Andre Yoskowitz
15 Apr 2012 20:38
Last week, attorneys for the former top cyberlocker Megaupload came out swinging, calling the criminal prosecution of the site's top executives "unduly adventurous," while accusing the government of trying to destroy evidence in the case.
"In essence, the government has taken what it wants from the scene of the alleged crime and is content that the remaining evidence, even if it is exculpatory or otherwise relevant to the defense, be destroyed," said defense attorney Paul Brinkman at the time.
On Friday, a federal judge declined to pull the plug on the seized data, which amounts to 25 petabytes, the same as 25 million gigabytes.
The government has openly admitted to copying "selected data" from the servers and has now cleared hosting service Carpathia to delete the rest. The data currently costs Carpathia $9000 per day to host with no one footing the bill now that Megaupload's assets are frozen. The US District Judge Liam O'Grady did not agree with the government's plans to make the information disappear, and instead is ordering the various parties connected to the case to broker a deal.
Megaupload says the data is necessary to show the site was not a criminal enterprise but instead a locker with "substantial non-infringing uses."