US Gov't Wants Megaupload Users To Pay For Their Data 203
angry tapir writes "U.S. federal prosecutors are fine with Megaupload users recovering their data — as long as they pay for it. The government's position was explained in a court filing on Friday concerning one of the many interesting side issues that has emerged from the shutdown of Megaupload, formerly one of the most highly trafficked file-sharing sites. Prosecutors were responding to a motion filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in late March on behalf of Kyle Goodwin, an Ohio-based sports reporter who used Megaupload legitimately for storing videos. The government argues that it only copied part of the Megaupload data and the physical servers were never seized. Megaupload's 1,103 servers — which hold upwards of 28 petabytes of data — are still held by Carpathia Hosting. Goodwin's options, prosecutors said, are either pay — or sue — Carpathia, or sue Megaupload."
Go Cloud! (Score:5, Funny)
My data is safe. Its in the cloud!
Some very interesting issues (Score:5, Insightful)
According to the MPAA, U.S. government, etc. these digital files are the same as physical property, and under the Fifth Amendment "No person shall be... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". Note the wording - it doesn't state that the government must actually have seized the property in question (which the government argues they did not do) - it must merely have caused a person to be deprived of their property. By their own logic, through the actions of the government, Mr. Goodwin has been deprived of his property, and without his right to a jury trial.
But the government argues that they aren't liable because they only copied certain servers, and a forensic expert could retrieve the original files with access to the servers and hard disks. This is like arguing that the government can seize your car from the garage and dismantle it into thousands of parts, but that they haven't deprived you of your property, because you are free to hire a mechanic (at great cost) to put it all back together again.
On the other hand, suppose you leave some property in the safe of your lawyer, who is subsequently arrested for committing some serious crime. You have now been deprived of your property, but it still exists in the safe. In this case, the government would not have a liability to release a criminal in order to let him open his safe and retrieve your belongings. I think that the government might win this one - if they are willing to let Mr. Goodwin have access to the servers, which they say they are. The Fifth Amendment does not require that the government ensure that you have access to your property that you have left in the care of another person, it only requires them to not be the ones depriving you of it.
The other big issue from the article is that the U.S. government plans to extradite Kim Dotcom and the employees of Megaupload (including web developers etc.) so that they can be charged with criminal copyright infringement in the U.S. Can you imagine what the outcry would be like if any other nation tried to extradite Americans working for a U.S. based file hosting company? What if British prosecutors decide to extradite the developers of {Dropbox,Google Drive,etc.} because some users were sharing episodes of Doctor Who? Most people support extraditions for serious offences like murder, but when it starts to be used for frivolous things like copyright infringement, that support is going to disappear.
Re:Some very interesting issues (Score:5, Insightful)
I would like to see what happens if Iran decided to extradite some U.S.A. citizen involved in Flame or Stuxnet, what would this look like?? Whats the difference? The money and power of U.S.A.?
Re:Some very interesting issues (Score:4, Insightful)
I would like to see what happens if Iran decided to extradite some U.S.A. citizen involved in Flame or Stuxnet, what would this look like?? Whats the difference? The money and power of U.S.A.?
Parent is not 'flamebait' - it's a legitimate question. The answer is Yes, it's our money and power. The US government throws its weight around to get US friendly (or US business friendly) laws & treaties passed around the world. It's a byproduct of being a superpower and having a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. The globe is an international chess match between a slowly changing group of players. As long as we dole out influence, aid and weapons we will be seen and be treated differently than most countries.
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The official stance is that the US is as involved in Flame and Stuxnet as Iran is involved in violating the NPT.
Nothing would come of such an effort beyond the saber-rattling and recriminations we're already seeing.
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That does not seem correct. The NPT has provisions for mandatory supervision, which Iran is violating. The supervision is intended to make sure that the country is, indeed, not developing nuclear weapons. Those inspectors that were allowed limited access claimed a high probability of weapons development.
In other words, Iran is violating the NPT.
Shachar
Re:Some very interesting issues (Score:5, Interesting)
This is like arguing that the government can seize your car from the garage and dismantle it into thousands of parts, but that they haven't deprived you of your property, because you are free to hire a mechanic (at great cost) to put it all back together again.
