Check out California Court Orders Preservation of RAM Data by Duane Morris' eDiscovery Team members Sharon L. Caffrey and Sandra A. Jeskie.  Excerpt below.

In early June, the federal court for the Central District of California, in Columbia Pictures Indus. v. Bunnell, Case No. CV 06-1093, issued a ruling requiring a company to store its random access memory ("RAM") data.

The ruling came during ongoing litigation stemming from a lawsuit filed by the Motion Picture Association of America ("MPAA"), alleging claims of contributory copyright infringement against TorrentSpy, a popular free file sharing service.

The RAM data preservation requirement appears to be an issue of first impression for the courts. The court's order requiring preservation and production of the transient contents of computer memory greatly expands the current legal duty to preserve electronic data.

Although the ruling is presently on appeal, if upheld, the effect of broad implementation of this ruling would not only result in e-discovery anarchy, but it could also result in serious computer performance deficiencies and increasing the already rising cost of doing business electronically.

The storage requirements necessary to meet the court's order would be extraordinary and therefore extremely expensive.

The ruling may also have a chilling effect on web users who now have even less comfort that personally identifiable information will remain private.