Megaupload Host Wants Out

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Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 22, 2012 @09:20PM from the time-to-tap-out dept.

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."

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5th Amendment by Compaqt · 2012-03-22 21:24 · Score: 5, Insightful

"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
1. Re:5th Amendment by TFAFalcon · 2012-03-22 21:36 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  It's still being followed. Due process of the law now means being accused.
2. Re:5th Amendment by JosKarith · 2012-03-22 21:38 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Freezing someone's assets to "Prevent their flight" disrupts all their business, legitimate or not...? Who knew that was going to happen?
  Hell, I'm still confused as to how a German living in New Zealand gets arrested on the orders of the FBI...
  
  --
  'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
3. Re:5th Amendment by TheInternetGuy · 2012-03-22 23:27 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Oh, you said assets
  didn't you? Well carry on then.
  
  --
  If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
4. Re:5th Amendment by PopeRatzo · 2012-03-23 00:28 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  A failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.
  What would you say if you got a call from your banker tomorrow saying they lost all your money, but...
  "A failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part."
  Hell, you should have saved some money elsewhere and kept your money somewhere that didn't have a vice president who was going to Vegas every weekend, and by the way, you never complained when you were getting 0.5% higher interest rates than other banks offered.
  If your money is your life, you should be more careful with it.
  If it's such a high war on crime priority for the FBI to take down this goofy criminal mastermind, who they seem to believe is some James Bond supervillian, then they ought to pay this host site to preserve their evidence for them. And, they ought to allow the users of Megaupload access to their files until they are each proven to be stolen or infringing. And to anyone who actually paid Megaupload to share their files: have you never heard of a torrent?
  
  --
  You are welcome on my lawn.
5. Re:5th Amendment by Hatta · 2012-03-23 01:18 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  That's not funny, it's true. Since "due process" no longer means "judicial process" what's left?
  
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  Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Why not force taxpayers to pay for it...? by mykos · 2012-03-22 21:26 · Score: 4, Funny

...just like we have to pay for any other copyright enforcement actions?
Shutdown E V E R Y T H I N G! by AGMW · 2012-03-22 21:31 · Score: 4, Insightful

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
1. Re:Shutdown E V E R Y T H I N G! by rtb61 · 2012-03-22 21:49 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  The best alternative would have been to appoint a legal guardian, to ensure the legal elements of the business can continue whilst the court case is carried out. What has happened flies in the face of one of the most important elements of justice, innocent until proven guilty. Elements of the US government have completely abandoned this principle from torturing suspects (guilty upon accusation and subject to punitive physical and psychological abuse, at the hands of mentally disturbed individuals seeking promotions and passing performance measures, all without recourse to the courts and false confessions to end the torture being treated a valid evidence) to confiscation of assets to actively prevent paying for a legal defence.
  A bunch of out of control wankers, with no real appreciation of the law and justice, just their own ego of being judge, jury and execution. A closed chorus, cheering each other on in their legal abuses, gloating over the power they misuse and it all falls apart when it finally goes through the courts, unless of course they can force a confession and guilty plea out of people, via extended psychological torture.
  
  --
  Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Re:Not THEIR data by king+neckbeard · 2012-03-22 22:00 · Score: 5, Informative

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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Ask the EFF? by QuasiSteve · 2012-03-22 22:10 · Score: 4, Informative

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."
Re:Holdng data hostage by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-22 23:07 · Score: 5, Insightful

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
Re:a priori by ray-auch · 2012-03-22 23:10 · Score: 4, Informative

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.