US Gov't Wants Megaupload Users To Pay For Their Data

angry tapir writes "U.S. federal prosecutors are fine with Megaupload users recovering their data — as long as they pay for it. The government's position was explained in a court filing on Friday concerning one of the many interesting side issues that has emerged from the shutdown of Megaupload, formerly one of the most highly trafficked file-sharing sites. Prosecutors were responding to a motion filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in late March on behalf of Kyle Goodwin, an Ohio-based sports reporter who used Megaupload legitimately for storing videos. The government argues that it only copied part of the Megaupload data and the physical servers were never seized. Megaupload's 1,103 servers — which hold upwards of 28 petabytes of data — are still held by Carpathia Hosting. Goodwin's options, prosecutors said, are either pay — or sue — Carpathia, or sue Megaupload."

Comments

Re:Government is the 1%

[Anonymous Coward]

It's couldn't care less. Couldn't care less.

Re:Or...

[rhook]

You cannot sue the federal government if they do not let you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Tort_Claims_Act

Re:Some very interesting issues

[poetmatt]

Which sounds nice and all, except that this is New Zealand and the judge is not at all convinced by our government's antics here. If they declare sovereign immunity (which they might) we are going to have some serious issues in new zealand - rightly so for our government's overreach.

And in contrast, when police do investigations and presume you may be suspicious (for things such as damage to your house incurred while they falsely investigated something) they absolutely are required to pay that back - you can easily win in small claims court for those damages. This is no different, since megaupload has not been found guilty of anything.

Re:Some very interesting issues

[cusco]

And if drugs are even rumored to be some peripheral part of someone thought to be related the case in some way the cops will generally sell the property before the owner gets a chance to try to recover it. NORML reported a few years ago that half of the assets seized and sold in drug cases didn't even belong to anyone charged with a drug crime.