This actually happens all the time. Happened to a friend of mine more than once even. So long as the police were acting in "good faith" you have no legal recourse.
Re:Some very interesting issues (Score:5, Informative)
Which sounds nice and all, except that this is New Zealand and the judge is not at all convinced by our government's antics here. If they declare sovereign immunity (which they might) we are going to have some serious issues in new zealand - rightly so for our government's overreach.
And in contrast, when police do investigations and presume you may be suspicious (for things such as damage to your house incurred while they falsely investigated something) they absolutely are required to pay that back - you can easily win in small claims court for those damages. This is no different, since megaupload has not been found guilty of anything.
Re:Some very interesting issues (Score:4, Insightful)
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This actually happens all the time. Happened to a friend of mine more than once even.
Your friend should try a different lawyer. Just sayin'...
Re:Some very interesting issues (Score:5, Informative)
Don't equate "due process of law" with a jury trial. A jury trial is an example of due process, but it's not the only one. There are all manner of legal processes through which you can lose, have taken away, be temporarily deprived of, or otherwise forfeit property without going through a jury trial. As a most simple example: property gets seized as part of a search warrant all the time, as has happened in this case. Sometimes it is eventually returned, sometimes it is permanently retained as evidence. None of that requires a jury trial, even though it's often involved.
Re:Some very interesting issues (Score:4, Informative)
This is like arguing that the government can seize your car from the garage and dismantle it into thousands of parts, but that they haven't deprived you of your property, because you are free to hire a mechanic (at great cost) to put it all back together again.
The government DOES seize vehicles without due process.
Re:Some very interesting issues (Score:5, Informative)
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If Google was basing their business model on hosting illegal copies of Doctor Who, then I would have no problem with the Brits requesting extradition.
Before people with burning ears downmod me, ask yourselves this: Is Google basing their business model on illegal file sharing?
Or even "legal file sharing, wink wink"?
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Viacom v. YouTube (Score:3)
Is Google basing their business model on illegal file sharing?
This was in fact the allegation in Viacom v. YouTube, that at one point YouTube (now a Google company) wasn't fulfilling its obligations as a service provider under OCILLA (17 USC 512).
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It's just that my cloud is in my basement, being contained by a magnetic field.
In other words, a raided NAS externally available...
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So a single flood or fire away from being lost?
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Its a Trap! (Score:2)
Option 1. Pay to get you data... If you have illegal data then you have shown financial responsibility in owning Illegal material.
Option 2. Sue... You better be sure all your data is Legit... If not then you may loose your suit and you got expensive lawyer bills.
Ether way the there is proof on the person who put the data there. If it is illegal there are brand new targets.
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For the most part for most people your data is safer in the cloud... Because you have a professional team who's job is to make sure the data is secure and working. Vs. Average Joe who has a USB Drive that they backup on, then put in the closet, Or keep running in a small closet overheating every summer.
Not to many of us have RAID storage, run nightly off site backups....
So yes your data is safer in the cloud... If your data is really that important, you should skill have an other way to get your data. Even
Long story short... (Score:4, Insightful)
...what idiot did upload their stuff to MegaUpload and did not keep an offline backup/original?
I mean, I might be heavily influenced, given that I'm...uuhhh...obsessed with keeping *all* data (executing rm hurts...) and keeping it safe and sound...
Re:Long story short... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's one part of it. Single point of failure is always bad, and trusting someone else to manage it is worse.
But then... It's fricken' MegaUpload. It's always seemed sketchy. Who trusts important stuff to them?
Re:Long story short... (Score:5, Insightful)
But then... It's fricken' MegaUpload. It's always seemed sketchy. Who trusts important stuff to them?
People who don't know better. This doesn't make them idiots, they just make them ignorant in a specific field.
The same thing could be said about many, many people that are quite knowledgeable in IT yet happened to deposit their money in the wrong bank. And well, they lost a lot of money, not just some digital picture or whatever.
I think before criticizing the victims here we should give it some thought: Do we have *all our own assets* (physical and otherwise) in the right place? Maybe we have our health insurance in the megaupload equivalent of insurance and we don't know about it? Or our funds?
