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"There's a chance that after four years Megaupload users may be reunited with their lost files. U.S. District Court Judge Liam O'Grady has asked several stakeholders to chime in on the possible return of the Megaupload servers, which also holds crucial evidence for Kim Dotcom's defense."
Nearly four years have passed since Megaupload's servers were raided by U.S. authorities. Since then very little progress has been made in the criminal case.
Kim Dotcom and his Megaupload colleagues are currently awaiting the result of their extradition hearing in New Zealand and have yet to formally appear in a U.S. court.
Meanwhile, more than 1,000 Megaupload servers from Carpathia Hosting remain in storage in Virginia, some of which contain crucial evidence as well as valuable files uploaded by users. The question is, for how long.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 08 2015, @04:59PM
Perhaps it's the tinfoil in my DNA but I wouldn't ever trust files that had been seized by the government. I certainly wouldn't trust the server hosting them. Is the government going to scrub everything to remove infringing material? If they don't -- and return "stolen" content -- then what precedent does that set?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tibman on Sunday November 08 2015, @06:23PM
Kim probably doesn't need lessons in paranoia : )
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Sunday November 08 2015, @09:04PM
That's one reason why you should keep a list of checksums for all your important files and then keep the list separate from the files. Yes, it's possible to replace files maliciously with some checksums, but if you choose an appropriate one it gets to be rather unlikely for anybody to succeed at that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 08 2015, @11:54PM
It would set a precedent that we don't value stealing people's real property to protect monopolies over ideas to the point where even non-infringing data is held hostage.
Why the fuck would *anyone* care if infringing data is returned?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 09 2015, @12:59AM
If some portion of the files are indeed pirated and the government returns them, that would be like the cops returning contraband to someone. It simply makes no sense...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 09 2015, @02:35AM
Part of the reason Megaupload got into trouble was deduplication.
Megapuload has now way of knowing what copies are infringing. That is why they did not actually delete tyhe content when hit with a DMCA take-down request. For example, the original copyright owner may be using Meagupload to store their work. Or, people may be keeping a copy on megaupload for personal study: considered fair dealing under Canadian law.
The implication is that the police similarly have no way of knowing which copies are actually infringing or not. That is probably one reason the prosecution has gone nowhere.