Amazon is handing prosecutors cloud-stored data from its Alexa Voice Service that the Arkansas authorities say might be used as evidence in a murder prosecution.

The Seattle-based company originally had balked at a warrant demanding the recorded voice and transcription data from an Amazon Echo near a murder scene. The company claimed that the data, and the responses from the voice assistant itself, were protected by the First Amendment. What's more, Amazon said that the Arkansas authorities had not demonstrated a "compelling need" for the data.

But the novel and vexing questions this case poses—such as what is the legal standard for when data from an Echo or other Internet of Things devices can be used in a court of law—won't be answered. The reason? The murder defendant, James Bates, agreed late Monday to allow Amazon to forward his Echo's data to Arkansas prosecutors.

"Because Mr. Bates is innocent of all charges in this matter, he has agreed to the release of any recordings on his Amazon Echo device to the prosecution," his attorneys said (PDF).

The warrant for the Echo data surrounds the 2015 death of Victor Collins. He was found dead in a hot tub at the Bentonville home of Bates. The authorities say Collins, a former police officer, died after a struggle. The defendant said it was an accidental drowning. An Amazon Echo was streaming music near the hot tub.

Bates has pleaded not guilty and is free on $350,000 bond.

The warrant noted that the Echo "is constantly listening for the 'wake' command of 'Alexa' or 'Amazon' and records any command, inquiry, or verbal gesture given after that point, or possibly at all times without the 'wake word' being issued, which is uploaded to Amazon.com's servers at a remote location."

Nathan Smith, Benton County's prosecuting attorney, declined to say whether any of the Echo data will be used in court. "I am pleased that we will have access to the data from the defendant's Echo device since the defendant consented to its release," he said in a statement. "As with any case, our obligation is to investigate all of the available evidence, whether the evidence proves useful or not. Since this case is ongoing, I cannot comment on the specifics of the recording or whether it will be used in court."

There has been plenty of online discussion on whether Amazon was truly committed to the privacy rights of its customers. For starters, in its motion to quash the warrant, the company noted that the case could hurt the market for "in-home intelligent personal assistants," because the government's demands "inevitably chill users from exercising their First Amendment rights to seek and receive information and expressive content in the privacy of their own home."

To be sure, Amazon isn't the first tech company, and it won't be the last, to make a market-based argument in favor of its customers' privacy. That said, the Mimesis Law blog brings up an interesting, Amazon-focused argument in a post titled, "Amazon isn't Fighting For You."

"If you have ever bought anything from Amazon, you know the creepy follow-up. All of a sudden, anything related to the product you looked at on the Amazon site starts showing up on your Facebook page and in the margins of whatever Internet article you are reading. So what if it was evidence against you for murder?" the post asks.

Mimesis notes that Amazon, in its motion to quash, noted that it had already turned over "subscriber information and purchase history for the defendant's Amazon account. Amazon has not yet produced any recordings or transcripts."

But in its argument against giving up the Echo data, Mimesis noted a case about the privacy rights of one's purchase history.

"If Amazon already gave up the subscriber information and the purchase history, what is the fight all about? As much as we want to believe it’s a big company sticking up for a little guy, seems like more of a publicity stunt," Mimesis said.