14 DAY TRIAL // MegaUpload is dead, at least for now. Unfortunately for many users so are the files stored there. Fortunately for pirates, everything is still available on the large number of other cyberlocker sites, over BitTorrent and so on. Unfortunately for legitimate users, their files likely are not available on other places.
The ones that had files in the MegaUpload cloud, but not anywhere else, never a good idea, are the ones being hit the hardest by the whole MegaUpload spectacle. Pirates have plenty of other options, legitimate users don't.
Still, the actual data hasn't been deleted, yet. But the US government is not really concerned about it, it got what it was looking for and signaled the hosting companies, Carpathia and Cogent, that they are free to delete it if they so desire.
Thankfully, as always, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has intervened. The group is now asking for users that are in the unfortunate position of having lost access to files to contact it.
"Luckily, those companies aren't following the government's example of shooting first and asking later. To that end, Carpathia has put together a site at www.megaretrieval.com where Megaupload customers can contact EFF and provide information to help assess the scope of the issue and possible responses," the EFF wrote.
The EFF is not promising anything at this point, but it is trying to help users that are in a tight spot. For now, it's trying to assess the situation and its scale and is looking for possible solutions, from suing the US government to working out a diplomatic solution for users to get their data back.
But there are still no guarantees. The hosting companies don't really have access to the files stored on their servers. Even if they did, it's not their data to hand out. MegaUpload can't do anything about it at the moment either.