US Gov't Won't Pay for MegaUpload's 25 Million Gigabytes

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
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US Gov't Won't Pay for MegaUpload's 25 Million Gigabytes

Hosting 25 petabytes of data costs $9,000 per day.

In January, the US government including the US government [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115362-UPDATE-Feds-Take-Down-Megaupload]. Now, nobody can access their data, whether it was copyright-infringing or completely legal - but that data hasn't gone away.

In fact, it's still sitting on the servers that MegaUpload had been renting from storage company 332 years of HD-quality video [http://www.carpathia.com/data-centers], half of the written works in the history of mankind, or the Library of Congress 1250 times over. Hosting that much data on 1,103 servers isn't cheap; Carpathia is on the hook for $9,000 every day just to keep the MegaUpload files around.

If you're wondering why Carpathia doesn't just turn the servers off to save power - it's not like the files will go anywhere - that's not the problem. Carpathia says that the servers are worth approximately $1,250,000, and if not for the MegaUpload files it could be selling them or renting them out to customers who haven't been shut down by the government. The climate-controlled center in which the servers are being stored costs an additional $37,000 per month to maintain, but that's a comparatively small cost.

The US government refuses to make taxpayers foot the bill for hosting the servers, or the time it would take to sort through 25 petabytes of data to figure out which files are legitimate and which are pirated. Prosecutor Jay Prabhu says that Carpathia had made $35 million from MegaUpload over the years, and had received "thousands of notices" that its servers were being used to host illegal content. Ergo, the government was under no obligation to pay for its preservation.

It doesn't seem as though there are many options on the table, either. MegaUpload and the MPAA have both objected to Carpathia deleting the data outright, for wholly different reasons - MegaUpload because it intends to return the legally-owned files to users, and the MPAA because it sees the files as evidence it can use in lawsuits.

Nor can Carpathia simply return the files to MegaUpload. Prosecutors have blocked any attempt to pursue that path, citing concerns that the file-sharing website would simply take the data overseas to relaunch operations beyond the reach of the courts. "It's like trusting the thief with the money," said Prabhu.

Either way, you can't help but feel bad for Carpathia. It can't get rid of its servers or repurpose them while the litigation is pending, and nobody wants to sift through 1250 Libraries of Congress to figure out what's legitimate and what's not. So for the moment, all it can do is bite its lip and hang on the hook.

Source: ACEDS [http://aceds.org/news/25-million-gigabytes-brings-prosecution-megaupload-and-its-eccentric-founder-standstill]

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Robert Ewing

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Mar 2, 2011
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Well, Megaupload wasn't on any American servers, the owners weren't American. It had very little to do with America is my point, but they were the ones that world policed the fuck out of them, and took it down. I think they should pick up the relatively small slack on protecting the legal files uploaded to be honest.
 

nyttyn

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Sep 9, 2008
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The whole "us government gets to tell the rest of the world what to do" aspect of this concerns the fuck out of me I must say. At this rate every file service ever is going to start hosting their servers in Switzerland.
 

BehattedWanderer

Fell off the Alligator.
Jun 24, 2009
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Wow, that's a lot of data. Though, I imagine there's quite a few repeats in there. I wonder what the size of the unique content is.
 

evilneko

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Jun 16, 2011
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That just ain't right. The government should either image the hard drives (ie what they normally do in computer crime cases) and release the originals back to Carpathia, or drop the case. In other words: shit or get off the potservers.

No I don't care that that would require tens of thousands of fresh hard drives and possibly cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Their footdragging has already cost Carpathia well over a million dollars.
 

evilneko

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Jun 16, 2011
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BehattedWanderer said:
Wow, that's a lot of data. Though, I imagine there's quite a few repeats in there. I wonder what the size of the unique content is.
Most cloud storage services use de-duplication, and MU being so big, yeah they would've had that going on in full. Probably a much smaller percent of dupes than you might imagine.
 

Awexsome

Were it so easy
Mar 25, 2009
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The people who want to save the data should get to sorting through it. If they're being blocked from doing it then I could put blame on the government but you relinquish control of the servers for less than a day and all that illegal content is going to be copy/pasta'd elsewhere. Serving the exact same purpose and having no difference from function besides from the pirates making the government jump through more hoops in jurisdiction arguments.

There was legitimate content on there is unfortunate collateral damage but Megaupload was the one who fucked it up by encouraging and collaborating to keep that pirated content up and profit from it. Government is just doing their job well and going after the right people in all this from the very start.

Everyone knows they can't go after individual pirates so go after the ones who make their actions possible by ignoring or cooperating with them. Megaupload, Pirate Bay, ect.
 

upgray3dd

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Jan 6, 2011
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evilneko said:
BehattedWanderer said:
Wow, that's a lot of data. Though, I imagine there's quite a few repeats in there. I wonder what the size of the unique content is.
Most cloud storage services use de-duplication, and MU being so big, yeah they would've had that going on in full. Probably a much smaller percent of dupes than you might imagine.
Yeah, whenever a file is found to be a copy of one already stored, it just links to the copy already on file. But lately, many pirates have been forcing there files to be placed uniquely by compressing the files and giving the files a unique password.

Now that I think about it, how the hell do you go through Megaupload looking for pirated content when it's just a bunch of .Rar files you can't access without a password?
 

