Even if I don't trust the justice system in the US I really hope that the FBI will fail their investigation and will have wasted a ton on money on this. Even better that they are found convicted of wrongfully use of power or something approaching that.
(I never said that Megaupload is innocent though, but I like well followed procedures, they are the guardians of our liberties)
The sentiment that due process was not followed has come up multiple times. Is that what you mean by "well followed procedures"? If so, how did they violate due process? I am unaware of any way that they did. (Note that I am using "due process" to mean "due process as dictated by law" not "what I think is fair" or "the way I think things should be.")
This article is really about the merits of the case, which is separate from the question of following due process upon arrest and indictment.
Well yes the fact that they are dead even before any judgement has been pronounced is quite infuriating. It's not a coincidence that money is seized and their domain name taken, it's made to destroy the website even before any kind of judgement can roll out. I may be the only one but I find that outrageous.
But if the FBI loses this case and its image is tarnished then it could be a precedent and may change the way these copyright infringement cases are conducted. I am not american and I would hate to see the FBI take away my startup business on the ground that I am violating copyrights because of my users.
I realize that you can lose your business if your equipment is confiscated and so forth, but isn't this akin to a temporary injunction? These stop a suspected-within-reason on-going crime and do not require a full trial to be placed. I don't know how long a temporary injunction lasts or what is considered reasonable, but every time I see the argument about shutting down the business, I am reminded of the temporary remedy. Perhaps it is abused in this case. IANAL and have little idea of what I am talking about, so please correct me on the legality here if you know better.
That they're being compared to a drug ring is rather unsettling, even if we assume that all the prosecutions claims are true.
The ongoing damage here, if any, is only economical and a much more narrowly construed seizure could still largely prevent further damage while safeguarding their legitimate customers.
It seems similar, but one significant difference is that, in a drug bust, it's pretty cut and dry as to whether the targets are doing something illegal. The mere presence of drugs automatically makes it so. That's not really the case here. A judge could very well determine that Megaupload never broke any laws.
in a drug bust, it's pretty cut and dry as to whether the targets are doing something illegal
That's way too subjective for law. The prosecution has to prove to the jury (NOT the judge) that what they found is, in a criminal case, beyond a reasonable doubt, an illegal substance.
Not exactly difficult. A chemist with a mass spec could prove it in 5 minutes.
Proving willful noncompliance with the dmca is a whole different league of problem.
That is my thinking. However, I think the proper analogy would be a drug bust where one of the drug ring's warehouses' lease was up. Now, the government is perfectly within its rights to go through the warehouse and log and dispose of any illicit drugs found, but I don't think the government is allowed to do a wholesale liquidation of all the materials found in the warehouse. The materials should be held in escrow until the end of the trial.
So you're saying that the FBI should be allowed to arrest a business's operators and seize equipment that they believe are violating the law... but leave the business (which they believe is illegal) to keep running somehow?
The FBI will attempt to prove that MegaUpload was an illegal business. Why should they just let it keep running if that is the case?
If your business is destroyed the moment they seize the servers, then you've already been "judged". I'm not a law expert, but I'm pretty sure a big part of modern judicial system is that you have separate people investigating and giving the verdict. Right now the FBI, for the business itself, was judge, jury and executioner.
You can call technicalities and process and mandates and whatever, but the facts stand: Megaupload is dead, and there was absolutely no trace of a fair trial.
While you may not think much of the distinction, it wasn't the FBI that decided to shut them down - it was the judge that decided there was probable cause and thus signed the seizure warrants. So the judicial branch made the decision - this is the same branch that can imprison you before you're found guilty if they believe you're dangerous or a flight risk.
If you allowed all organizations to continue to operate until they were proven to be breaking the law you'd have something very closely resembling anarchy. Imagine if ever pump and dump boiler room operation had 1-3 years advanced notice before being subject to asset seizures.
I think the reasoning the feds use is it prevents the suspect from destroying evidence, and/or stops the activity from continuing to 'harm' the public.
