Megaupload Blames U.S. Government For Massive Data Wipe

Andy Chalk

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Nov 12, 2002
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Megaupload Blames U.S. Government For Massive Data Wipe


Lawyers for Megaupload are seeking legal protection for its remaining servers following a mass deletion of petabytes of data that may have included exculpatory evidence.

In June, Dutch hosting company LeaseWeb deleted all data from 630 servers that had been rented by Megaupload without warning, resulting in the loss of petabytes of data belonging to Megaupload customers. Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom called it a "huge disaster" and said his lawyers had asked LeaseWeb multiple times not to delete the data while the matter was still before U.S. courts, but also stated his belief that the deletion of the data was actually the goal of the U.S. authorities all along. "That's why they seized all of our assets and would not even release funds to pay our hosting partners," he said.

Megaupload lawyers repeated that point in a letter sent earlier this week to U.S. District Court Judge John Anderson, in which they ask the court to restart negotiations for a "workable solution" to ensure the preservation of data on 1103 Megaupload servers owned by Carpathia Hosting. Megaupload reached an agreement with Carpathia in April to buy the servers for $1.4 million, but that deal was blocked by U.S. authorities.

"While LeaseWeb's deletion of relevant evidence in the face of explicit preservation requests is inexcusable, the United States is equally culpable. The Government was plainly on notice of the need to preserve the LeaseWeb servers," the letter states. "As Megaupload has long maintained, by freezing the Defendants' assets and denying Defendants access to or possession of the servers, the Government has exercised de facto control over the servers and is therefore in constructive possession of them. Under Brady v. Maryland and its progeny, the Government had an affirmative duty to ensure the preservation of the LeaseWeb servers and the exculpatory evidence they may have contained. The Government failed to do so."

"The destruction of the LeaseWeb servers demonstrates the urgent need to reach a workable solution for data preservation as soon as possible, lest the 1103 servers currently in Carpathia Hosting's possession meet the same fate," it concludes. "We therefore respectfully urge the Court to reconvene the interested stakeholders and renew negotiations as quickly as the Court's schedule permits."

Letters have also been sent to LeaseWeb and the U.S. Department of Justice asking for all correspondence between the hosting company and U.S. agencies in order to "understand the extent to which LeaseWeb consulted with the U.S. Department of Justice or other U.S. authorities prior to wiping the data."

Source: TorrentFreak [http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-government-is-to-blame-for-megaupload-data-massacre-court-hears-130704/]


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1337mokro

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Dec 24, 2008
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The US reaching beyond their borders to enforce their internal legislation? NAAAAAHHHH!

I wonder what the Bolivian president thinks about this.
 

SonOfVoorhees

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Alot of there stuff they had was illegal and pirated stuff wasn't it? So they can hardly complain stuff was deleted illegally when they allowed people to upload illegal stuff. Funny how criminals break the law to make money, but then quote the law when it suits them.
 

Calamity

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SonOfVoorhees said:
Alot of there stuff they had was illegal and pirated stuff wasn't it? So they can hardly complain stuff was deleted illegally when they allowed people to upload illegal stuff. Funny how criminals break the law to make money, but then quote the law when it suits them.
A lot is not the same as all, and you can't possibly know that. No one is a criminal yet because no one has been officially put on trail.

This is just another shitty move in the massive list of shitty moves by the US this last month. So ashamed I live in this country.
 

Andy Chalk

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Nov 12, 2002
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SonOfVoorhees said:
Alot of there stuff they had was illegal and pirated stuff wasn't it? So they can hardly complain stuff was deleted illegally when they allowed people to upload illegal stuff. Funny how criminals break the law to make money, but then quote the law when it suits them.
So if somebody rents a storage locker and puts heroin in it, everyone else with lockers in the same facility should lose all their stuff when he gets busted?
 

Klonoa Prower

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SonOfVoorhees said:
Alot of there stuff they had was illegal and pirated stuff wasn't it? So they can hardly complain stuff was deleted illegally when they allowed people to upload illegal stuff. Funny how criminals break the law to make money, but then quote the law when it suits them.
The thing is, they didn't break the law. They merely provide a service in a different country that facilitates breaking the law in the US. US law does not globally encompass the earth.
 

JadeWah

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SonOfVoorhees said:
Alot of there stuff they had was illegal and pirated stuff wasn't it? So they can hardly complain stuff was deleted illegally when they allowed people to upload illegal stuff. Funny how criminals break the law to make money, but then quote the law when it suits them.
So two wrong, make one right?

Besides, how about all those people using the site for legal stuff? Innocent casualities of war huh?

This whole deal just screams the US pushing their own agenda, without any repercussions. Well as someone commented, NSA might have those files, just ask politely and they might give em back.
 

klaynexas3

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Dec 30, 2009
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SonOfVoorhees said:
Alot of there stuff they had was illegal and pirated stuff wasn't it? So they can hardly complain stuff was deleted illegally when they allowed people to upload illegal stuff. Funny how criminals break the law to make money, but then quote the law when it suits them.
And not all of that data was illegal, and yet it was still deleted. People paid to be able to use those servers for data uploads, and not everyone was committing piracy with it, but even so, they had their data deleted along with the pirates. Seems completely fair, right?
 

klaynexas3

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Dec 30, 2009
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Damn that was funny, right after Voorhees posts, the next five posts(possibly more now) are criticizing his brilliant logic, even the journalist. Man, I feel bad for his inbox now.
 

