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Five Years Later, Legal Megaupload Data Is Still Trapped On Dead Servers (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: It's been more than five years since the government accused Megaupload and its founder Kim Dotcom of criminal copyright infringement. While Dotcom himself was arrested in New Zealand, U.S. government agents executed search warrants and grabbed a group of more than 1,000 servers owned by Carpathia Hosting. That meant that a lot of users with gigabytes of perfectly legal content lost access to it. Two months after the Dotcom raid and arrest, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a motion in court asking to get back data belonging to one of those users, Kyle Goodwin, whom the EFF took on as a client. Years have passed. The U.S. criminal prosecution of Dotcom and other Megaupload executives is on hold while New Zealand continues with years of extradition hearings. Meanwhile, Carpathia's servers were powered down and are kept in storage by QTS Realty Trust, which acquired Carpathia in 2015. Now the EFF has taken the extraordinary step of asking an appeals court to step in and effectively force the hand of the district court judge. Yesterday, Goodwin's lawyers filed a petition for a writ of mandamus (PDF) with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which oversees Virginia federal courts. "We've been asking the court for help since 2012," said EFF attorney Mitch Stolz in a statement about the petition. "It's deeply unfair for him to still be in limbo after all this time."
When you keep your data in the cloud, and don't keep backups on hand, you're at the mercy of the powers to be. I pulled my data out of the cloud when I realized that I didn't need to have it on the Internet 24/7. A local file server works fine for my needs.
Have we not learned already by this time?
Do not store anything in the cloud that you cannot afford to lose access to. It can go away at any time for any reason.
When the servers went offline, many thousands of people lost access to their work and home files. I have my photo archive on Megaupload but I have still got no way to get it back as some scardy cat corporate tosser says "No" to everyone just in case someone might get a copy of some porno or action movie. FFS
I kept telling people that Mediafire was objectively better and that Megaupload was not worth using. People laughed at me.
Now who's laughing!? Now who's laughing!? Now who's laughing!? Now who's laughing!?
It will be interesting to see how this turns out, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
The govt might have a responsibility to return the legal data to the rightful owner, but with Megaupload's TOS, I'd bet that is not the user.
If Megaupload was in fact breaking the law, then the govt probably had an arguable right to take them down.
This likely made them go bankrupt.
I'd bet Megaupload's terms of use has a clause that says if something outside their control happens, then the user has no recourse against them.
Which says that even if the servers were returned to Megaupload, they would likely not become available to the user.
I think this shows a fundamental weakness in depending on cloud based services.
Live by the could, die by the cloud.
"deeply unfair" is central theme of all US copyright law.
Why would you expect anything else?
I was going to say unbelievable, but I have seen this first hand in at least 10 cases where the government simply drags its feet with staff lawyers and causes parties to pay for commercial lawyers at $300-500 per hour. For up to a DECADE.
N/t
This is one of many reasons the cloud makes a terrible backup. The US government may confiscate your legal data during an investigation, and it takes years before they return it.
There is a great line in the original article:
"If the government takes over your bank, it doesn’t get to keep the family jewels you stored in the vault," [EFF Legal Director Corynne] McSherry wrote in the case statement. "There’s a process for you to get your stuff back, and you have a right to the same protection for your data."
The article focuses on someone who's hard drive failed 2 days before the seizure of the servers. Thus, that person's files on Megaupload became the only existing copies of some of the data at the time.
The article also discusses the lack of the courts response over 5 years in dealing with the issue. Meanwhile, "In 2015, proceedings on the matter kicked up again when QTS, the successor to Carpathia, told the district court it needed relief from the ongoing expense of maintaining the seized hard drives in its climate-controlled warehouse. QTS lawyers said the parties should either take possession of the hard drives, compensate QTS for storage, or allow QTS to delete and re-use the drives."
And you wondered what all those donations to Democrats from Hollywood and the music industry bought?
Ok, spell it out then: what did they buy?
Ok, spell it out then: what did they buy?
N. I. G. G. E. R. S.
Also do not forget that if sharing is what you want (so granma and granpa can see video of their grandkids) :
- Tarsnap, Dropbox, Google Drive might be more expensive for equivalent storage size / bandwidth. But at least there's less risk for them to go belly up.
(Even if there's risk for those with non-free/closed-source clients to rape your privacy).
