MegaUpload’s lawyer Ira Rothken tweeted on Monday that they managed to get a 2 week delay on the two server companies Carpathia and Cogent deleting the files of MegaUpload customers. The servers, similar to those used by web hosts such as Bluehost, were to be deleted today but Rothken said:
“Carpathia and Cogent agreed to preserve consumer data for additional time of at least two weeks so #Megaupload can work with US on proposal.”
MegaUpload has been shut down by the US Federal Government after the file hosting site was prosecuted under piracy law. The company had leased servers from American based companies Carpathia and Cogent to hold some of the files of its 50million users. There is a still a large cloud over head though as to whether users will ever get the files back.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have set up a website called MegaRetrieval in the hope that when it becomes possible, legal files can be retrieved by users. EFF have partnered up with Carpathia, one of the server companies which host some of the MegaUpload files but in a statement, Carpathia said that the company
“does not have, and has never had, access to the content on MegaUpload servers and has no mechanism for returning any content residing on such servers to MegaUpload’s customers.”
So then, although Carpathia support the efforts of getting files back to users, there is yet no realistic method to do so. Considering the Department of Justice has already stated that MegaUpload in their own terms conditions mentioned the need to make backup files and they could remove their service at any time, it isn’t likely that users will be able to get their files back. It looks like a very complicated legal matter, and the fact that even the hosting companies, unlike Bluehost, cannot retrieve the information, it makes it seem pretty improbable at the moment.
