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Five Years Later, Legal Megaupload Data Is Still Trapped On Dead Servers (arstechnica.com) 82

Posted by BeauHD from the never-seen-the-light-of-day dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: It's been more than five years since the government accused Megaupload and its founder Kim Dotcom of criminal copyright infringement. While Dotcom himself was arrested in New Zealand, U.S. government agents executed search warrants and grabbed a group of more than 1,000 servers owned by Carpathia Hosting. That meant that a lot of users with gigabytes of perfectly legal content lost access to it. Two months after the Dotcom raid and arrest, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a motion in court asking to get back data belonging to one of those users, Kyle Goodwin, whom the EFF took on as a client. Years have passed. The U.S. criminal prosecution of Dotcom and other Megaupload executives is on hold while New Zealand continues with years of extradition hearings. Meanwhile, Carpathia's servers were powered down and are kept in storage by QTS Realty Trust, which acquired Carpathia in 2015. Now the EFF has taken the extraordinary step of asking an appeals court to step in and effectively force the hand of the district court judge. Yesterday, Goodwin's lawyers filed a petition for a writ of mandamus (PDF) with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which oversees Virginia federal courts. "We've been asking the court for help since 2012," said EFF attorney Mitch Stolz in a statement about the petition. "It's deeply unfair for him to still be in limbo after all this time."
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Five Years Later, Legal Megaupload Data Is Still Trapped On Dead Servers More

Five Years Later, Legal Megaupload Data Is Still Trapped On Dead Servers

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  • That's the big problem... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2017 @08:08AM (#54304381)
    When you keep your data in the cloud, and don't keep backups on hand, you're at the mercy of the powers to be. I pulled my data out of the cloud when I realized that I didn't need to have it on the Internet 24/7. A local file server works fine for my needs.

    • I pulled my data out of the cloud when I realized that I didn't need to have it on the Internet 24/7.

      Pity T J Maxx, Target, and Yahoo didn't do the same.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Teancum ( 67324 )

      The problem is the presumption that the data doesn't have a physical location when you are dealing with a cloud. You may not directly know where a given hunk of data is physically stored at, but such storage is still a requirement for current computing practices. It can be destroyed, confiscated, lost, or even simply scrambled where you have no control over what happens. It can also be copied and distributed to places which may not be in a place you want it at (like a competitor or somebody who intends t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by quenda ( 644621 )

      Backups are good.
      For anyone using google, they make it very easy to download a copy of *all* your data.
      If you use Android, that's probably your email, photos, calendar, location history, search history, contacts, medical records, DNA sequence, and sexual deviations, ...

      They will bundle your whole life up into one little insignificant tar file.

      Go here: https://takeout.google.com/set... [google.com]

    • Also do not forget that if sharing is what you want (so granma and granpa can see video of their grandkids) :

      - Tarsnap, Dropbox, Google Drive might be more expensive for equivalent storage size / bandwidth. But at least there's less risk for them to go belly up.
      (Even if there's risk for those with non-free/closed-source clients to rape your privacy).
      And you should keep a local copy on your NAS anyway.

      - You can serve the files from your NAS (lots of them feature file server), and YOU can control the protecti

    • The problem is having only one copy, no matter whether that one copy is in the cloud or not.

    • When you keep your data in the cloud, and don't keep backups on hand, you're at the mercy of the powers to be

      Indeed. And the even bigger picture here is that the Government — the single biggest "power that is" — is the primary source of problems. Every interaction with it — be it the TSA agents, the police (even if they aren't after you), the DMV, a hospital [nbcnews.com], or even the Post Office — carry a high risk of being unpleasant if not outright horrifying. Having an uneventful encounter wit

    • He HAD a backup hard drive. When he found that the hard drive had failed, he tried to access the files on Megaupload. In how many places should he have kept his data, and how much more should he have spent purchasing the hardware or subscribing to a storage service in the case that both his local hard drive and the cloud account where he stored his data were rendered inaccessible?

  • When the servers went offline, many thousands of people lost access to their work and home files. I have my photo archive on Megaupload but I have still got no way to get it back as some scardy cat corporate tosser says "No" to everyone just in case someone might get a copy of some porno or action movie. FFS

  • Of course its deeply unfair (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26, 2017 @08:28AM (#54304503)

    "deeply unfair" is central theme of all US copyright law.

    Why would you expect anything else?

  • Asset forfeiture? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2017 @12:37PM (#54306573) Homepage

    Geez, I know this is Slashdot, but really. The guy did have a second copy, but it died - as copies do - at the worst possible instant. In this case, basically as the Mega servers were being seized. Should he have had a 3rd copy? A 4th? Sure, but that's not the point.

    The point is: the US government seized servers containing data from thousands and thousands of users. The US government has made no provisions at all for people to retrieve their property. This is theft, plain and simple.

    Consider this in meatspace: The government raids a restaurant thought to be violating health regulations. They seize all property in the restaurant: not only stuff belonging to the business, but the wallets, purses and bags belonging to the customers. The restaurant is in limbo - that's bad enough - but why should the customers' private property be seized and never released.

    Of course, this is the same country that allows asset forfeiture. I'm sure your wallet is guilty of some crime or other...

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      Of course, this is the same country that allows asset forfeiture. I'm sure your wallet is guilty of some crime or other...

      It doesn't have to be, here's how it goes:

      It looks like you're carrying lots of money. Drug dealers carry lots of money. Hence I will confiscate this money as possible drug profits. If you can show a paper trail in court, you can have it back some day. If you can't, tough. If you need the money right now, tough. Oh and there's no presumption of innocence and no free legal aid since it's a civil matter, if you lose as you very well might you'll also lose a ton on lawyer and court costs.

      One joint was sufficie

    • so what if they shut down a full office building just to get one small office that is violating the law.

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