14 DAY TRIAL // The legal team working for Megaupload hopes to freeze the copycat MPAA and RIAA lawsuits until 2015.
A formal request for this has been filed with the federal court of Virginia and it hopes to postpone the showdown between Megaupload and the two associations, one for movie makers and one for the music industry.
The reason behind the request is the postponing of the extradition hearings of Kim Dotcom and his colleagues, which were pushed until next year.
More than two years after Dotcom’s house was raided and his assets seized, the US authorities want to extradite him, but the New Zealand authorities don’t seem too eager to do this. In fact, the hearing was postponed several times already.
Also, recently, the judges criticized the fact that the New Zealand authorities shipped off documents related to the case and evidence to the FBI in the United States. Soon after this issue was revealed, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Associations of America (RIAA) filed lawsuits against Megaupload within a few days of each other.
This backed theories running around the Internet that the US authorities were after the documents just so they could help copyright holders to file lawsuits to slow down Kim Dotcom’s defense team.
Still, with the lawsuits approaching, Megaupload’s defense can’t really build its case. “Relevant evidence that is electronically stored on servers, which would be needed to defend the civil cases, is not reasonably accessible. As a result of the Criminal Action, the Megaupload cloud-storage servers have been taken offline and are housed in a locked third-party warehouse in Virginia,” they say.
They continue mentioning that the US Department of Justice has been opposing Megaupload’s efforts to get access to those servers and data, which makes it impossible to create a strong case.
“Standard civil e-discovery protocols would typically include accessing and “mirroring” the original servers so that the resultant copies may be used to analyze the data contained therein. At present, that cannot be done,” the document obtained by TorrentFreak reads.
Lawyers want to stay the lawsuit until at least April 1, 2015, giving them some more time to try to piece the defense together.
It remains to be seen whether the judge will rule in their favor or not, but the issues remain either way, namely the inability to gain access to vital information because of the United States’ opposition.