Blame MegaUpload, if you stored legal documents on the cyberlocker
service and now may not be allowed to retrieve them, according to the
U.S. government.
Neil MacBride, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia
who has accused MegaUpload and founder Kim DotCom of criminal copyright
violations, asked a federal court in documents filed last night to deny a
request for a protective order filed by Carpathia Hosting, which houses MegaUpload’s user data.
Carpathia wants the court to help pay the costs of preserving
MegaUpload’s data, which it claims is more than $500,000 and growing, or
protect Carpathia from civil claims should it decide to delete the
information. Carpathia has said that in most cases where a customer can
no longer pay for service, the servers are wiped and used elsewhere.
MacBride told the court that the government relinquished any claim to
MegaUpload’s data in January and that Carpathia, on its own, decided to
maintain the information at its own expense. MacBride suggested that
Carpathia did that because of possible civil lawsuits it could face, if
managers deleted the information. MacBride not only was dismissive of
Carpathia’s claims about the financial burden associated with
maintaining the data, but he reminded the court that it is overseeing a
criminal matter and not a civil case.
