Defendants in Aarons cyber-spying lawsuit: What we do is legal (Updated: 12:55 p.m.) - Local News - GoErie.com/Erie Times-News

A judge heard the opening statements this morning in U.S. District Court in Erie in the legal battle over whether a local software company must immediately disable tracking software it sold to certain Aaron's rental stores.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs, Crystal and Brian Byrd of Casper, Wyo, told U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan Paradise Baxter that all across the country from California to Florida, Erie and Wyoming, possibly thousands of people who have rented computers from Aaron's rental stores franchisees may be using computers, that, unknown to them, have the capacity to track their computer activity and even take a picture of them.

All of that tracking activity has its hub in North East, home to the software company DesignerWare, one of the Byrd's lawyers Chris Tisi argued.

Tisi said Baxter must order DesignerWare to disable that so-called "detective capacity," of the software PC Rental Agent so that ongoing violations of the federal Wiretap Act cease.

Lawyers for DesignerWare countered that its software does not break the law and that the detective capacity of the software has been used in less than 1 percent of the 92,000 computers on which the software was installed in the last six months.

The harm caused DesignerWare's business would far outweigh any alleged harm to computer users targeted by the software, lawyer David B. White told Baxter.

DesignerWare has two owners and one employee, White said. Its income of $800,000 a year has already been slashed by $250,000 as a result of publicity surrounding the Byrds' case, he said.

Lawyers appeared in court for Aaron's Inc., on behalf of corporation-owned stores. However, lawyer Kristine Brown said that corporation-owned stores did not install the PC Rental Agent on their computers.

Absent from the hearing were defendants Aspen Way Enterprises Inc. and other franchisees of Aaron's Inc. that, DesignerWare said, did install and use the software.

More testimony is expected this afternoon, including testimony from a witness in Spokane, Wash., who is expected to tell the court that employees in the Aaron's store where she once worked had access to the secret monitoring of customers' computers, Tisi said.

The plaintiffs sued DesignerWare and Aaron's on May 3 in U.S. District Court in Erie.

The plaintiffs claim that Aaron's secretly used the software from DesignerWare to track their computer usage and take a photo of Brian Byrd via the computer's Web camera, in violation of federal wiretapping, privacy and consumer-protection laws. Aaron's has argued in court papers that it had no relationship with DesignerWare and has suggested that only Aaron's franchisees' stores did business with DesignerWare.

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