But then they better have damn solid evidence first that the additional time period the company is left operating will be instrumental in increasing the damage done sufficiently to make significant difference. In this case Megaupload have been operating for years.
IF they're found guilty, the additional time of operating in a situation where everyone who might want to use them to pirate knows they're under significant government scrutiny is not likely to make the damage done all that much greater.
As for destroying evidence, in this case the feds are happy to let the hosting companies destroy data - they've apparently warned Megaupload that lots of user data will get deleted by the hosting companies soon for failure to pay, because Megaupload's assets were seizes so they can't pay...
So not only are they not allowing the files to stay online, they're preventing Megaupload from ensuring they can retain copies of customer data in the event they're found not guilty.
Regardless of whether or not they're found guilty, this way of acting is downright disgusting.
My gut tells me so much money went into this multi-national synchronized operation that no judge in his sound mind will let all charges go. at least they will have to break even.
I don't know, I think there have been some high-profile cases where a lot of time and money was spent by the government, but the result was either no conviction, or a conviction of a much lesser charge.
Now, since as you say, this was a large multi-national operation, I don't know if all those charged will be extradited to the USA, or if they'll be tried in other countries. I really have no idea about laws & procedures around the globe, but if they are extradited to the USA, I wouldn't count the MegaUpload folks out just yet. It's probably very dependent on how much of their assets are frozen, which will affect how much of their money they can spend on legal representation. (I say unfortunately, because it seems to me that in an ideal justice system, everyone should have the same level [high!] of representation, rather than some being able to "buy" better lawyers).
Yeah, pretty much. One of the essential principles of Western democracy is that everyone should be equal under the law, that what is a crime for a peasant should also be a crime for a noble. If you can use money to purchase better legal outcomes (through e.g. better legal representation), that principle is undermined.
In the USA at least, much of our government could function nearly the same regardless of if our market system is completely laissez-faire capitalism, or hardcore communist. In fact, you could argue that government and its' systems, like the judicial system should be completely devoid of any possibility for profit motives. Since, as saucetenuto states, those undermine the system.
Now, I don't want to get into an argument about whether good lawyers deserve to get paid better than bad lawyers, etc. But I don't think I'd want to meet the person who sees the justice inequality between rich and poor defendants and thinks "All is as it should be."
What do you mean by "no judge in his sound mind will let all charges go"? Do you mean that no judge would dismiss the charges before trial? I agree that is unlikely, but it's a rare thing for a judge to do that.
But outside of that, it's not up to the judge. It's a criminal case, and they will be tried by a jury. If they're convicted, the judge will determine their sentence. But it's not up to the judge to determine their guilt. (Unless the defendants forgo a jury trial and elect for a trial by judge, but I doubt they will.)
Not really, the same with any organization - if the people who made the decisions lose face, they will double down before sunk costs.
The comparison in this case might have the prosecutor go after some lesser charge just to stick anything in order to justify the huge operation in the first place.
This is precisely why there is a separation between the executive and judicial branches of government. Unfortunately I do agree they're not as separate as we might wish.
If you think MU is the victim here and that the FBI are the criminals, you’ve got it backwards.
They took down individual links only, while still keeping the infringing files on the server, and all the other un-reported links to that exact file (they also hashed each upload, so to detect duplicates, and complete the upload instantly and have 1 data file... a fingerprint system they never used to prevent re-uploads of copyrighted material that was reported).
Then they conspired (shown in leaked emails) to only follow DMCA requests coming from large US entities (while ignoring requests coming from Mexico, for example).
Their entire business revolved around tricking people into signing up for paid accounts so they could download copyrighted material. And made 175 million from it.
Say I've legally purchased an MP3 from Amazon and I decide to use my UberUpload to host the file so I can access it from any device. UberUpload decides to hash the file so it can depulicate the file and save disk space. Some other user downloads a pirated copy of the file TheArrrrrrBay and uploads it to UberUpload. The file hash is the same, so instead of storing the pirated version, UberUpload points to the legal copy.
