Judge: Megaupload, Host, DOJ Must Work Out Server Maintenance 72
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."
collateral damage (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:collateral damage (Score:4, Informative)
He didn't slide off the end, he was literally historically accurate. You could say that he used the wrong tense, but that wouldn't even hold up under analysis. Analysis shows that he was using "baby" metaphorically, so it didn't matter that the examples of real babies being killed are historic. The metaphoric babies are still being killed.
However, the problem with the argument is that often two sides will each be supporting their own metaphoric baby. In this case ANY decision will kill at least one of them, and often no decision, or a delayed decision, will end up killing both.
The legal system is not about justice. They don't even claim to be about justice anymore. Instead they claim to be following the rules. (Often they are.) So to lawyers and judges, legal cases are essentially high stakes gaming. With a variable scoring system.
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Herewith my professional advice (Score:4, Informative)
"The DoJ claims that there is a large amount of infringing data on the servers and that it would be illegal to allow the account holders to download it."
DOJ bears the burden of proof. Legally, it must show the content is infringing, or release it. If you want to get technical, it should have had to show that any particular content was infringing BEFORE seizing it.
Technically, DOJ is currently breaking the law, because it has "interfered with" thousands or even millions of legitimate business contracts in order to prosecute OTHER PEOPLE who might not be legitimate. The government is specifically prohibited by the Constitution from doing that.