I have to stress that I think for any business to use this or a cloud service is fine and savvy, but to have it maintain your sole copy of important documents and work that you have no other copies of or access to is beyond stupidity.

I have my account with Bitcasa (which I have yet to be able to use properly because of their buggy as hell software) and my intent is not to store anything on there that is in any way valuable or does not have a copy in existence on my PC or my unRAID microserver at the minimum.

Putting your faith in 3rd party services to look after your data without any redundancy is foolish, you never know when something like this might happen, or their service becomes unavailable, the company goes bust or the datacentre is hit by a meteor, any number of things really.

On the subject of whether it is illegal or not, I'm not sure what qualifies anyones data as being above the apprehension of federal law if it is possible at all, I can imagine the FBI would laugh at anyone that dared suggest that what they are doing is illegal, however you view it morally.

Quote from: Clock'd 0Ne on January 30, 2012, 20:41:46 PM

On the subject of whether it is illegal or not, I'm not sure what qualifies anyones data as being above the apprehension of federal law if it is possible at all, I can imagine the FBI would laugh at anyone that dared suggest that what they are doing is illegal, however you view it morally.

It's down to ownership, imagine if the FBI went into microsoft or sony and deleted all the files they had because a few were not legal. In this case Megaupload does not own the files, it rents or provides space for them. Deleting the files could open the FBI to huge amounts of litigation, including loss of earnings, storage access and the value of the data.

An alternative example view, a big company rents out hundreds of secure storage lockers, of which you rent one. The police find that a few criminals are using their storage to keep illegal drugs. They then burn the contents of all of the storage spaces, including yours. You still think you have no rights to sue for damages?

And of course they should have their data backed up separately, but what about companies who have used it for group projects where many people are at a distance? This could disrupt work for thousands of people.

They're idiots. There are many better services out there intended for code development, project storage space or sharing between friends and family.

Don't think I ever saw anything on megaupload that wasn't illegal.

I think you'll probably find that in the terms and conditions the company will have something that either transfers rights of ownership or gives then the right to do whatever they want with your uploaded data, move between servers, copy, delete, etc...

The FBI would only be invoking that clause.

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I think you'll probably find that in the terms and conditions the company will have something that either transfers rights of ownership or gives then the right to do whatever they want with your uploaded data, move between servers, copy, delete, etc...

The FBI would only be invoking that clause.

I very much doubt if they ask for transfer of ownership or rights to remove the data either providing it's legal. The data is the life of the company, if it all goes then Megaupload won't have any income. There is also the defence of the ToC insisting people use the service do not use it for illegal purposes.

On top of this it is all evidence, if they delete it before the trial then their case will be substantially weakened if not voided.

I've never even looked at Megaupload, so I can't comment on the amount of illegal content on there. If data held is copyrighted and on there in breach of that then by all means delete it after the trial, but quite quickly new services will spring up in countries less bothered about the issue.

I understand where you are coming from Liam with regard to media hosting, I do think that choosing to use a service provider that is known to be used to host illegal copies of copyright material was a questionable decision though, there are better services and ways of going about it as you pointed out mentioning Amazon's S3. If you're entering into this kind of scenario you need to know what's going to happen to your data if the worst happens and the service is shut down, sadly as you've highlighted its going to nearly always end up as lose/lose in most cases

This isn't fueled by the feds. The orders they had in place are no longer required.

So if anything you're complaining about the lack of interaction they're having in this situation.

The files are being deleted because megaupload aren't paying their bills and no-one needs the storage providers to hold the data any longer for evidence.

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You do realise there are quite a few independent artists on itunes now?

Heck if randoms on youtube can post tunes up on itunes it can't be that exclusive a club.

You also realise itunes is DRM free on the music side?

Yeah?

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Of course, pulling bits and compare wont work as meant to. The start to finish big picture of their service would mean no artist or band would need their services. There was even plans with the megaupload one to put money back to the artist to fun making the albums etc through getting money from the advertising the site made etc.
We have to pay a bit to much of a high price now for music, especially outside of the US for the right to have DRM free though. I am fine with that but the hikes are set not by Apple, they wish they were less too but to keep the music on their they have to do silly deals even they do not like.
Movie buys on itunes here are same or sometimes more expensive then the physical media as a result of these which is crazy!

All these independents that make it big get signed up by record labels for reasons they feel they need to launch their carrier. Removing any need for them is a great thing for all expect the publishers etc.

None of this is fuelled by the feds, just like anything, it is the politicians and the corporate companies helping them be politicians. Like the few guys who pulled out supporting SOPA who have had their funding cut from people like Disney as a result.

I do not know how much coverage you have in the UK of Dotcom and him in jail here but it is on nearly every day.
- His layers are not been given the full set of charges for why his has been arrested for.
- One of the few reasons given has already been removed because the firearms all have licences.
- Police have been interviewed on TV and all the reasons they made the arrests were not actually related to megapload and Piracy, they were for fraud charges, drug charges etc. (That is how they got him)
- Dotcom's layers pretty positive that the charges they know of and guess at what he will be charged of will fall over due to the legal processes not being correctly followed. In the rush to take him down it just seems things were just not done right. They called it a witch hunt on the tv.
- This guy is indeed a bit of a dick it seems, Flaunted what he was doing and very likely was doing this illegal stuff, but as mentioned may very well get off just about everything because it has been handled poorly.
- He can not get bail because he has aliases.
- He has a criminal record in his home country but got NZ residency because by German law after a period of time of being crime free you history is basically wiped which allowed him to get his residency.

If the correct law and human rights process are followed it could very well be that he gets off with minor chargers and his assets restored. Megaupload may die but he is likely to set up something new or carry on with his music goals.

A lot of this is wait and see.
My points are in all this are:

1. This was not handled in the right ways at all.
2. This is much more then about Piracy
3. People doing nothing wrong are harmed and loosing out and can do nothing about it.

.