EFF wants to help you get your files back from MegaUpload's servers before they're erased

If you're one of the millions of MegaUpload customers whose data is endangered by the entertainment industry's legal action against the company, EFF wants to help you get your files back. They've teamed up with Carpathia Hosting, the company that hosts MegaUpload's servers, and created Megeretreival.com. The US DoJ's plan to destroy the files -- and the evidence! -- hosted on MegaUpload's servers has been delayed by two weeks, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation will use that gap to advocate on behalf of users whose financial data, personal files, movies, videos, writing, and creative work were hosted on MegaUpload.

EFF is troubled that so many lawful users of Megaupload.com had their property taken from them without warning and that the government has taken no steps to help them. We think it's important that these users have their voices heard as this process moves forward.

~ Julie Samuels
Staff Attorney at EFF

Carpathia does not have access to any data for Megaupload customers. We support the EFF and their efforts to help those users that stored legitimate, non-infringing files with Megaupload retrieve their data.

~ Brian Winter
CMO of Carpathia Hosting

Megaupload's hosting company teams up with EFF to identify legal files

• [Mordicai]

  The EFF– Neutral Good?  Or Lawful Good, because they are a bunch of badass lawyers?  I can’t decide.

  • [SoItBegins]

    Awesome good.

• [awjt]

  Umm, nobody is willing to file suit against the government to stop the nonsense?  It’s called an injunction, and all it takes is one person, their lawyer, and a cooperative judge to make it happen.

  • [Mujokan]

    I guess you are reacting to this: “The US DoJ’s plan to destroy the files — and the evidence! — hosted on MegaUpload’s servers has been delayed by two weeks”, which is misleading.

    The Feds aren’t destroying anything, so no injunction is possible. MegaUpload is not blocked from gathering evidence from the servers. The problems are (1) that they had their assets seized, so they aren’t paying the hosting service and (2) the hosting service doesn’t have access to the data.

    As for (1), the data will remain so long as the hosts don’t wipe the servers and use them for something else (this is what the press release is about, they have no plans to do that), or, if MegaUpload petitions for discovery, until the evidence has been gathered by MegaUpload, I imagine. I doubt they have much incentive to do that, but technically I believe that is what the situation is.

    As for (2), I don’t know why the hosting service doesn’t have direct access to the data. I imagine it is in the contract they have with MegaUpload. The question is why MegaUpload isn’t somehow facilitating access to the data. Probably this is because their assets were forfeited and they aren’t operating, or just that they haven’t gotten around to it. I don’t know how hard it would be for MegaUpload to get around this — e.g. how much money it would cost. This is a bit of a mystery.

    • [awjt]

      Interesting, and thanks for the response.  On the technical side, the provider doesn’t have access, probably, due to it being a VPS hosting situation.  The files most likely aren’t sitting there in raw form on a drive.  They are in a virtual host, and inside a filesystem in that virtual host, probably RAIDed across multiple drives with both software and hardware RAID schemes.  And there’s also the probability that the files are encrypted within that filesystem in the virtual host.  So, yes, the files are essentially inaccessible to anyone without root to the virtual host.

• [wysinwyg]

  Wait, I thought the copyright zealots already decided that there ARE no lawful users of MU, and even if there were they’re idiots and don’t deserve their data, and even if they’re not idiots that’s just tough shit.  Why aren’t we listening to these people?  /sarcasm

• [TheMidnightHobo]

  Haha, hooray! I’ve been anxious to see what’s going to happen about this. Good on yer, EFF.

• [snagglepuss]

  This is what copyright fiends have really been aiming for all along:  The stated “WAAH! They’re taking our stuff !!!” tantrums, which always seemed childish, were really just a precedent-setting smokescreen before ramming through the far-more-sinister idea that “WE can stomp onto the Internet and take ANYTHING WE WANT away from YOU !!! And you have to PAY us to get it back ! And then we’ll do it to you AGAIN !” ad infintum….

  The old “Piracy and Blackmail are wrong unless WE’RE doing it ! So THERE !!” tactic. Not that that surprises me in the least. It’s been the operating model of the music business for decades..

• [Alan Wexelblat]

  There’s a typo in your text – you wrote “Megeretreival.com” instead of Mega… Fortunately the underlying href points to the correct thing so it’s just a surface typo.

• [Michael Best]

  I suspect the reason they don’t have access is not necessarily a technical one, it may be a legal one.

• [Shinkuhadoken]

  I appreciate the effort of the EFF, but I can’t help but feel it’s incredibly unlikely that a file hosted on Megaupload would be the only one in existence. Is this really a battle worth fighting?

  • [EvilTerran]

    If you were using MU for your backups, and your computer broke down / got stolen / etc in the last few days, for instance…

    I feel that’s beside the point, though — if big content can shut down *this* massive online service at will, in a way that results in all the data stored on it being lost, that sets a nasty precedent. What about the *next* massive online service they decide they don’t like?