sz4&t=4765s Edit: Wrong link on first version. I was trying to see if any other channels had coverage of the Code Conference 2016, but looks like it's just Recode. |