Re:Long story short... (Score:4, Informative)
Single point of failure is always bad
Yes. This, a thousand times, this.
trusting someone else to manage it is worse
Not really. You're just exchanging one set of risks for another. The risk of messing up on your own shouldn't be underestimated; a fat-fingered rm can cause a lot of damage. Of course, if you're really competent then you'll be aware of the single-point-of-failure problem in the first place and so will replicate as appropriate (and according to budget) but for a lot of people the risks from keeping their data in the cloud are actually lower than from keeping the data locally. It's a trade-off (and so must be optimized to particular situations, as with all trade-offs).
Things get more complex when you've got data which you want to keep confidential yet available (e.g., health records) but a lot of stuff doesn't need that level of caution.
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What clueless moron has only TWO backups?
Their need to go to Megaupload to retrieve should be the last case. Oh crap, my offline is dead, oh double crap the backups of the offline is dead, Time to grab the files from online....
Oh crap....
Now it's the data owners fault for using shitty backup medium. Hard drives are unreliable at best. If your data has any real value, you BUY a backup medium with a proven track record of robust and low failure rates....
That is why all my data backed up at home is on SD
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You keep your tapes safely at home, I presume?
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I keep the incremental at home yes. I keep a pair of Weekly Complete at work in my desk, and a yearly pair of tapes go into the safety deposit box at the bank.
Granted I don't have a LOT of data to back up. I have a SDLT 320 drive and tapes and I dont use compression so I only have a total of 320 gig of data backed up Off site. I'll upgrade to SDLT600 when I can afford to and I can always expand to 3 tapes for a complete backup. SDLT tapes are cheap.
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dirty tapes are not a problem with a robust tape backup system. the IBM Ditto was a joke in reliability (It was actually iomega who made it). SDLT writes in multiple redundant tracks. I have read tapes that were sitting in water on the floor for 3 days. It's why the old DLT format renewd as SDLT is still used at all corperations, and junk like Ditto and other tape formats are all dead. Ditto was always a unreliable format, I used to fight with those years ago and chuked the 5 drives and 900 tapes we
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Then your data is worthless. Fair enough, why spend money backing up something worthless. Mine is worth a lot, so I bought a drive and Linux has the software built in to do everything for me. " I must be stupid. Or you know...I'm just being realistic." No, just lazy because your data has no value at all to you; I can understand that.
Oh and nice irrational exaggeration... 18 backups, really? It's 5 incremental, 1 weekly full, and 1 yearly full. every Friday I bring a new backup to work and take th
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If MU *did* have any backups they probably got seized.
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Actually, what the government has demonstrated is that cloud providers located in the USA are useless. Providers who locate their systems in other countries may not be as problematic, though this depends on many different factors, but I think it's safe to say that the USA is probably the most unsafe place to store your data at this time, as seen by this case.
Ironically, Russia is probably one of the safest places to store your data. The government there, though corrupt (just like the USA's, only less so),
never seized, but frozen by order (Score:5, Interesting)
but would carpathia give data to anyone who paid? doubt that. how would they even know how to get the data. are they even allowed to access the data? doubt that too.
seems like just washing of hands - amazingly fucked up investigation though. next they'll try to argue that they never did any legal action?? (which is actually true, "haha"). it's increasingly evident that the fbi tactic was that they assumed dotcom would settle for some prison time right away(thus not needing evidence or due process).
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This is Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the FBI. Those US cop shows aren't far from the truth. Get someone on a minor crime, then threaten to charge him with a serious crime, requiring a long trial and much longer imprisonment. A plea bargain from the defendant makes the FBI look good and prevents the judicial system suffering massive court-room costs.
Unfortunately for the FBI, New Zealand didn't have any evidence of an actual (physical damages) crime.
Nice new business model (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Tell people to pay if they want to see the data ever again
3. Profit!
All this, of course, is contingent of the hostage taker having access to the data storage. Solution is simple: don't store your data in a country with such practices, or with a company with ties to said country. The Internet should finally recognize the US as damaged area and route around it.