Slash2x

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Dec 7, 2009
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masticina said:
Americans are SORE losers...

Very SORE losers
Yeah we really are [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki]

OT:

Wow... Just WOW... "Hey you there fishing in that lake without a license!!!! We do not know where you live so we will burn every house and boat next to or on the lake!!!! OK lets take a look... Innocent,Innocent,Innocent,Innocent..... YEAH WE GOT THE GUY BREAKING THE LAW TOO!!!!!"

Our legal system is so fucking retarded... Next thing you know we will be arresting people for buying water that looks like it is in a beer box....... Awww shit.
 

Baldr

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Jan 6, 2010
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Andy Chalk said:
SonOfVoorhees said:
Alot of there stuff they had was illegal and pirated stuff wasn't it? So they can hardly complain stuff was deleted illegally when they allowed people to upload illegal stuff. Funny how criminals break the law to make money, but then quote the law when it suits them.
So if somebody rents a storage locker and puts heroin in it, everyone else with lockers in the same facility should lose all their stuff when he gets busted?
The government didn't erase the stuff, the company did. When the storage company dumps all the lockers after a bust, you have a beef with the storage company, not the Government.
 

SonOfVoorhees

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Aug 3, 2011
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Many moany people commenting about me. lol. End of the day, the legal users were screwed by that site allowing illegal downloads etc. Dont moan at me, moan at them. They allowed illegal content on their site thus they screwed over the legal users. Moan at them for a refund, but everyone new that site had illegal downloads on it so grow up and stop moaning. It sucks that people lost legal stuff, but its not like they are naive and didnt know what that site was like.
 

Greyhamster

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Nov 26, 2010
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Calamity said:
SonOfVoorhees said:
Alot of there stuff they had was illegal and pirated stuff wasn't it? So they can hardly complain stuff was deleted illegally when they allowed people to upload illegal stuff. Funny how criminals break the law to make money, but then quote the law when it suits them.
A lot is not the same as all, and you can't possibly know that. No one is a criminal yet because no one has been officially put on trail.

This is just another shitty move in the massive list of shitty moves by the US this last month. So ashamed I live in this country.
Yup, it's becoming quite the list. Let's see: Russia, China(Blaming these two for helping Snowden), the entirety of Latin America(giving false data to prevent the Bolivian president from returning home), Europe(bugging pretty much all EU diplomats, PRISM)... the US has now pissed off what, 50% off the world in the past two weeks?
 

Denamic

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Aug 19, 2009
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SonOfVoorhees said:
Many moany people commenting about me. lol. End of the day, the legal users were screwed by that site allowing illegal downloads etc. Dont moan at me, moan at them. They allowed illegal content on their site thus they screwed over the legal users. Moan at them for a refund, but everyone new that site had illegal downloads on it so grow up and stop moaning. It sucks that people lost legal stuff, but its not like they are naive and didnt know what that site was like.
So, it's the criminal's fault the legit users got their shit deleted? No mention about the unlawful deletion, or the unlawful raid, or the unlawful seizure of Dotcom's assets? Nah, that's all minor stuff; it's all the pirate's fault.
 

Voulan

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SonOfVoorhees said:
Many moany people commenting about me. lol. End of the day, the legal users were screwed by that site allowing illegal downloads etc. Dont moan at me, moan at them. They allowed illegal content on their site thus they screwed over the legal users. Moan at them for a refund, but everyone new that site had illegal downloads on it so grow up and stop moaning. It sucks that people lost legal stuff, but its not like they are naive and didnt know what that site was like.
I hardly call it moaning, I'd call it potentially illegal. I'm a little concerned if you consider legitimate complaints about the government overstepping its boundaries to be little more than whining at a schoolyard. And besides, just because some people used the site for illegal material it does not and should not implicate legitimate users. What you're doing there is victim blaming.

Seriously, "grow up and stop moaning" is your response to this? I don't even.
 

Baresark

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Baldr said:
Andy Chalk said:
SonOfVoorhees said:
Alot of there stuff they had was illegal and pirated stuff wasn't it? So they can hardly complain stuff was deleted illegally when they allowed people to upload illegal stuff. Funny how criminals break the law to make money, but then quote the law when it suits them.
So if somebody rents a storage locker and puts heroin in it, everyone else with lockers in the same facility should lose all their stuff when he gets busted?
The government didn't erase the stuff, the company did. When the storage company dumps all the lockers after a bust, you have a beef with the storage company, not the Government.
I believe the idea is that the company did so under coercion from the US Government, making in part culpable for the loss of data. At very least the government should have had it preserved for evidence against Megaupload. But as the accusation goes, they also deleted evidence that can exculpate the company and it's owner, which at absolute best is destruction of evidence.
 

Azaraxzealot

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Of all the things about megaupload I miss, I miss megaporn the most... All those 100s of links I have are useless :(