Now we have a single file with the same hash, but two pointers, one legal and one illegal. If UberUpload deletes the file, it is deleting legal and illegal content. If it deletes the illegal pointer, the legal copy of the file still exists.
I could be wrong, but the links I've found so far all have 8 characters.
Notice it's a somewhat easily searchable space. You can enumerate all links starting from point1 to point2 (I think they assigned sequential numbers so no need to search the entire space).
Hence the slew of public MegaUpload-search websites that you could go to and search for every file in the index.
The point of the response was that if you needed private backups of your Amazon MP3 you should use a service that is a true lockerbox, and not a pseudo sharing site thats designed for sharing content. Otherwise, you need to take the blame for 1) losing access to your backups, and 2) knowingly sharing it even if you did not give the link out.
A lockerbox service that requires some authentication, or a very large GUID type link that can't be enumerated.
MegaUpload was designed for sharing.
The case of someone losing their legitimate Amazon MP3 upload is an edge-case that inconveniences one person, but takes down the sharing of hundreds, or thousands, of copies of illegitimate copies.
What is shady/illegal about this? 8 Characters are memorable and easily accessible. Just because someone puts their wallet in their handbag doesn't give me the right to take it if I can.
It would be nonsensical to store two copies of the same file as a service like MU or Dropbox. That file might legitimately be owned by user A and illegitimately owned by user B. Just because a DMCA takedown request was filed against user B's link doesn't mean user A should lose their legitimately owned file. This is analogous to someone storing stolen cash in a bank. Just because there was a stolen $20 in the vault, doesn't mean all $20 notes in the bank are stolen.
It will be interesting to see the outcomes of these events, it may make me lose all faith in humanity.
In combination with all other factors. Everything.
> Just because a DMCA takedown request was filed against user B's link doesn't mean user A should lose their legitimately owned file.
As a copyright holder, that's not my problem that 1 in a million decided to upload some questionable copy of my work to a publicly accessible pseudo-sharing site that violates my copyright over and over and over again.
If you upload it to MU, then cry to someone else when that same criminal enterprise gets shut down and you lose the one copy you had.
Your right weren’t violated. Mine were.
Anyone crying about this is just playing a victim card here after making a bad decision. Or can't come to grips with reality after assuming that since copyright infringement is so easy to do, it must not be a bad thing to do, and it must be part of your entitlement.
But as a copyright holder do you have the right to take my legitimate, bought and paid for copy down?
I know of someone who may or may not have used a site like UU to get recent episodes of the show X. Once UU stopped sharing links, this person looked for other ways to get the recent episodes of X. She tried purchasing them from iTunes, but to no avail; She tried purchasing from Amazon Streaming but to no avail. Her only option is to wait for the DVD to come out or pirate.
There is a case where money is lost due to piracy. The answer is not to sue the pirates but to provide distribution methods.
>If you upload it to MU, then cry to someone else when that same criminal enterprise gets shut down and you lose the one copy you had.
> Your right weren’t violated. Mine were.
Actually, mine were. I bought a copy and you destroyed it.
You keep claiming that I deserve to lose the copy that I bought because Megaload may have paid someone else to upload copyrighted content. Exactly how was I supposed to know this? (Hint - at a mininum, you need to point to a public announcement by Megaupload to this effect.)
Eight characters is about the length of an ordinary password. Exactly how far does blame extend, then? I've seen more than a few people who honestly believe that keeping a URL secret somehow protects the content.
I can understand if you're mad about copyright infringement, but why does that person who recorded all of their child's sports matches deserve this merely for using MU? They were sharing their own movies with the rest of the team, true, but that's all the more reason to use a site like that in the first place.
All my premises have been that 1) MU was one of the top piracy sites on the net, 2) profited from piracy, and 3) was designed for spreading piracy.
Instead of edge-cases, how about a common one? Or does that not count?
