DOJ tries to block return of data to MegaUpload user | Hacker News Reader

DOJ tries to block return of data to MegaUpload user

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93 pointsiProject13 comments

It's worth nothing that the government, in its brief, wrote Goodwin has another legal option to pursue if he believes his possessions weren't treated fairly. "Mr. Goodwin," the government's lawyers wrote, "can sue MegaUpload or Carpathia [Hosting, the company that hosted MegaUpload's servers] to recover his losses."

So he can sue MU, which has had all of its assets frozen and has no access to the files (so no restitution can possibly occur), or sue Carpathia, where the only obligation they could even remotely be under is to return the files, except there's a court order telling them they cannot recover the files.

Carpathia is not responsible for the takedown. MU might be responsible for the takedown, but they have no available assets to award recovery to affected users.

And technically I imagine those damages would / should be transferred to those who illegally took them down and are holding the data.

What hypocrites. They don't want to return the data, don't want to be sued at the same time, and even try to redirect the claim to those who can't return it. Are they just dumb, or utterly cynical to the point of mocking the public?

If recent events are any indication, I'd go with the second choice.

This whole Megaupload case leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

On the one hand, do I think Megaupload's founders were happy to turn a blind eye to piracy? Probably. They may have even encouraged it. Given the current (stupid) laws there is certainly a case to be made by the government. Still, the case is far from clearcut [1].

That being said, the remedy sought by and received by the government is disproportionate to the alleged offense.

One problem is that the DoJ injunction to both shutdown the service and maintain the data is costing Megaupload and/or the ISP $9000/day to keep 25PB of data around [2]. How much of that data was infringing exactly?

This is the part that leaves a bad taste in my mouth: the DoJ's remedy is essentially punitive to the parties involved (for what is still an alleged infringement) to the point that they simply want to bankrupt alleged offenders. Whatever happened to due process?

All of this leads me to two conclusions:

1. The Obama administration's track record on intellectual property is horrendous, from staffing the DoJ with RIAA/MPAA stooges [3] to secretly negotiating international treaties that treat copyright infringement with similar severity as counterfeiting or terrorism [4] (the original ACTA; not the one signed this year). This I think is so bad I think the administration needs to go (not that I think the alternative is much better); and

2. The US government is reinforcing the view that if you want to store data in the cloud and you want it to remain there, store it outside of the US.

[1]: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120120/00373617487/megaup...

[2]: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/03/isp-storing-25-pe...

[3]: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/obamas_latest_pick_for_...

[4]: http://boingboing.net/2009/11/03/secret-copyright-tre.html

Was there really a need to put "legitimate" in quotes every single time?

More seriously, though, it shows that the legal system has put itself, perhaps unwittingly, in unexplored and potentially very volatile territory.

Most times, a warrant does not affect at lot of people in the grand scheme of things. Potentially inconveniencing an innocent household is, all things considered, not a big deal. But a warrant that affects quite literally millions of people, which cannot possible be all guilty - dangerous, that.

I wonder if this will force some changes in the way seizure of property is handled. I suppose it depends on how much of a "shitstorm" it continues to cause.

Yet another problem created by cloud storage. If instead of putting everything on a community storage service we took Eben Moglen's suggestion of storing everything in our homes (which would require better bandwidth and ISP AUPs, of course) our data would be in the best legally protected place in society. It won't happen. The cloud will win because it has bigger corporate backers, but this is another example of how technology solves one problem while simultaneously creating another.

Yet another example of a too powerful to care government agency which cares nothing for the collateral damage it causes, nor does it have too.

To be blunt, they should be required to release within a timely manner all non offending assets. They claim bad precedent which is more than annoying, its insulting. In other words, as long as they get who they are after they could care less who suffers in the process. Worse, those caught up in the crossfire are not entitled to any assistance whatsoever.

So the moral of the story is, do not keep your data anywhere but on systems you own. I wonder how much Apple and Google have to pay to keep the DOJ at bay? I would assume it is whatever the cost of lawyers are whose entire job is to convince the DOJ all things possible are always done.

I agree that keeping your own data on your own property is a worthwhile endeavor. I speculate though about how proficient most people are at keeping truly decent security for that data. If I build a small server rack at home and allow all of my mobile devices to connect to that server from out in the wide world, and if then lots and lots of other people do that as well, how does the nature of security change?

If it were rich people's property, perhaps.

But what's the average net worth of a Megaupload user?

Reminds me of the Cold War discussions on "megadeath". If we fire this missile, how many millions of people would die? It's dehumanizing, and "two megadeaths" sounds a lot more appealing to the eyes and ears than "two million deaths" or "2,000,000 people dead".

We're only hurting 180 megausers, not 180,000,000[1] users.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaupload#Statistics

Quote from article: "Twenty-three years ago, the Supreme Court made clear that a criminal defendant does not have a right to use someone else's money to finance his defense."

Is this implying that the guy who wants his videos back is a criminal defendant?

I assumed that "criminal defendant" referred to MU/DotCom, but then I find myself unable to parse the sentence into something meaningful. Can anyone explain please?

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