EFF Files Brief To Allow Users Access To Their MegaUpload Files

Fluffeh writes "The EFF has filed a brief in Federal Court on behalf of Kyle Goodwin (and potentially millions of other users) so that he can access his legally sound backup files. 'Goodwin is a local high school sports reporter and the sole proprietor of the company OhioSportsNet, who stored his video footage on Megaupload.com as a backup to his video library on his hard drive. He had paid €79.99 (about $107) for a two-year premium membership. Just days before the government seized the site, Goodwin's hard drive crashed. The brief states that his lost videos include footage to make highlight reels for parents to send to their children's prospective colleges, and an unfinished full-length documentary about the Strongsville girls soccer team's season.' According to the EFF, authorities told Carpathia (the hosting company that MegaUpload was using to host their content to the tune of $9,000 a day) that after it was done examining the servers and had copied portions of the data, the hosting company could delete the files and re-purpose its servers. Carpathia noted in a statement last week that it would like to allow Megaupload users to recover their data, but has struggled to find a way to do so."

Comments

Apple and others

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and every other company that has "cloud" type of businesses should be on this like white on rice with their own briefs and financial help to the EFF.

Why?

Because this shows one of the many reasons why the "cloud" is a shitty idea. And until problems like this are solved, the "cloud" is a no deal for me.

Re:Apple and others

[PNutts]

Well, if you choose to keep no backups of your data and store it all in one place and it's lost, I don't think you can condem an entire technology. And I don't see why other businesses with an entirely different service offering should help.

From a link in FTA:
In response, a Justice spokesperson cited the site's FAQ which covered the possibility that their files might one day be lost or inaccessible: "This is still an ongoing matter," the spokesperson told Ars. "It is important to note that Megaupload clearly warned users to keep copies of any files they uploaded. Megaupload.com expressly informed users through its Frequently Asked Questions ('FAQs') and its Terms of Service that users have no proprietary interest in any of the files on Megaupload’s servers, they assume the full risk of complete loss or unavailability of their data, and that Megaupload can terminate site operations without prior notice."

Re:Apple and others

[Anonymous Coward]

except it wasn't megaupload who terminated site operations...

Re:Apple and others

[Charliemopps]

But megaupload didn't chose to do that did they? A foreign government did it for them. Just imagine if some non-western country had done something like this to a site as big as megaupload... We've prolly already be bombing someone.

Re:Apple and others

[Anonymous Coward]

> if you choose to keep no backups of your data and store it all in one place and it's lost,

For this guy, Megaupload *was* the backup. The TOS you quoted shows he did not choose a good backup option, as there is little guarantee. But even if he had chosen a cloud company specifically in the backup business, he would never be able to discard this kind of legal risk. At least for cloud companies with servers in the US (unfortunately).

Re:Apple and others

[Jawnn]

What part of "...stored his video footage on Megaupload.com as a backup to his video library on his hard drive..." did you miss? Or is it that you define basic disaster recovery architecture, that stores files off-site in case of a local "disaster" (like a hard drive crash), as "all in one place"? The only thing that poor Kyle can be accused of is having the bad luck to lose his primary store before it could be backed up anew to someplace that RIAAs goon squad had yet to raid. Consider the scale of things, it's likely that there are others in the same boat.

The real story here is the fact that the goon squad doesn't give a shit about the damage they've done to legitimate customers of Megaupload/Carpathia. We've seen this pattern over and over - law enforcement doing millions of dollars of damage to innocent bystanders (legitimate businesses) when they indiscriminately pull the plug on hardware that might host something illegal. At least they had the courtesy to not seize it permanently this time, though unless the EFF prevails, that's some fucking small consolation.

Re:Apple and others

[hairyfeet]

I hate to say it but I agree AC, this is why I tell my customers to use "defense in depth" so that if the cloud disappeared tomorrow they would lose nothing. Using a combo of USB HDDs, DVDs, and the cloud one can make your most important data practically destruction proof but this shows why the cloud by itself is simply useless. For the best defense in depth one should have a relative you swap USB HDDs with on a weekly or bi-monthly option and send the DVDs to a relative for safe keeping.

I got to see how well defense in depth works when a customer had a fire burn his home to the ground, nothing left but the concrete slab it was built on, he grabbed the USB HDD that he had been swapping weekly with his father for backups and in less than 4 hours I had him completely restored onto a new machine,and the only thing he needed the cloud for was a couple of pics he had uploaded after the last swap.

As we saw with the article earlier about the MAFIAA attacking every other place that lets users store files the cloud is pretty much worthless now unless you are a corp, and even then you better have some idea the financial state of the corp you are doing business with as companies go under every day. Finally if the ISP end up with the caps they want the cost of backing anything larger than pics to the cloud will become too expensive for all but the big corps anyway. I'm betting this whole "push to the cloud" will go the same way it went last time it happened, anybody remember thin clients and the whole "just use the net" push we had a decade ago? remember what happened? economy went sour and the dotbomb took out a ton of companies and that died a quick death.

What the new cool silver bullet

[vlm]

OK so we're seeing stories about cloud being a failure. Fine. In the endless wheel of IT repetition, what old idea will come around again, to replace cloud as meaningless PR term of the year...

I'd like to vote for "statistical mux". I have no idea why it would be useful, but it sounds cool, which is all thats really needed.

I also liked "source route bridging" the last time around, so maybe we could try that... over wireless? Or add a i- as a prefix? i-source route bridging?

Hmm another old IT idea that I liked was cheap computers that hook up to TVs and boot directly into basic in about one second. maybe with the raspberry pi?

I see what you did there, Gov't.

