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Megaupload Host Wants Out
angry tapir writes "Carpathia Hosting, a U.S. company hosting the frozen data of millions of users of the file-sharing site Megaupload, has gone to court to argue it should not keep the files if it is not being paid. The company has filed an emergency motion in the U.S. Federal Court in the state of Virginia seeking protection from the expense of hosting the data of up to 66 million users. 'While Carpathia has never had access to the data on Megaupload servers and has had no mechanism for returning that data to Megaupload users, we have been attempting over many weeks to resolve this matter to the satisfaction of all parties involved, in a manner that would allow for Megaupload users to be in a position to ultimately recover their data,' Brian Winter, the company's chief marketing officer says."
"No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law ..."
constitution.org
Seems like a dead letter these days. Encryption keys, laptop seizures, cloud seizures, warrantless email searches, GPS tagging, etc.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
...just like we have to pay for any other copyright enforcement actions?
It totally stinks that the high percentage of legitimate Megaupload customers are getting screwed 'cos of the US bully-boy tactics. What about shutting down the US Postal Service because of all the illegal activity that enables? People do bad things with telephones too. Hey, don't people use cars as getaway cars ... let's shut down Ford and GM while we're at it!
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
They are afraid that the case against "Kim Dotcom" implodes and he sues (which, given the circumstances is not unlikely). It will be interesting to see the outcome of this. Kim Dotcom certainly has the funds and is willing to fight this to the end.
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How about this article, which lists multiple users making the claim you say doesn't exist by name: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2012/01/megaupload-wasnt-just-for-pirates-angry-users-out-of-luck-for-now.ars
Your claim is fucking ridiculous. There are 25 PB of data. It's nearly impossible for there not to be significant amounts of legitimate data on there.
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The megaupload servers will have the details of all the users and their uploaded pirated stuff in their accounts. Just bill their credit cards.
Seriously, you realize that this is the start of the process not the end, those servers contain massive amounts of copyright infringement logs and a paid account is linked to a credit card and thus to a person. So there will be a mass of investigations to follow from this.
There's no way a court will let that data be destroyed.
The EFF helped set up an effort for U.S. users of MegaUpload to get their data back. They should have some information on how many requests they've gotten.
http://www.megaretrieval.com/
"Carpathia Hosting has created the website www.MegaRetrieval.com to help lawful users in the United States work with EFF to investigate their options for retrieving their legitimate, non-infringing files from Megaupload."
If I did legitimate banking business with an offshore bank I would still expect my funds to dry up and disappear one day because it's a fucking illegal bank. Yes, there is non-infringing use, but these sites exist on the back of illegal uploads. If it can be shown that they make a significant percentage of their income on obviously illegal transfers then it's hard to see the logic (legally, that is) of permitting them to continue to do business. And it's also hard to see the logic of expecting your files to continue to be available when you're storing them with someone known for their access to files to which people aren't supposed to have access.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's like this:
Company A pays Company B for hosting
Company B buys/rents servers, rackspace, power, bandwidth to provide the service
Government C shuts down Company A
Company A no longer pays Company B
Company B still has it's bills to pay.
Therefore, either:
Company B removes it's service, and re-uses the equipment, rackspace etc for a new paying customer
or
Company B loses money running a service that costs money but it gets nothing for
or
Government C re-imburses Company B for the cost
or
Government C uses a legal instrument to require Company B to retain the data
It's definitely happened before with physical goods in the UK, not sure about US, probbaly wouldn't be much different. One take on it is here (make sure you read down to the second half):
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1222777/The-raid-rocked-Met-Why-gun-drugs-op-6-717-safety-deposit-boxes-cost-taxpayer-fortune.html
Essentially a bunch of innocent people had to spend a lot of money on legal action to get their stuff back. Not all succeeded. Of those that did, mostly we don't know because to get their compensation they had to sign gag orders - can't have people talking about the law f**king up now can we....
Search warrant stated 90% of use was illegal... later estimates reckon 10% or less.
Yes, you'd have to be an idiot to leave important data in 'the cloud.' However, most people ARE idiots.
Where are you documenting this lack of requests? There isn't a clear party to ask that can actually do anything, and if there was, there could very well be users who don't know who that party is.
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Ironically, the DOJ itself uses MegaUpload.
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