BehattedWanderer

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Jun 24, 2009
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evilneko said:
BehattedWanderer said:
Wow, that's a lot of data. Though, I imagine there's quite a few repeats in there. I wonder what the size of the unique content is.
Most cloud storage services use de-duplication, and MU being so big, yeah they would've had that going on in full. Probably a much smaller percent of dupes than you might imagine.
True, but I'm more interested in knowing how many terabyte hard drives someone would need to privately back up what probably amounts to a fair portion of humanity's media history.
 

Krion_Vark

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Robert Ewing said:
Well, Megaupload wasn't on any American servers, the owners weren't American. It had very little to do with America is my point, but they were the ones that world policed the fuck out of them, and took it down. I think they should pick up the relatively small slack on protecting the legal files uploaded to be honest.
Carpathia is an American company which drops all of their assets under the American government. So no they didn't world police them. Carpathias data centers if you go to their site is Ashburn, Virginia; Dulles, Virginia; Harrissonburg, Virginia; Pheonix, Arizona; Los Angeles, California; Toronto, Canada and Amsterdam, Netherlands(This one is only available for people/companies in Europe however).
So yeah they were on American servers.
Nice try though.


Awexsome said:
Everyone knows they can't go after individual pirates so go after the ones who make their actions possible by ignoring or cooperating with them. Megaupload, Pirate Bay, ect.
Well they CAN go after individual people take that girl from early 2000 for pirating music.
Or that 92 year old WWII vet who was recently in a new article for pirating something like 300,000 movies and sending them free of charge to soldiers over in Iraq and Afghanistan.
They could go after the single pirates if they can get a big enough case against them. Going after the companies however is a much bigger pay day.
They already tried the scare tactics of going after individual people but that didn't work so now they are going after the companies that are putting it through. Limewire, MegaUpload, Pirate Bay.
 

Freechoice

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Dec 6, 2010
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BehattedWanderer said:
evilneko said:
BehattedWanderer said:
Wow, that's a lot of data. Though, I imagine there's quite a few repeats in there. I wonder what the size of the unique content is.
Most cloud storage services use de-duplication, and MU being so big, yeah they would've had that going on in full. Probably a much smaller percent of dupes than you might imagine.
True, but I'm more interested in knowing how many terabyte hard drives someone would need to privately back up what probably amounts to a fair portion of humanity's media history.
1 tera drives? 25 mill divided by 1000.

25,000.
 

evilneko

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Jun 16, 2011
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Kalezian said:
evilneko said:
That just ain't right. The government should either image the hard drives (ie what they normally do in computer crime cases) and release the originals back to Carpathia, or drop the case. In other words: shit or get off the potservers.

No I don't care that that would require tens of thousands of fresh hard drives and possibly cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Their footdragging has already cost Carpathia well over a million dollars.

Actually, Im sure that it is illegal to force a company to lose money while citing legal issues such as evidence in the United States when it comes down to it.
Doubtful. Evidence can be seized regardless of the effect it has on a business. It's up to the business to seek recompense from the other party.
 

weirdee

Swamp Weather Balloon Gas
Apr 11, 2011
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If MegaUpload was going to take things overseas, it doesn't necessarily require getting the files back to do so...sure it would be a hassle setting things up again, but you don't see all of the other file sharing websites having that much trouble.
 

DarkBlood626

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Nov 9, 2008
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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/19/judge-megaupload-founders-property-seized-with-bogus-warrant/

The warrant used to start all this crap was shown to be in error so why do they still have it?
 
Jun 16, 2010
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Robert Ewing said:
Well, Megaupload wasn't on any American servers, the owners weren't American. It had very little to do with America is my point, but they were the ones that world policed the fuck out of them, and took it down. I think they should pick up the relatively small slack on protecting the legal files uploaded to be honest.
Really, when it comes to cybercrime, American police are the only police. Not many other countries are willing to devote resources to catching criminals they're barely aware of.
 

Sarge034

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Feb 24, 2011
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Kalezian said:
Actually, Im sure that it is illegal to force a company to lose money while citing legal issues such as evidence in the United States when it comes down to it.
The government is not responsible for any losses incurred by the company if the company was informed it was involved in an illegal act and failed to stop. If we are to believe the article that is what happened.

If I was in charge of Carpathia I would give an ultimatum: You want your fucking evidence? you help keep it online or we will use OUR fucking servers how we see fit.
You enjoy your counts of "obstruction of justice" in a federal case (making them felonies).

>18 USC § 1509 - Obstruction of court orders

Whoever, by threats or force, willfully prevents, obstructs, impedes, or interferes with, or willfully attempts to prevent, obstruct, impede, or interfere with, the due exercise of rights or the performance of duties under any order, judgment, or decree of a court of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both

>18 USC § 1519 - Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy

Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.


Yea, you would get up to 21 years in a federal penitentiary and/or whatever the combined fines would be. Still think that is a good move?

America might try to be the big brother of the rest of the world, but it has a hard on for businesses being affected by 'Big Government'.
First, Carpathia is an American business. Second, only when the businesses are doing something illegal.
 

Gamegodtre

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Aug 24, 2009
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i gotta say MPAA is insane..... 20 pedabytes of porn is on megaupload and thats just a low assumption i mean comeon admit it it was mainly used for porn and music doenst take much space. and a good majority of the content is not even from the US since it ran in multiple countrys so to uthe files for a lawsuit well thatll be interesting