Megaupload User Data Could Be Destroyed Soon 260
New submitter advid.net writes "According to the Associated Press, user data from the recently-closed file-hosting site Megaupload could be destroyed as soon as Thursday. Apparently Megaupload paid another company to actually store the data. 'But Megaupload attorney Ira Rothken said Sunday that the government has frozen its money. A letter filed in the case Friday by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia said storage companies Carpathia Hosting Inc. and Cogent Communications Group Inc. may begin deleting data Thursday. ... The letter said the government copied some data from the servers but did not physically take them. It said that now that it has executed its search warrants, it has no right to access the data. The servers are controlled by Carpathia and Cogent and issues about the future of the data must be resolved with them, prosecutors said."
There's also been talk of a lawsuit against the FBI over users' lost files.
Re:c:\ erase /S *.* (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Suing the FBI? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's like the FBI impounding all the units in a storage facility because some of them hold illegal contraband.
Re:Suing the FBI? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't understand the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Did the users upload to MU and delete their local copy? If not, they still have their data.
!Safe in Cloud (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is why you should never trust anything you can't afford to lose to the cloud. You lose control and have no idea what is really going on with your data under the hood.
Re:Can they simply delete it? (Score:5, Insightful)
The short answer is no. "They" (by which I assume you mean the US govt) cannot delete the data. What they *can* do is take steps which will almost certainly result in the data being deleted by the third parties hosting it.
The result is something like an extrajudicial execution. They've ensured Megaupload will die, even if the company is exonerated in the courts.
Re:Suing the FBI? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can they simply delete it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Suing the FBI? (Score:4, Insightful)
Having destroyed the material, how do they prove it was illegal? Even if they can point to a few files, how do they show that the majority of files are infringing (which will be required under US law)?
No, the objective here is simple: put Megaupload out of business, irrespective of what is legal or not. This deletion will put them out of business.
Re:!Safe in Cloud (Score:4, Insightful)
Kinda like... trusting anything you can't afford to loose to a hard drive.
Remember when IBM moved its production facilities from San Jose to Hungary? I heard they had a 60%+ return rate on those first batches of drives-- I lost two years of grad school research.
Cloud= redundancy, man. Didn't you watch the Steve Jobs presentation at WDDC, when he said HE NEVER LOST ANYTHING? That's the idea.
Re:Suing the FBI? (Score:5, Insightful)
When they come to take your rights away, they start with the people that clearly don't deserve them. When they come for yours, well... it's a little too late then isn't it?
Re:Nuke 'em from orbit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Customers that downloaded original stuff are screwed if they can't find a copy.
Re:Can they simply delete it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine if this was done to YouTube. YouTube has at least one infringing clip, but it also has a lot of original content that would be lost.
Believe you me, if YouTube hadn't been bought by Google, this would have happened to them. The various Copyright Cartels would still love to do this to them, but can't because Google is too big.
Re:Destruction of fledgling cloud storage industry (Score:4, Insightful)
"This action will destroy the cloud storage/computing industry before it gets off the ground."
You say that as though it's a bad thing.
If you give your data to someone else, it's no longer your data and there's no guarantee you'll get it back. Either deal with that, or keep your data locally.
Re:Can they simply delete it? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's kind of like the police busting into you apartment and finding a body. They remove the body, but don't look at anything else. Then arrest you and prevent you from paying your rent.
As a result, your landlord throws everything out, cleans the apartment and re-rents it.
The only problem with that is there could have been tracks that the real murderer left there, a suicide note or a confession written by someone else.
Re:Suing the FBI? (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, let's play this game.
Let's say that U2 has a new song that's almost out. It gets leaked (somehow) to the internet. Bono sends a copy to Edge on MegaUpload so that he can play it for a performer from their opening act so that they can hear it and end their act with a song that's not too similar. U2's manager sends a copy to an advertising agency to use in a commercial. The band sends a copy to the execs at Island Records so that they can send it to radio stations. Also, a pirate makes it and the Megaupload link available for download.
The lawyers for U2's label (rightfully) demand immediate takedown for the pirate link, because it's being used for piracy. How many of the 4 copies are illegal?
The answer is probably one. MegaUpload would be right to leave the other 3 identical copies alone. This is the problem with copyright infringement claims. The files don't come with dossiers explaining who is and is not allowed to listen to it. That's why copyright and fair use must be decided in a court of law.
Re:Suing the FBI? (Score:4, Insightful)
Innocent until PROVEN guilty? Why can the money (and the lawyers it could buy) be taken away before the trial even begins?
Re:Can they simply delete it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Counter-lawsuit? Against what?
The government is the perfect example of 'not my department.' The government doesn't have to care what gets crushed under the wheels of 'justice'. The people who are supposed to care were the ones who pointed the government in that direction and said 'GO'.
ie: the government has the excuse in the form of: The people told me to go do this, it's not my job to question, it's my job to do. They told me to do this by passing the laws that gave me the power to do this. I must assume that they factored in the costs and potential outcome when they granted this power in the first place.
This is why your first worry shouldn't be 'Will this give the government the power to solve problem xyz' but 'How is it possible for this power to be abused? And when it is inevitably abused in that manner, is it worth the cost?"