Re:Nice new business model (Score:5, Insightful)
This is but the 2.0 "cloud" variant of classic ransomware [wikipedia.org].
Fuck the US MAFIAA!
Re:Nice new business model (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Take people's data, hold it hostage
2. Tell people to pay if they want to see the data ever again
3. Profit!
It's not quite like that. Megaupload paid Carpathia for hosting user's data. Carpathia doesn't care what data, they just supplied the storage and took money for it. Megaupload stopped paying Carpathia. So what is Carpathia going to do?
I would think it would be completely legal for them to just re-use all their servers that Megaupload is paying for, with total destruction of all the user data. Probably a matter of contract and contract law: For how long would a hosting service be required to keep your data if you stop paying? And I don't think Carpathia has any legal obligations to Megaupload's customers. On the contrary, I doubt that Carpathia has any right to give anyone other than Megaupload access to those servers without some court order, even Megaupload customers who want to access that data.
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It's not quite like that. Megaupload paid Carpathia for hosting user's data. Carpathia doesn't care what data, they just supplied the storage and took money for it. Megaupload stopped paying Carpathia. So what is Carpathia going to do?
According to a story posted a few weeks ago, Carpathia is required to keep the servers^wevidence intact by the government, while not being paid for it.
Re:Nice new business model (Score:5, Insightful)
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This would be true, if Megaupload willfully stopped paying Carpathia. However, they expressed the willingness to continue paying them for the servers, if they had the funds available. These funds, however, were frozen by the US government, who is thus responsible for Carpathia not getting paid, and as such has taken over the duty to maintain the data integrity.
So if the government ceases your money (or better yet, ceases you), it is their responsibility to pay the landlord rent, the lease on your car, your cable bill, phone bill, electricity bill, utilities bill and magazine subscriptions? I don't think that's the way it works. Those bills will go unpaid, your services cut, your car repossessed and you'll be evicted from the apartment. And the stuff in the apartment that's legally yours? Well, unless you can get someone to pick them up or pay for transport and st
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So, according to what you say, American government can seize all your belongings including money on accounts with little to no cause and let the debt collectors eat you alive? And you say that it is morally and ethically OK and the government has no responsibility for what happened?
What is moral and what is the law says are sometimes two different things. They may have followed the American law, but what they did is still not right and they are still responsible for those data or their loss.
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You are accused of committing a hit and run.
The police find you and throw you in jail until the court case (you couldn't make bail).
Your not working so you can't pay the lease on your car, so the leasing firm wants to repossess it, but the police say it is evidence of your crime and has to stay where it is until the trial.
replace you with Megaupload, a hit and run with copyright infringement, the police with FBI and the car leasing firm with Carpathia.
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Yes, but only so long and so far as the police demand they preserve it as a crime scene or as evidence. They don't have an obligation to anyone else, they don't have to keep the servers powered (unless the police ask them to), they don't have to supply the bandwidth (unless the police wants the data), they could possibly get permission to just tape out the contents, recycle the servers and preserve those as the evidence. Nothing gives them any kind of obligation to continue providing a hosting service, only
Yes it is (Score:3)
In any civilized country it sure is. Think about it if a parent is arrested, who takes care of the children? The state.
The entire problem is that police powers and civil liberties are always going to be at odds with each other, they need to be because you can't have an effective police force if they can't violate peoples rights (as in have more powers then ordinary people) and you can't have everyone life in a constant police state either.
Take guns, most police forces have guns with which they are allowed t
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British police do have guns; that's a common misperception. No, the regular beat cops in London might not, but they have radios, so if they think a situation warrants the use of weapons, they just make a quick call and suddenly a bunch of heavily armed SWAT-like cops show up on the scene.
As an American, this does seem like it might be a viable way of managing police. Over here, our cops (who always carry a handgun) are constantly shooting something or someone for no good reason. Just recently here in the
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Your analogy fails when the things you mention is not evidence.
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Yes, you're exactly right that that's the way it works, but it shouldn't be like that. If the government makes it so you can't pay your rent, your car lease, your cable bill, etc., the government in my opinion has the responsibility to pay all those things for you. They shouldn't be allowed to disrupt your life like that, and worse cause your property to be considered "abandoned" because you're sitting in a jail cell on bogus charges.
