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Judge: Megaupload, Host, DOJ Must Work Out Server Maintenance
itwbennett writes "Slashdot readers will recall that Carpathia Hosting, which is hosting the frozen data of 'up to 66 million users', would like to be released from that expense. But Judge Liam O'Grady has another idea: 'Lawyers for Megaupload, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Web hosting provider Carpathia Hosting and other groups fighting over who should maintain 1,100 servers formerly used by Megaupload should sit down and work out an arrangement,' O'Grady said Friday.' Stay tuned: The lawyers are due to report back in two weeks."
I can already HEAR my wallet being drained!
How do the courts generally manage assets frozen while being maintained by third parties?
Surely this situation must come up in cases of, say, livestock?
Its weird this all seems to be taking everyone by surprise.
Why can't all the MegaUpload servers and files on it be set so that all account holders have read only access to their data?
Problem solved.
My invoice is in the post.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Hosting providers should have a "kill switch" such that in the event of litigation, all hard drives will be physically removed, boxed, and turned over to law enforcement, all contracts terminate instantly, and if anyone wants their data back they can go fight DOJ etc.
Anyone who doesn't back up their data deserves to suffer for being stupid. Yes, really. Some things will never not be a bad idea, and no matter how much people bitterly resent backing up their work there is every reason to do it and no logical one not to.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
is "frozen" data? this seems like a pretty simple fucking solution. turn the servers back on for 120 days and set the fstab to read-only. Turn them back off later and continue the scapegoating process of destroying one mans free time and personal fortune in the pursuit of "copyright enforcement"
Good people go to bed earlier.
You ever heard of a “Japanese Inspection?” Japanese Inspection, you see, when the Japs take in a load of lettuce they’re not sure they wanna let in the country, why they’ll just let it sit there on the dock ’til they get good and ready to look at, But then of course, it’s all gone rotten ain’t nothing left to inspect. You see, lettuce is a perishable item
(from "Days of Thunder")
From day 1, the behaviour of the authorities on this case has stunk. The first thing that struck me about their arrest of Kim Dotcom was that they turned up at his mansion with a trailer, and hauled away his pink Cadillac right there on the spot - confiscating his property before he'd even had a trial.
If they are evidence, they go into the custody of the authorities. They don't sit there, rotting away the funds of the company, unless of course, that's the intention.
It has, even with more closely related assets.
In RIM vs. NTP, the court toyed with the idea of shutting down the BlackBerry network, cutting off thousands of BlackBerry users. Some of those users were government workers and Congresspersons. The court decided not to order a shutdown because it would be "unworkable" to exclude customers in the government from the shutdown. More like, the court realized in this case their power was unworkable, and inconveniencing Congress would be about the quickest way to lose that power. They didn't seem much concerned with the damage such an action would do to innocent 3rd parties.
In Verizon vs Vonage, the court actually went beyond making threats. The judge threatened to shut Vonage down, but didn't do it. However, Vonage was actually ordered not sign up new customers.
SCO took matters even further on their own. They used the threat of legal action to push innocent 3rd parties into paying a "license fee" to use Linux. They had the nerve to demand that all Linux users pay this fee. Never mind they hadn't won their case yet. Never mind that even in the event of a win, the losers should be paying, not the public. The courts' incredible powers were being used by a litigant to scare and blackmail the public.
The court did shut down Napster. Wantonly and irreparably destroyed a service millions of people had been using, describing Napster as a "monster", and ultimately for naught as other services quickly filled the void. They killed many of those services too, and in vain. None of those acts stopped piracy. The Pirate Bay may be the leading surviving service now. They misidentified the monster. It wasn't Napster, it wasn't even the Internet and technology itself, it was Nature.
It's astonishing that the courts can even think of doing such spiteful things. Keep on threatening to chop babies in half, as in the Judgment of Solomon, and it will someday backfire. The court will be forced to admit they were bluffing, or really cut the baby in half. It has happened. The courts are baby killers.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"