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Question
In a criminal case, the prosecution seeks to admit a printed audit trail from a government procurement software showing the sequence of edits to a contract tied to the alleged offense. The original logs are stored in a secure cloud account maintained by a private vendor. The vendor’s administrator testifies that the printed copy is a faithful reproduction of the logs as captured at printing, but the defense objects that the original logs were not produced and questions the printout’s completeness and integrity. The trial court admits the printed audit trail on conditional grounds, stating it may be used only if the original logs are proven unavailable or properly authenticated; the copy remains provisional until those conditions are satisfied. (a) Identify the central doctrine governing conditional admissibility of secondary evidence in this context. (b) Distinguish the controlling rule regarding original versus duplicate evidence and the conditions for conditional admission. (c) Apply the doctrine to these facts: is the printed audit trail admissible now? what must be shown to make it fully admissible, and what issues could still affect its reliability or weight?