[girlintraining]

authorities told Carpathia (the hosting company that MegaUpload was using to host their content to the tune of $9,000 a day) that after it was done examining the servers and had copied portions of the data, the hosting company could delete the files and re-purpose its servers

So after...
illegally seizing the servers,
illegally seizing the financial assets of a
non-US citizen using a
non-US financial service located in a
non-US controlled area,
the US government is now asking that
all the evidence and data be destroyed,
The company be buried in the US' endless appeal's process,
the end-users who legally used the service are labeled as criminals,
and the United States is once again proving to the world that it's financial networks, data networks, or any property located on, near, or in any way related to, itself is inherently untrustworthy for the purposes of conducting any form of commercial enterprise.

That sound about right?

Re:I see what you did there, Gov't.

[folderol]

I'd say you're right on the button there. BTW what's that big black thing hovering above your house?

Re:I see what you did there, Gov't.

[mspohr]

What makes you think that Amazon S3 or any other service will "definitely not be shut down"?
All the MPAA/RIAA and their government goon squad need is a certain level of paranoia that you are storing something that they don't like and "all your fella data here belong us".

Re:I see what you did there, Gov't.

[godglike]

What more precautionary measures could Megaupload have taken? They are a non-USA company, operating outside the USA, with executives living outside the USA. And even if they had a spare 25 petabytes of storage for co-location, somewhere other than outside the USA(???), the USA would have seized that as well.

So what the authoristies said was

[viperidaenz]

"We're judging this company as guilty before giving it an opportunity to defend itself and before we even gather evidence. Please delete all their data after we pull out anythign incriminating so both legitimate users are effected and they can't use it to defend themselves."

How many seconds

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how many seconds regular users will have to wait when downloading their files for the last time

Then what's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

"It is important to note that Megaupload clearly warned users to keep copies of any files they uploaded.

If have to keep your own copies, what's the point in paying for this service in the first place?!

Again, the whole "cloud" concept is just worthless.

And I don't see why other businesses with an entirely different service offering should help.

Because it damages their reputations too. People will attribute the same failings to them - just like I do.

Cloud computing == risky, not secure, and no substitute whatsoever for just getting your own back up system and the authorities can delete your data on a whim because someone else is uploading pirated stuff to the servers.

Re:Then what's the point?

[Gerzel]

Because MegaUpload isn't a backup site. There ARE sites and services for backup purposes and their contracts DO include provisions for access and loss of data.

Cloud isn't worthless, just over-hyped.

Re:Then what's the point?

[TapeCutter]

Exactly, it akin to nuking a safe harbour and burning down the port because Captain Jack Sparrow sailed in through the heads. Merchants are not going to sail billions of dollars woth of container ships into that kind of environment.

Re:Then what's the point?

[rtb61]

Cloud is subject to the exact same risk. The premise and proof is if you house data in the US your data is at risk of arbitrary destruction by the US government. Story cloud services based in the US are shit as a result of arbitrary legal destruction by US government agencies (a delightful combination of arrogance and stupidity).

WARNING DO NOT USE US CLOUD SERVICES OR FACE ARBITRARY DESTRUCTION OF YOUR DATA.

All caps, just to emphasize the risk, end of story. US government agencies have proven, actual historic fact, to have a complete lack of regard to security of private data if they are the ones destroying it for whatever arbitrary reason they choose to destroy it.

More akin to taking all the mail from every post office and destroying because of one package containing a copied music CD. Simply out of control US enforcement agecies, keeping in mind they have had months to react and make changes but quite simply don't give a fuck and the message from them is still piss off. If your stupid enough to house your data in the US this is what you get, you lowly nothing nobody.

Collective Punishment

[nickmalthus]

Collective Punishment is a lazy and reviled method of government action which defiles the very idea of Justice. There was a time in this country where our leaders fretted over government encroachment stating things like "It is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer" and "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated". In the digital era it is inexcusable that the government cannot make a best effort to identify offending content and release the rest of the content back to their rightful property owners. This is just another instance where the government favors the interests of the financial elites over the interests of the average citizen.

Just as America was a "Great Experiment" so is copyright law. The whole intent of it was to balance the incentives of content producers and consumers with the main goal of maximizing the progress of the Arts and Sciences. Today it has been perverted into an entitlement system where the government enforces perpetual royalties. In the information age where millions have higher educational skills the antiquated copyright laws only server to retard innovation. Even worse anyone caught in ambiguity like the person EFF is championing is now automatically presumed guilty. Fortunately this injustice is not lost on everyone. I feel EFF is the most effective non-profit organization I donate to and I plan to increase my monthly contribution.

Re:Cloud businesses based in other countries.

[FireFury03]

So, a cloud business should have their servers in Russia or China or somewhere that will tell the US Government to "fuck off"?

Its probably reasonable to host mirrored servers in mutually hostile countries so that they won't both shut you down as a result of a complaint in a single country.

Re:Cloud businesses based in other countries.

[million_monkeys]

So, a cloud business should have their servers in Russia or China or somewhere that will tell the US Government to "fuck off"?

Kinda of sad how the same reason hosting is those countries is preferred for criminal and shady dealings is now a reason for legitimate businesses to keep servers their too.

How did this happen?

[countach]

I don't get how the government just shut them down with no warning. I mean if Ford or GM committed some crime, they would go on. They'd get a chance to defend themselves, and even if found guilty, they'd just have to modify their behavior if necessary, and they'd just keep going. How did megaupload just get shutdown instantly, no warning, no chance to defend itself, no chance to modify behavior?

Why don't people learn?

[lucidlyTwisted]

"The Cloud" is not a complete back-up solution, do not rely on it. It may well form park of your solution, but you really should have other copies on media you can control directly.