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Cloud Data Storage Piracy Hardware

Megaupload Lawyer Says User Data Will Be Held For Two Weeks 94

Posted by samzenpus from the on-second-thought dept.
First time accepted submitter AlistairCharlton writes "Users' data on the seized Megaupload website will be saved for two further weeks, according to the website's lawyer, despite being shut down by US authorities. From the article: 'Megaupload lawyer Ira Rothken reportedly told tech blog TorrentFreak.com that users' data would be saved for at least another two weeks, after it was previously thought that the data would be deleted by Thursday, 2 February.'"
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Megaupload Lawyer Says User Data Will Be Held For Two Weeks More

Megaupload Lawyer Says User Data Will Be Held For Two Weeks

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  • slashdotted (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mapkinase ( 958129 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2012 @08:56AM (#38876479) Homepage Journal

    Anyway, the question to who knows: is the data available to users now? Why don't they make it available? MAFIAA does not gain anything by not allowing current users to download their own material. Unless there is a technical issue of nobody's giving rat's ass about users of megaupload.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *

      The government has a copy. They just need to go through it first to make sure no one was doing anything illegal--such as downloading pirated files, bad-mouthing the President, supporting the Occupy movement, etc.

      • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Yeah, like the government hasn't spent hundreds of thousands supporting the 'occupy movement.'

      • Re:slashdotted (Score:4, Insightful)

        by LordLimecat ( 1103839 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2012 @10:31AM (#38877483)

        Oh good grief, Slashdot comments have reached a new low.

        Can you show me a single, solitary instance of where badmouthing the president has been treated as a criminal (or civil) offense, in the last 50 years? If not kindly keep your hyperbole to yourself.

        Ditto with "supporting the occupy movement", which I will note was given free reign to trespass on private property for well over a month before everyone decided it was time they complied with the same laws the Tea Party had to.

        Seriously, this silly karma whoring is getting irritating.

        • right, because HomeLand Security has never paid a visit to anyone who bad mouthed the president on facebook or yourtube or radio

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Khyber ( 864651 )

          "Can you show me a single, solitary instance of where badmouthing the president has been treated as a criminal (or civil) offense, in the last 50 years?"

          Considering I've called the SS several times regarding people talking shit about Bush, and been thanked every time for it, you must be one ignorant idiot, limecat.

          • ...Why? Surely you have better things to do with your time than call the secret service when somebody badmouths the president, especially when you frequent a site like this one.

          • Threatening the President is not the same as badmouthing the president. If you report someone saying something about the president to the SS they will investigate to see if there is a credible threat, but if it is found to be just badmouthing then nothing further will be done.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Khyber ( 864651 )

              Said badmouthing can include IMPLIED THREATS.

              Learn, please.

              • What's your problem man? I know that badmouthing can include threats. And if it doesn't it isn't criminal. You must be one ignorant idiot.

                • Re: (Score:1)

                  by Khyber ( 864651 )

                  Implied threats don't require direct things to be said. If it even has a hint, you can get in trouble for it.

                  Are you even following the conversation?

        • Oh good grief, Slashdot comments have reached a new low.

          Can you show me a single, solitary instance of where badmouthing the president has been treated as a criminal (or civil) offense, in the last 50 years?

          2008 RNC St. Paul

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Fned ( 43219 )

          Can you show me a single, solitary instance of where badmouthing the president has been treated as a criminal (or civil) offense, in the last 50 years?

          You won't find one, because people bad-mouthing the President don't get arrested and tried. They just get secretly declared to be terrorists and summarily executed. [salon.com]

          ...which is AWESOME. I think it's super-great that our President has this power! GO OBAMA! WOOO! I am totally voting for him in November, I will even film myself voting and post it to Youtube so that there's public proof that I SUPPORT OUR PRESIDENT UNCONDITIONALLY!!!

          • Wow rampant ignorance and /or misrepresentation of sources gets modded up on slashdot, who would have thought.

            The article youre referencing doesnt mention once anyone getting killed, tried, arrested, detained, or targetted for saying ANYTHING about the president.

