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."

Comments

That's the big problem...

[__aaclcg7560]

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.

Re:That's the big problem...

[Ol Olsoc]

Exactly. At the very least, "HAVE A BACKUP". I say anyone who doesn't understand this basic principal of cloud computing deserves to lose their data.

Anyone who understands cloud computing probably isn't going to use the cloud.

Re:That's the big problem...

[Teancum]

The problem is the presumption that the data doesn't have a physical location when you are dealing with a cloud. You may not directly know where a given hunk of data is physically stored at, but such storage is still a requirement for current computing practices. It can be destroyed, confiscated, lost, or even simply scrambled where you have no control over what happens. It can also be copied and distributed to places which may not be in a place you want it at (like a competitor or somebody who intends to do you harm).

Keeping data in a cloud is fine for temporary stuff or for data that is of a transitory nature that might be discarded a day or two later. Also if the data is of a nature that if it is published on the front page of a newspaper or on Wikipedia, nobody would care.... you generally don't have a problem. If you really want to keep the data for any length of time... due to legal requirements or even something that is vital to the mission success of your company or organization, it is really idiotic to rely upon 3rd parties who don't have a vested interested in your success to be keeping that data.

Re:That's the big problem...

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

He HAD a backup hard drive. When he found that the hard drive had failed, he tried to access the files on Megaupload. In how many places should he have kept his data, and how much more should he have spent purchasing the hardware or subscribing to a storage service in the case that both his local hard drive and the cloud account where he stored his data were rendered inaccessible?

Dead but no lost but maybe

[SniffTheGlove]

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

Re:Dead but no lost but maybe

[Ol Olsoc]

Just restore it from your backup. What's that, you don't have a backup?

Cloud storage is their backup.

Re:Dead but no lost but maybe

[Mr D from 63]

Cloud storage is their backup.

No, it was their backup. When it went away they should have created another one.

Of course its deeply unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

"deeply unfair" is central theme of all US copyright law.

Why would you expect anything else?

Re:The Cloud

[TheRaven64]

This isn't the reason the cloud makes a terrible backup. The thing that you want to avoid with a backup is correlated failures: things that cause a failure of your primary store should be different from things that cause a failure of your backup. Your house burning down or thieves coming and stealing your computers will cause failures of both your original and on-site backups. It's a lot less likely that the founder of your cloud provider will be arrested for the same reason that you lose your laptop.

Remember: it only matters if your backup storage fails at the same time as your on-line storage.

Asset forfeiture?

[bradley13]

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...

Re:Asset forfeiture?

[Kjella]

Of course, this is the same country that allows asset forfeiture. I'm sure your wallet is guilty of some crime or other...

It doesn't have to be, here's how it goes:

It looks like you're carrying lots of money. Drug dealers carry lots of money. Hence I will confiscate this money as possible drug profits. If you can show a paper trail in court, you can have it back some day. If you can't, tough. If you need the money right now, tough. Oh and there's no presumption of innocence and no free legal aid since it's a civil matter, if you lose as you very well might you'll also lose a ton on lawyer and court costs.

One joint was sufficient to confiscate a sailboat. A cheating husband's wife lost their jointly owned car because he was illegally using it to have sex with prostitutes. People's homes have been confiscated because their kids or tenants have been selling drugs out of their room. Rental companies have lost their property because the people who rented it used it for smuggling, even though the company wasn't even a suspect. Basically you can get robbed without any fourth amendment protection, it's insane.