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."
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well....
About the moment seized the equipment, it became their problem. As I understand it, Megaupload lost privileges to do anything. It's now evidence. They should have taken possession of it.
But since Megaupload is contractually obliged to pay for the space and bandwidth, and the equipment is still there, they have to keep paying on the contract.
The judge *should* have ordered that the hosting provider was either required to hold onto the equipment indefinitely, or hand it over to the DoJ. Either of those would be at the expense of the DoJ. This decision of "go work it out for yourselves" really smells like the DoJ doesn't have enough of a case for the judge to sign off on taking possession.
The equipment must take up about 30 racks or so. That's a pretty sizable footprint in most datacenters. It seems the hosting provider is being very cooperative, and even though the "storage" cost seems high, it's about right for full racks, if they're dropped the power and network connections.
Re:Awesome! (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't understand why they just can't reimburse the hosting company for the hard drives with all the data on them (so they can buy replacements and continue operating their business) and put the ones with all the data on them in storage.
I mean, I get that we're talking about a massive amount of data here, but hard drives aren't that big. It's not like they're going to need to clear room in that warehouse where they store the Ark of the Covenant or anything.
If that's too much work, why not just mirror the data somewhere and let the hosting company wipe the drives and got on with life?
It just seems like these issues are trivial but the players involved are making them out to be far more complicated then it needs to be (in some cases deliberately, I'm sure). It's all a bunch of fucking ones and zeros and the people involved in the case are making it out to be a lot more than that.
Re:How are other frozen assets managed (Score:2, Insightful)
Its "taking them by suprise" because its what theyre going for: they dont even need an extradition and conviction if they destroy megauploads business for good.
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
The DoJ can't legally delete the non-infringing files. As long as the servers are in their possession, they really can't do anything with them except copy them or return them to their owners, and I don't know if copies of the files on the servers would be admissible in court. If they want to use the data on the servers as evidence in their trial, they may have to hold on to the servers they originally seized. But nothing prevents them from copying the files on the servers and returning those files to Carpathia.
But that's not what Carpathia would want. To them, a lot of the value is in the hardware. They would want the original hardware back with files intact and that's not going to happen anytime soon unless either DoJ dismisses the case or MegaUpload pleads guilty. And the value of the hardware and stored files could decay to near nothing by the time a criminal case could make it through the courts. And should they get a conviction and MegaUpload appeals you can cut that almost nothing to actually nothing.
I don't see how they are going to work this out in a way that doesn't maximally screw over non-infringing users.
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
1) The DOJ is saying they're fine if it gets destroyed. That makes any argument that you can't give it to the accused pretty flagrantly specious.
2) If the DOJ did actually want a clean copy as evidence, they can make themselves a copy and then put the original equipment back into service until the verdict comes down.