MegaUpload's Clients Included US Government Officials

Back in January, the FBI took out MegaUpload on charges of piracy. Since then, many users complained that their files had been lost as collateral damage. These users stored a great deal of personal data in the cloud that was MegaUpload – we're talking totally legitimate files here. Since then, there have been various efforts made to allow these users to retrieve their files. Those involved, included the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the site's founder, Kim Dotcom. They have been in talks with the Department of justice to allow users to retrieve their files. What's interesting, is that it turns out that many of those users were also high ranking US government officials. Oh, the irony!

“Megaupload’s legal team is working hard to reunite our users with their data. We are negotiating with the Department of Justice to allow all Mega users to retrieve their data,” Kim Dotcom told TorrentFreak. "Guess what – we found a large number of Mega accounts from US Government officials including the Department of Justice and the US Senate.”

“I hope we will soon have permission to give them and the rest of our users access to their files."

The EFF are also worried about the long term chilling effects on similar sites and innovation over this shutdown. EFF staff attorney Julie Samuels said:

"In general we are very concerned about the implications the ‘Mega conspiracy’ indictment has for the future of cloud computing and file-hosting services, and innovation more generally. It’s hard to imagine how the nature in which this went down won’t have a chilling effect going forward. We hope to come up with processes for future cases that will counteract that".

Yes indeed. Almost immediately MegaUpload was raided, many similar sites either disabled all file sharing functionality or closed down, such as http://btjunkie.org who now simply displays the following depressing message on their site, against a blue background:



The EFF have set up a website dedicated to help users retrieve their files, at www.megaretrieval.com

Yes, these are sad times indeed when powerful vested corporate interests can kill off innovative sites and services in the name of maintaining big profits for themselves.