Once you've been duly convicted of an actual crime, then sure, they can
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Cease, verb. To stop, as in cease and desist.
Sieze, verb. To take away, as in sieze one's property.
sieze
1. Common misspelling of seize.
Perhaps you should read your own signature?
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Touché.
I'll blame my nasty haed cold for that lapse of raeson. :-)
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Both actually work in this case.
A suspect or asses can cease to be, by act of the government.
This often involves a bullet applied at high velocity to the suspect or asset.
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If you stop paying the lawn mover (the guy, not the machine), does he blow up the lawn?
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Their alternative is to sue a company who, not yet having been proven guilty, should be considered innocent.
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Except the didn't take it, they copied it.
The are saying go after the people who have your data they copied.
They aren't saying to pay the feds.
The headline is sensational, misleading, crap.
The solution is to have more the one point of failure.
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Since the USA claims jurisdiction over any inter-tube that touches their country, even avoiding USA-owned sites isn't enough.
I disagree. If your data is on a server in, say, Russia, do you think the Russian authorities are going to bend over backwards to cooperate with US police? I don't think so. Even in a US-friendly country like NZ, your data will likely be much safer, since there's an extra layer or three of bureaucracy to get through to foul things up for the data owner, and the foreign court is lik
Tin Foil Hat Time (Score:2)
Re:Tin Foil Hat Time (Score:4, Insightful)
This may be pointing out the obvious, but so what if someone does pay, and does legitimately retrieve their data. What's to stop the Government from prosecuting them next? After all, they get the "Criminal" with the evidence, and they had to pay to get it, (weakly) proving its their data.
If its _your_ data, there is nothing the government could prosecute you for. If its _your_ illegal copies of copyrighted material, then I suggest it's a stupid idea to try and download any of that under the eyes of the government.
Government is the 1% (Score:5, Insightful)
the 99% can take a hike.
Get your rights trampled while they pursue someone or something, well too bad. Its called collateral damage and the little people simply have no say.
As the saying goes, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have"
It also goes without saying a government big enough to give you everything want could care less what you want or what it takes from you.
Re:Government is the 1% (Score:5, Informative)
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Not going to happen realistically. When was the last time you saw a country as big as the USA totally reform their government, without it being forced to by losing a war and being occupied? What's much more realistic I think is for the country to break up into smaller, more easily-managed units; this is the normal failure mode for large nations(/empires).
So this now means that MU can go back online? (Score:2)
"Access is not the issue -- if it was, Mr. Goodwin could simply hire a forensic expert to retrieve what he claims is his property and reimburse Carpathia for its associated costs," the response said.
Based on this statement, it sounds like the US Federal Prosecutors already have preserved a copy of all the data they need for their case, and now they don't have a problem with Megaupload/Carpathia taking Megaupload back online to allow users to retrieve their data, and any TOS/data retrieval fee is to do with
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But carpathia won't do it for free and meguploads assets are frozen. Individual users have no rights with carpathia they aren't the customers of carpathia.
Only mega upload can access that data but are forbidden by the government.
The best part of all this will be the end lawsuits and accutials. The us government had so completely botched this case that they can't win. They probably won't even get the extradition as they are denying legal rights to the accused.
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Megaupload's assets are frozen, but Carpathia might be willing to take it online for free to allow Megaupload to retrieve their data, and thus once Megaupload have secured a copy, the servers and data on Carpathia's end can be destroyed and thus Carpathia can put an end their losses.
Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
So if they just reopened megaupload with all the old data still on it the feds would just let that happen right?
Because if so, then yes... megaupload should just do that. But that seems more then unlikely. This is another game the feds like to play. They put down whatever you want, look you in the eye, and say "go ahead - take it!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Khyzj5toqwA [youtube.com]
I hate the federal government sometimes. This sort of dickish behavior should be reserved for pissing off dictators or various powers that deserve a good scare. But against the cyberlockers?...
Meh... we need some sort of digital Switzerland. Possibly that's just going to have to be the P2P world... no way around it.