            It DOES discuss whether the president can target people, in this case overseas (and cooperating with foreign beligerents), who also happen to be citizens. Which might be an interesting discussion to have, except it has absolutely nothing to do with

            • Oh, they have no problem monitoring people within their borders. The fact that various three-letter-agencies (I can't recall if it was specifically the FBI or the CIA) kept close tabs on people who were seen as in opposition to the establishment (John Lennon, Martin Luther King Jr, and Timothy Leary were extensively monitored) is well-known. Imagine all the stuff that we don't know... These examples happened like 40 years ago.

              My first two examples weren't arrested or tried for anything (although Lennon ha
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:you lose credit when you say 'MAFIAA' (Score:5, Insightful)

        by tnk1 ( 899206 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2012 @11:01AM (#38877883)

        Well, there's only two real problems with the cloud, albeit possibly major ones depending on your utilization.

        1. You can lose your stuff. It's not as easy as we fear, but the Megaupload situation shows that it is not as hard as we had hoped.
        2. If you store private data there, you're taking a risk that you probably don't need to take.

        Neither of these says that you should not use cloud services, what they do say, however, is that for critical data, you should not rely on it. For data expected to be secure, you should not use it at all.

        For my part, the cloud is probably fine to use if you want to store anything that is not security or financially related. The fact that you could lose it doesn't mean you should not use it at all, it just means you should back it up locally. Otherwise, you should be able to keep using the advantages of cloud services, which are still, frankly, going to be more reliable than your home computer on average. They also allow you to get your data where and when you need it, which is another big advantage that should not be overlooked.

        Caveat emptor.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          You can lose your stuff. It's not as easy as we fear, but the Megaupload situation shows that it is not as hard as we had hoped.

          And this is why I will never trust a server that I do not physically control (and back up) to have the primary copy of any of my data. This is also why I will never trust cloud computing. It was a bad idea when Larry Ellison proposed it fifteen years ago, and it's still a bad idea today, and for exactly the same reasons.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            Just to clarify, the cloud is a great tool for some things. iCloud is an example of the right use of the cloud. It's a temporary repository for sharing information between multiple devices. If the cloud goes away, you still have a local copy of the app and a bunch of local copies of your data. You just lost syncing.

            Sharing sites like Megaupload are also examples of the right use for the cloud, so long as you understand that they are temporary locations to store stuff that you want to share with others.

      • ...it was done by the Federal Government.

        Using legislation bought and paid for by the MAFIAA (Music and Film Industries Association of America... Seeing as you like to keep repeating that). See, the real problem is not the government per se, but that we allow the it to become so corrupted, thinking there's something in it for us. Just looking for a fast buck

    • Simple.

      Any rescue of MU's content would allow it to revive itself once the federal trial is over.

      It's in the mafiaa's interest for MU to die.

  • Deleting? (Score:3)

    by Suki I ( 1546431 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2012 @08:57AM (#38876495) Homepage Journal

    Since when does deleting destroy data?

  • From TFA (Score:5, Funny)

    by ciderbrew ( 1860166 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2012 @08:58AM (#38876501)

    Previously known as Kim Schmitz, Dotcom, was arrested at his luxury New Zealand mansion on 20 January; he was found locked in a panic room which contained a gun cabinet.

    That's were you want the gun cabinet to be. Who designs a panic room with guns on the outside? The zombies could learn to use them?

    • It would be a rubbish panic room if you need guns inside. What you need are gun 'turrets' immediately outside the panic room. Possibly controlled by a smartphone app?

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The point is it is unusual to have guns in a city in New Zealand.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Fned ( 43219 )

        The point is, it is not unusual at all for really rich people to have guns wherever they want them, even if they're publically anti-gun.

  • Deleting evidence (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mrbill1234 ( 715607 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2012 @09:00AM (#38876513)

    I would have thought that all the evidence would need to be preserved. Surely if any data is deleted that would compromise the case?

    • Re:Deleting evidence (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2012 @09:03AM (#38876545)
      You assume the outcome hasn't already been determined.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ihmhi ( 1206036 )

        I wouldn't exactly call modding this one Troll a fair moderation. Sure it might be a bit "conspiracy theory"-ish, but the conspiracy is that the government acts at the behest of corporations to the detriment of its citizens. One of the rare cases where a conspiracy theory is mostly true, and It's not exactly a big secret anymore.

