Megaupload Fallout in the File Hosting Arena

On April 26, 2012, Megaupload data negotiations began. Carpathia reported that maintaining the data costs over 9,000 USD a day, and wanted to seek a formal resolution on whether to delete the data or release it to interested parties. United States district court Judge Liam O'Grady seemed sympathetic to Carpathia's plight and ordered all parties to return to the negotiating table. 

Oops! Carpathia, in the attempt to relieve themselves of the backbreaking cost to maintain thousands of servers - yes thousands - they instead got the wrong sort of attention when the DoJ pointed out that 35 million USD had been paid by Megaupload to Carpathia, and alleged that Carpathia wasn't as innocent as they were portraying themselves.

Meanwhile, the fallout of Megaupload's shutdown has brought the self-imposed limitations of other file sharing services. FileSonic.com, FileServe.com, FileJungle.com, Uploadstation.com, x7.to and 4Shared.com, withdrew the ability to share links to files, canceled affiliate programs and/or began to allow users to only download what they themselves uploaded. Other files hosting services blocked access to users in the United States or those with US based IP addresses; Uploaded.to and Turbobit.net (a torrent indexing services) began blocking access to U.S. vistors in February. BTJunkie, another popular torrent indexing site, completely shut down of their own accord in Februrary as well, as did QuickSilverScreen, a streaming video link site.

MediaFire and RapidShare spokespeople have stated theses companies are not concerned because file hosting is a legitimate business and Megaupload essentially got greedy and careless. RapidShare spokesperson pointed out that Microsoft's SkyDrive also operates in the same way of other file hosting services.

So even though, some of us may have lost access and convenience, there are still options out there. And more to come. Where one service shuts down, another one starts up. 

Read more...

Collateral Damage of the Megaupload Takedown

by Perri Lamanna

Old News: Megaupload, the Hong-Kong based file sharing site, was shutdown by the US Justice Department in January of this year (2012) for operating a service dedicated to the illegal sharing of copyright material.

Along with Megaupload went the companies hosting the servers, and the data being shared. Carpathia and Cogent are two of the hosting companies that were affected; Cogent's stock dropped sharply, and has only recently began to recover. Carpathia meanwhile denied in a press release ever having access to the Megaupload servers, yet, on the contrary, were creating a website (http://www.megaretrieval.com/) to assist "lawful" Megaupload users to retrieve their data. A clear knee-jerk reaction to the U.S. Attorney Neil H. MacBride's statement that users whose data was not accessible contact the server hosting companies directly.

At this point, it looked like legit users' data was very possibly headed for mass deletion. Still, why would any legitimate user be worried about their data since the Megaupload FAQ clearly stated that users should keep copies of their files and that the site [Megaupload.com] services could be terminated at any time without prior notice... Does anyone read the FAQ anymore? Well, they should, but no one really does until something horrific happens. It's the same hindsight principal of doing hard drive backups religiously; there's always tomorrow.

New News: For the slackers and procrastinators who saved data on Megaupload servers, but failed to save a copy of their own (tisk, tisk, shame on you), you're very likely SOL. 

The EFF (Electronic Frontiers Foundation), an organization protecting civil liberties in the digital world, went to court April 13th, defending the legit users' rights to their data. The judge differed a two week decision to lawyers representing the Motion Picture Association of America, Megaupload, at least one service user whose files are inaccessible, and... the hosting companies, Carpathia and Cogent.

The EFF defends that a system should be established that allows legitimate users to file for access to their data; a system that isn't easily implemented now that thousands of servers storing the data have been unplugged and shipped to a Virginia warehouse, according to the attorney for Carpathia Hosting.

The short of it; it's too costly for the hosting companies to maintain the servers, which they are not being paid to maintain any longer by Megaupload, and the MPAA lawyers, among however many other association lawyers looking out for their client's interests, don't believe any of the data should be given back to the users, as that it is likely copyright material hidden among seemingly innocuous files.

Next week marks the deadline for a decision... when the fate of gigabytes of data may or may not be marked for permanent deletion.

Read more...