Battle For Megaupload Data Rages On

[clarkson12]

Posted 04/03/2012 | by Brad Chacos


The Carpathia hosting company has already sunk over half a million bucks into keeping the user data stored on Megaupload's 25,000 servers, and that tally's rising by another $9k a day. Now, the company's looking to offset that cost by either: (A) selling 25 petabytes of data back to Megaupload; (B) get the court to help foot the maintenance bill; or (C) receive court protection from civil claims if it has to wipe the data to stop the bleeding. Unfortunately for Megaupload users on the up-and-up, the government and MPAA are blowing a raspberry at all three options.



Actually, the government is fine with wiping the data, but doesn't feel as though it owes Carpathia liability immunity if it chooses to do so. U.S. Attorney Neil MacBride told the court that the government withheld its claims to the data way back in January, and Carpathia voluntarily chose to continue hosting the Megaupload servers, CNET reports. The government's trial against Megaupload has nothing to do with civil matters related to the data or payment arrangements between Carpathia and Megaupload, MacBride says. He asked the court to deny the requests for either compensation or immunity.

Meanwhile, the MPAA weighed in on selling the data back to Megaupload, Digital Trends reports. The group also filed documents with the court to try and prevent the sale:

A sale or transfer of the servers to Megaupload (or any of the defendants) would raise a significant risk that Megaupload will simply ship the servers, hard drives or other equipment — and all of the infringing content they contain — to a foreign jurisdiction and relaunch the infringing Megaupload service, which would result in untold further infringements of the MPAA members’ copyrighted works. If so, the renewed criminal enterprise might be beyond any effective legal remedy.

All hope is not completely lost, however: MSNBC reports that the EFF is helping Kyle Goodwin, the man behind the OhioSportsNet high school sports site, try to recover his completely legal files from the servers. The duo filed documents asking the courts for their return.

So what do you think: will lawful users ever get their files back? Were your files bit by the Megaupload seizure bug? Go on and share with the group!

[deputyhcsd]

As strange as it is I didnt use Megaupload for anything of my own. But I loved the free hosting they provided. I loved watching live full size videos without having to DL them.