And you should keep a local copy on your NAS anyway.
- You can serve the files from your NAS (lots of them feature file server), and YOU can control the protection (e.g.: GPG-encrypted files. Or simply AES-password protected Zip archives if your relative are less tech savvy).
For sharing with more users simultaneously (video of your *wedding*. And suddenly all the 20 branches of the family scattered around the planet want them) :
- You can also serve the files over torrent, so you don't need a big bandwidth. Most NAS have also the option built-in.
And again YOU are in charge of the protection (But if you want strong security, just dont use 'Password123' to encrypt the archive, even if that clueless cousin asks for something easy to remember).
No matter what keep a separate local copy (keep a copy on your NAS if you go DropBox. Keep a (non encrypted) copy in a separate non-shared directory on your NAS or a separate NAS if you serve the file themselves).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Determination of unfairness is MegaUpload screens data on the agreement that it is not illegal and only rightful owners or lessee has access to it, and even better is thebphysical IP address is logged from where the accounted data is received or transfered or copied or departed from to MegaUpload servers (all those catgeroical data pull and move determinations are each unique and depend on your jurisprudence to engauge them).
Rather than certain data being targetted with a DMCA notice to MegaUpload service owner and accounting assessed for the data origins, they shutdown the company.
Everyone blames the gas station for polution now? When Seth Rogan stole Pineapple Express script by physically lifting the writer off the ground while threatening and pinning to the wall, the theatres only boycott to host the movie. Production company didnt seize, none of that. The independent script writer was threatened enough that no complaint was made and no lawsuit filed.
When the United States was created free and independent durring the Civil War out of the States of America, this is another mark of turmoil to it's existance in replacing the Crown of England in sending swarms of officers to eat out the substance of anyone.
The DMCA, the Mickey Mouse copyright extension, ... quite a lot of things really.
On the flip side, there's an interesting point that Kim Dotcom predicted Hillary's troubles with wikileaks long before they happened. It's all public, on his Twitter feed. He had quite a grudge against her over all this.
... you won't beat the ride."
A former cop once told me that about being arrested back in the "old days" when some cops would make sure suspects got a "rough ride" to the jailhouse.
I hope that these days, professionalism and, if necessary, fear of lawsuits, put an end to that kind of abuse.
Obviously, law enforcement has found other ways to make lives miserable for suspects who may or may not have committed any crimes.
The long tentacles of the music industry have far reach, and are not afraid of the things that kill in Australia.
Until we have global reform on copyright, decentralized p2p services are the only ones that are resistant to these shenanigans unless its in a country who just gives the US and their unofficial bosses the middle finger.
5 years later, my legal project car is still trapped in a dead chop shop that was closed down due to the obvious problem of parts fencing. Why did I take my car there instead of a legit auto shop? Uh.
And you wondered what all those donations to Democrats from Hollywood and the music industry bought?
Ok, spell it out then: what did they buy?
Let me guess: you congratulate yourself on how smart you are, too.
You go and keep telling yourself that.
They buy a favour or two.
What do the donations from oil companies and the like get them? Secretary of _____ in the US government.
LOL
Geez, I know this is Slashdot, but really. The guy did have a second copy, but it died - as copies do - at the worst possible instant. In this case, basically as the Mega servers were being seized. Should he have had a 3rd copy? A 4th? Sure, but that's not the point.
The point is: the US government seized servers containing data from thousands and thousands of users. The US government has made no provisions at all for people to retrieve their property. This is theft, plain and simple.
Consider this in meatspace: The government raids a restaurant thought to be violating health regulations. They seize all property in the restaurant: not only stuff belonging to the business, but the wallets, purses and bags belonging to the customers. The restaurant is in limbo - that's bad enough - but why should the customers' private property be seized and never released.
Of course, this is the same country that allows asset forfeiture. I'm sure your wallet is guilty of some crime or other...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Indeed. And the even bigger picture here is that the Government — the single biggest "power that is" — is the primary source of problems. Every interaction with it — be it the TSA agents, the police (even if they aren't after you), the DMV, a hospital, or even the Post Office — carry a high risk of being unpleasant if not outright horrifying. Having an uneventful encounter with these officials is the surprise, not the other way around.
Folks demanding, government takes over this or that are either idiots or hope to profit personally without being subject of the takeover themselves.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Leave em alone. He Dint Doo Nuffin