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Appeals Court Won’t Help Megaupload User to Get His Files Back


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The Appeals Court has denied a request from former Megaupload user Kyle Goodwin to intervene on his behalf. The sports videographer has been trying to get his files back for years and hoped to force a decision from the District Court, but this has proven unsuccessful. As a result, his files will remain under lock and key.

megaupload

More than five years have passed since Megaupload’s shutdown early 2012.

 

The criminal investigation took out the largest file-storage site of its time, and also meant that millions of users lost access to their personal files as collateral damage.

 

One of the affected users is Kyle Goodwin, who operates a sports video company in Ohio. He used Megaupload as part of his business, to safely store large videos he created himself.

 

Although many assumed that the Megaupload data had been permanently lost, Mr. Goodwin wasn’t ready to throw in the towel that easily. A few months after the raid he asked the court to assist him and others to retrieve their personal property.

 

Unfortunately for him, the District Court has yet to issue an order that allows former users of the site to retrieve their data. Assisted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Williams Mullen law firm, and Stanford’s Hoover Institution, many requests were filed but without a satisfying outcome.

 

Having exhausted nearly every option, Mr. Goodwin’s legal team urged the Appeals Court to intervene last month. The Government’s apparent disregard for the rights of former Megaupload users continues to hurt innocent bystanders, they argued.

 

Mr. Goodwin’s lawyers asked the court to issue a ‘writ of mandamus‘ to the trial court, requesting it to act on their client’s behalf and create a process for Megaupload users to regain access their data.

 

While the EFF hoped this would break through the five-year log-jam, the Appeals Court denied the request late last week.

 

“Although, as Mr. Goodwin points out, his motion for return of property has been pending for a significant period of time without decision, we do not find on this record that the district court has refused to adjudicate the matter,” the order reads (pdf).

 

“Accordingly, the petition for writ of mandamus is denied without prejudice,” the Appeals Court added.

 

The Appeals Court has the power to intervene in cases where a District Court “persistently and without reason” refuses to make a decision, but found that this is not the case here.

 

This means that the stalemate continues, even after five years. Mr. Goodwin’s data remains out of reach for the time being, and the same is true for all other users who still hope to be reunited with their files.

 

His legal team is not giving up though. EFF Senior Staff Attorney Mitch Stoltz informs TorrentFreak that they will continue their efforts to return the data to the rightful owners.

 

“We’re disappointed that the appeals court refused to step in to get this case moving. Kyle Goodwin and many others have been waiting five years to get their data back, and soon it might be un-recoverable. We will continue asking the district court to act on Mr. Goodwin’s request,” Stoltz says.

 

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Of course not, the appears court has been a sham for such a long time haha.

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Too bad for this guy and many others. I do feel bad for them and think that they deserve to get back what is theirs. But this is a hard lesson learned for them (I hope). Always store your stuff locally and redundantly.

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straycat19

The writing was on the wall long before Megaupload that storing data only in the cloud was risky business when several storage companies went bankrupt and turned off their servers in the middle of night for not paying their bills.  It isn't cheap, but the $20,000 I have spent on my home NAS is the best investment I ever made.  I have a total of 25 years of data stored on it.  I can lose up to 6 drives in the NAS simultaneously and still not lose one byte of data.  You may not be able to afford to invest a lot in one but even a small NAS that includes redundancy/backup is worth the investment for your 'can't lose' files.  An external backup drive, while better than nothing, can fail also, and if like most people, you leave it connected permanently to your computer, it can be subject to the same malware/ransomware/encryption as your main system.  If you go that route the best thing to do is connect it and do a backup and then disconnect it.  It's all about security of your data AND your device.

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23 minutes ago, straycat19 said:

The writing was on the wall long before Megaupload that storing data only in the cloud was risky business when several storage companies went bankrupt and turned off their servers in the middle of night for not paying their bills.  It isn't cheap, but the $20,000 I have spent on my home NAS is the best investment I ever made.  I have a total of 25 years of data stored on it.  I can lose up to 6 drives in the NAS simultaneously and still not lose one byte of data.  You may not be able to afford to invest a lot in one but even a small NAS that includes redundancy/backup is worth the investment for your 'can't lose' files.  An external backup drive, while better than nothing, can fail also, and if like most people, you leave it connected permanently to your computer, it can be subject to the same malware/ransomware/encryption as your main system.  If you go that route the best thing to do is connect it and do a backup and then disconnect it.  It's all about security of your data AND your device.

Bit OTT as in my understanding... :o

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Unfortunately "laws" only apply for the one's that are making (paying for) them

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  • 1 month later...
On 10/05/2017 at 3:24 AM, straycat19 said:

The writing was on the wall long before Megaupload that storing data only in the cloud was risky business when several storage companies went bankrupt and turned off their servers in the middle of night for not paying their bills.  It isn't cheap, but the $20,000 I have spent on my home NAS is the best investment I ever made.  I have a total of 25 years of data stored on it.  I can lose up to 6 drives in the NAS simultaneously and still not lose one byte of data.  You may not be able to afford to invest a lot in one but even a small NAS that includes redundancy/backup is worth the investment for your 'can't lose' files.  An external backup drive, while better than nothing, can fail also, and if like most people, you leave it connected permanently to your computer, it can be subject to the same malware/ransomware/encryption as your main system.  If you go that route the best thing to do is connect it and do a backup and then disconnect it.  It's all about security of your data AND your device.

I agree with your comments.

 

Do you mind sharing more information about your NAS setup? I'm interested to know what you got for your $20K investment.

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