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They (Megaupload) can't do that, they have all their accounts frozen by FBI.
Carpathia wont do it unless paid.
Shouldn't it be up to the FBI to pay them to put up the legit data?
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FBI seems to be failing to provide a quick trial as required by the constitution. They keep confiscating stuff and then sitting on it for months or years without going through a trial.
Look, if someone broke the law, arrest people, freeze accounts, and cease property. But then you go to trial. Within a week you had better be prepared to take this to court. And the whole process had better be fast. Because the ceasing imprisoning is a hardship in and of itself. It has to be fast.
And if the FBI loses the court
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Hint: You might not noticed, but the US has been turned into a police state the last 10 years. Nothing is safe against the government. Not even for citizens,
There is no privacy. The feds can get everything on you. The is no private property. Oops, somebody in this city did a drug deal (or mentioned terrorism, or did not like a federal official, well, that's also terrorism, right?), or at least one of our agents had a vision that it's so, so we have to confiscate your stuff.
There is no personal freedom, the
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We have checks and balances. It's a question of using them. The executive is clearly out of control.
Many of these departments clearly need to go through some sort of real public court proceeding before they can act. They seem to too often use poor judgment and possibly a little daylight would wise them up.
TOS Says NO! (Score:4, Interesting)
As this http://www.techspot.com/news/48924-mpaa-would-allow-megaupload-users-access-to-non-copyrighted-files.html [techspot.com] article notes, "the MPAA expressed sympathy towards legitimate users who may have lost access to original content or data that was obtained legally, although they also point out that Megaupload's terms of service offered no guarantee of the safety or accessibility of uploaded data."
The fact is, Megaupload offered NO guarantee any data stored on its servers would be accessible at any given point in the future, if at all. Whether its servers were destroyed by an act of God, or the US government makes no difference -- there was never any contract between Megaupload and its users to safeguard their data, and as a result its users were not deprived of anything tangible when that data was taken offline.
It's kind of like sticking your stuff in a locker at a swimming pool or a gym -- they put up big signs saying they're not responsible for your stuff. Of course, you would never store anything valuable in a locker room, now would you? This sort of 'rejection of liability' flows on -- if the government turns up, takes over the building for some reason or another, and throws you out, they're not responsible for your stuff either. You're just SOL.
A locker in a gym is not the same as a safety deposit box in a bank vault. To argue that they are is just plain silly, and if you tried it in court, I imagine a judge would laugh at you. Your argument would be swiftly defeated by a rebuttal of simple common sense.
So although it's fun to rant about 'suing the gubbermint', such a pointless exercise would never lead anywhere, and the government knows that. By pointing out that you could recover your data through Megaupload's hosting provider, they're really just being 'nice'. They owe you nothing.
Re:TOS Says NO! (Score:5, Insightful)
If my stuff is in a locker at the gym and a foreign government decides to open all the lockers and takes the content, I will not sue the gym: I will sue that government.
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It's kind of like sticking your stuff in a locker at a swimming pool or a gym -- they put up big signs saying they're not responsible for your stuff.
What the heck are you talking about? If someone breaks into your locker at the gym and steals your stuff, you can still call the police. If they find the guy who took it, they can still charge him with theft and potentially send him to prison.
Just because the gym puts up a sign that they aren't responsible doesn't mean that it's a free-for-all, and anyone can just come in, steal everything in everyone's lockers, and no one has any recourse. Similarly, Megaupload may not be responsible if your stuff is
Gangsters (Score:5, Insightful)
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...the US Government has not become gangsters, they always have been ...
Holding the world to ransom with superior weapons,
Threatening businesses with consequences if they don't pay
Threatening individuals with consequences if they don't pay
Ignoring the police (interpol/UN/NATO) when it suits them
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They wouldn't need to pay for their data if the feds hadn't frozen MU's assets in the first place.
I mean seriously, why is it that in a forfeiture case they flat out just take everything you have on hand and basically force you to shaft everyone you owe in the process?
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I'd say that they were wrong to seize MU's funds and prevent them from paying their hosting bills with carpathia in the first place, so yes they DO owe something.
