Did you store personal files or other legitimate content on Megaupload before the FBI seized the service and shut them down? It looks like your window of opportunity to recover it is now open! Carpathia hosting, one of two services formerly powering the Megaupload site, just created MegaRetrieval in partnership with the EFF. This site claims to assist the EFF in assessing “the scope of the issue facing Megaupload users who are at risk of losing their data” and driving “awareness that Megaupload customers can seek legal assistance to retrieve their data.”
Carpathia emphasizes they don’t have the power to retrieve data for Megaupload customers directly, as they don’t have (and never had) access to Megaupload’s data. They do, however, support the EFF’s efforts to ensure retrieval of non-infringing files for users needing them.
At this time, the company’s founder, Kim Dotcom, remains in prison in New Zealand, at the request of U.S. authorities, but denies all charged leveled against Megaupload and promises to mount a “vigorous defense.” Lawyers in other countries suggest the U.S. overstepped its bounds by taking the service offline throughout the world, not just in the United States. The indictment itself is under criticism for its basis on a criminal complaint. Previous copyright infringement complaints of this sort have been handled as civil cases, according to Jeff Ifrah, the co-chair of the American Bar Association’s criminal justice section and committee on white collar crime.
Whatever the eventual outcome, it appears the agreement struck to allow the EFF’s mediation in recovery of legal data is an attempt to address at least one criticism levied against the Justice Department; the accusation that they didn’t distinguish between non-commercial, personal data and potentially infringing commercial content when seizing Megaupload’s servers.
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