Megaupload files: Judge orders DoJ to cooperate with sharing site

Published: 13 April, 2012, 23:19

The fate of Megaupload and the billions of files uploaded to the storage site’s servers is still up in the air, but a judge in Virginia did award a victory, albeit a small one, to the website on Friday.

Megaupload’s attorneys were at the US District Court of the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria on Friday to find out what will be done with the trove of files stored on the site’s servers. Ever since authorities shut down the storage site earlier this year, the personal files uploaded by as many as 60 million users of the service have been in legal limbo. On Friday, Judge Liam O'Grady told the court that all parties involved in the episode need to work together to figure out a solution.

For now, the data that was dumped onto the site by millions of subscribers will be safe from deletion — but that could change in two weeks when the court will once again consider how to proceed with the case.

Judge O’Grady told the court on Friday that all involved parties need to go back to the drawing board and negotiate further on how to handle the files that were on the servers that were frozen during the shut-down of the site in January. Representatives for the entertainment industry had wanted all data destroyed, citing that re-releasing them to the Internet and the users of the site would only further copyright infringement. The attorneys for Megaupload, on the other hand, have been asking to be allowed access to the data, claiming that files uploaded to the seized servers would help build their defense. According to Megaupload, access to the files uploaded by their users will show how often their service was used for noninfringing purposes, but the US Department of Justice insists that that is “pure speculation.”

FULL STORY: http://rt.com/usa/news/megaupload-servers-friday-court-026/