The US govt is sharing case file content with copyright owners, claiming they're victims

Dec 12, 2013 14:59 GMT  ·  By

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is arguing that Megaupload users are victims of what’s been happening in the past couple of years.

Last week, it was reported that the US government was actually sharing Megaupload case file information with the copyright holders, which means that they could soon start filing lawsuits against Kim Dotcom, his company and regular users.

The government says that copyright holders are victims of infringement and they need the data for lawsuits. But the EFF argues that the MPAA, RIAA and other groups representing copyright owners don’t really qualify as victims.

In a letter submitted to the court on behalf of a Kyle Goodwin, a reporter who lost a lot of work-related files when Megaupload went down, and who has been asking to get his data back for months, the EFF stresses that users are the real victims here.

“While we appreciate the government’s intent to appropriately address victim rights, we submit that the court should also ensure that the rights of the many users of the service who have lost their property but who have not been accused of copyright infringement, including Mr. Goodwin, are also addressed in any next steps in this case,” EFF’s letter reads.

This is just an example of how a tool that’s been taken off the Internet, such as Megaupload, can complicate the lives of many people. While some may still hold the hope that they’ll get their personal files at some point or another, others have completely lost this hope after Leaseweb, a server hosting provider, wiped all Megaupload servers it was holding. Data from 630 servers got lost in the process.

Leaseweb says it contacted Megaupload and no one was interested in keeping up the servers, but Kim Dotcom points the finger at the US government, which has been dragging its feet in the case against the Internet mogul and his company.