If they'd simply allowed the hosting bills to be paid we wouldn't be in this mess to begin with.
Bad Maths (Score:2)
You know how you always see the fudged **AA's accounting that says that stealing music/movies cost billions in jobs/lost revenue, well now we can say that sloppily shutting down servers cost people billions in lost jobs/revenue.
Except... (Score:2)
That's why the site was making money, because people were willing to pay for faster access and to be able to store their files with a larger limit on how large those files could be. This spew from obvious shills is disgusting, pretending that users of Megaupload were somehow freeloaders--many of their users were not. They paid for access.
The money is there, it is the MAFIAA's own fault if they can't figure out a way to get to it
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The money is NOT there, the feds confiscated it.
nt (Score:2)
Fudge, the only reason this is a problem in the first place is because the feds swooped in and confiscated all of mega upload's funds and won't even let it pay their hosting bills. They had to fight like hell just to get enough to pay their legal bills.
Which honestly sounds like imposing an unfair burden on carpathia hosting.
Seriously, carpathia hosting is an innocent bystander in all of this that has been forced to squat on its servers while the feds sit on MU's money.
Not to mention seizing MU's funs BEFO
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the gov. in this case is trying to weasel out of getting sued, because they know it's coming (and already in progress). so.. "we didn't take any data, what data??"
Re:Or... (Score:5, Informative)
The funny thing about that idea is that the government actually gets to choose whether a suit against it has merit and can go forward. Good luck with that in many cases.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
So you are saying that in the U.S., courts are not independent? I always thought that to be a cornerstone of democratic systems.
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They retain "Sovereign Immunity". So basically you can not sue the US Government unless they give you permission to do so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity#United_States
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No, he's just citing Sovereign Immunity
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The US is an oligarchy, not a republic.
Re:Or... (Score:5, Informative)
You cannot sue the federal government if they do not let you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Tort_Claims_Act [wikipedia.org]
Re:Or... (Score:5, Funny)
Sue the Government. Might not work, but there is no reason why they can't be sued.
Yes [ ] - I would like to sue the US Government, endure a lifetime of tax audits, have my life turned upside-down & inside-out by the FBI, lose my job and family, and be laughed out of court by a Federal Judge for seeking reasonable redress for the bad acts of my government.
No [ ] - I was only filling out this form as part of a high school civics assignment.
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And it is. Of course, it shouldn't be the only place where you store your data, but then again, nothing should.
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What involvement in illegal activity? Megaupload is still (legally) innocent. You can only sue them for that if they're found guilty, which can take a while, if it ever happens.
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Well, the feds can hope that NZ does not extradite (which they probably will not), because the US judge already mentioned that the whole proceedings are probably illegal.
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look up Judge Irma Gonsales in Perfect 10 vs MU
It's Gonzalez, but besides that, a single ruling on a very different case hardly proves anything.
The bitter truth is that sites like megaupload make it prohibitively expensive to run any content creation business, especially a small unfunded startup can be sunk with a swish. Usually by tha competition too.
Not everything can be free. Not everything can be ad supported, and you cant sell consulting on everything.
I know many content distributors are dinosaurs with idiotic demands, I am not arguing their case, but megaupload's reward programs for piracy and the obscene scale of the operation and money that was being turned around are hardly a fair file sharing service.
I disagree, and so do some studies. But in any case, that's irrelevant to whether Megaupload will be convicted of involvement in illegal activity.
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We're not interested in your need for anal sex. Try Craigslist.
Re:FUCK YOU US !! (Score:4, Funny)
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The Republicans voted for Obama themselves when they put Romney up against him. If they had put up someone more in the middle, Ron Paul, he would've received all the Republican votes and taken large bites out of the other groups. Unfortunately, they don't understand compromise, so they will lose. Then whine. Then apparently lose all their rights to prison-warden government. It's okay though because history is written by the winners, which are ... the lawyers?
Sorry. Low sugar. If only I had my super-s
Re: (Score:2)
History is written by the victors because the losers aren't around anymore.
It's no different from an armed robber getting richer because he has a gun to force money out of your pockets.