    • Re:Deleting evidence (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31, 2012 @09:05AM (#38876577)

      They don't care about the evidence.
      They don't care about the conviction.
      They just want MegaUpload gone.

      They got what they want, the rest is details.

      • Re:Deleting evidence (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Ihmhi ( 1206036 ) <i_have_mental_health_issues@yahoo.com> on Tuesday January 31, 2012 @10:27AM (#38877445)

        Are you kidding me? If Megaupload gets out of this, they're going to have tons of free publicity. "We fought the American government... and won!" Dotcom can paint himself as a rebel thumbing his nose at the most powerful country in the world and getting away with it.

        • They won't win (Score:4, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31, 2012 @10:58AM (#38877845)

          Did you not read the indictment? Fake DMCA take down, confessions in emails, creating fake super users to keep files uploaded. Mr Dotcom has previous convictions too. He's going down for a long long long time.

          http://www.scribd.com/doc/78786408/Mega-Indictment

          Not a hope of them winning. If you have files in Megaupload, go ahead an ask FBI for them. In the indictment, they even had emails from Mega boss telling them to fill Megaupload with youtube content to make it look like they had legitimate files! I mean these guys were such idiots they had a US based email system and like the cliqué bad guys discussed the plot with the victims first.

    • In TFA its says the FBI took several backups. Someone should send the FBI a DMCA request and see what happens. That someone wouldn't be me as I don't have any copyright work, or I would - honest.
    • The data has already been copied by the police. The data being discussed is what is stored on the servers, not in the forensic locker. The data in the forensic locker is not public-accessible.

  • EFF, Carpathia to Assist Users (Score:5, Informative)

    by miller60 ( 554835 ) on Tuesday January 31, 2012 @09:38AM (#38876897) Homepage
    The EFF and Carpathia Hosting announced this morning [datacenterknowledge.com] that they're working together to assist users who stored non-infringing files on Megaupload. Users can go to MegaRetrieval.com [megaretrieval.com] to connect with the EFF, which will review the cases and try to help resolve issues through their free legal services.“EFF is troubled that so many lawful users of Megaupload.com had their property taken from them without warning and that the government has taken no steps to help them,” said Julie Samuels, Staff Attorney at EFF. “We think it’s important that these users have their voices heard as this process moves forward.”
  • Lets hope that this isn't the answer that we will keep getting when we ask the lawyer how long before the files are deleted.
  • Users' data as in the people who had accounts or users' data as in the IP addresses of people who visited the site? Wouldn't it be fitting if the coward owners of MegaUpload -- one of which was found hiding in a panic room -- were to hand over every IP address logged of anyone who accessed files on the site just to save their own rear ends. The kicker here is that who hasn't gone to MegaUpload at one time or another? How much do you want to bet that the FBI guys who arrested them actually had watched videos

  • Legitimate data alongside questionably illegitimate data has gone to cinders. Those people had a right to their property too. Sue u.s. govt. for that data and the damages.

    • No, they dont have a "right to their data", theyre hosting their data on a service that is now under investigation. If your dry cleaners got raided for human trafficking, I think you might find that your laundry would be unavailable for quite some time while the case got resolved.

      • but you would still have a right to your laundry, even if late.

        • As well as being compensated for anything damaged or unrecoverable.

          Just went through that whole mess. There is a whole list of things you can ask for back as a victim / witness, if they are unrecoverable (used for evidence, or destroyed in testing for evidence, or otherwise lost or damaged ) you submit a claim for the cost of replacements.

          You have to fill out a Victim Restitution Form as part of your Victim Impact Statement. This is provided by the prosecution, and added to the defendants charges.

          So it so

        • I imagine it would also matter whether a financial transaction took place. Not being terribly versed with how MegaUpload works, do you have to pay to host files? If not, wouldnt that make it a "no contract, no guarentees" sort of situation?

          I mean, as people like to point out, theyre only making a copy of your data (not theft!), so I imagine the law would treat it differently unless there was a contract that guaranteed availability.

  • Tell them all next week I-xx highway will be closed, as will alternate route xx. The reason is several people were stopped on I-xx driving without a license, and a car theif was caught on Route XX. So both of those roads will be closed to all traffic.

    Suddenly, your co-worker should understand the stupidity of SOPA.

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