So yes, if any of the above is true, what happened to MU was good.
And as far as that loaded question about the person losing his child's sports matches... You can frame it however you want, it does not change the facts we know about MU. MU was most likely a criminal enterprise.
Whatever you think of MU, what happened to the people who lost their files is bad. After all, it will not affect the pirates one bit. There are plenty of copies of whatever they're infringing, but there probably aren't any other copies of those sports matches.
You can call that "loaded" if you like, but it actually happened.
> You are grasping at unrelated analogies and contexts.
You're claiming that 8 character ids are inherently public. Why is the "publicness" of 7 numeral ids an unrelated analogy? After all, the universe of 7 numeral ids is significantly smaller than the set of 8 character ids, so if the former is private (by obscurity) then surely the latter is as well, absent some other factor.
This is highly unlikely. If this is the case then both Google Music and Amazon CloudDrive are both illegal. As of right now there are no lawsuits underway in this case. MP3.com has experienced some of these lawsuits but rulings so far point to this being legal. There is also the fact that emailing an MP3 to yourself would then constitute copyright infringement, which I find even less likely for courts to uphold.
If you have any concrete evidence that storing copyrighted files in non-local storage is copyright infringement I would be very interested in seeing the case law.
Any copying of a work under copyright is a crime unless there is an exemption in law. It's deny by default. Google and Amazon probably pay license fees to the RIAA. MP3.com was shut down for making unlicensed copies of songs that the users already owned the CD for, so I don't see how you got from them being put out of business to "being legal".
The law is US Title 17
§ 106. Exclusive rights in copyrighted works
Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;
(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and
(6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.
§ 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
Of the other sections from 107 through 122,
§ 108 allows libraries to reproduce "no more than one copy or phonorecord of a work".
§ 109 allows the owner of a physical copy to sell it, but forbids renting or lending software media (CDs etc) without a license.
§ 110 allows schools and churches to hold plays.
§ 111 allows the local loop of a network to repeat the network signal without obtaining an extra license for every single retransmission.
§ 112 allows TV stations to save a single copy of their transmission.
§ 113 prevents reproduction of a "pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work"
§ 114 regulates music streaming services.
§ 115 forces the RIAA to allow anyone to license copies of "non-dramatic" music (ringtones) at royalty rates set in law.
§ 116 allows jukebox owners to form a union to negotiate licensing fees.
§ 117 allows you to let your computer make a copy of software from disk to ram to run programs.
§ 118 gives PBS extra powers in negotiating license fees.
§ 119 allows satellite TV to convert the satellite signal to a TV signal.
§ 120 allows people to photograph buildings.
§ 121 allows the government and nonprofits to make Braille copies of copyrighted works.
§ 122 forces the satellite TV networks to obtain an extra license again.
"Cloud Player is an application that lets customers manage and play their own music. It's like any number of existing media management applications. We do not need a license to make Cloud Player available."
Your assertion that all copying is illegal is also false, as found in SCOTUS's refusal to hear the Cablevision case in 2009.
In addition, in the UMG vs. MP3.com decision the problem was that MP3.com was doing the copying. The judge made a clear distinction between what MP3.com was doing and time and space shifting, which are closer to what cloud storage services are doing.
If a file resides on a server, but has no access to the outside world, does the file still exist? When you delete a file, it is still technically retrievable even though your OS leads you to believe otherwise. The whole discussion on hashing and fingerprinting is irrelevant. Youtube could do the same thing, but they don't either.
Also, those leaked emails, as you call them were actually emails that the feds obtained from MU's mail server, probably via warrant. Those emails were used as the foundation of the indictment that was later presented to a grand jury. So, there is a huge question as to what probable cause the feds had to search MU's mail server in the first place, given that MU was complying with the DMCA safe harbor provision. MU appeared to only honor DMCA requests that came from legitimate parties; the email snippit claiming that they ignored a request from Mexico does not state the name of the entity that made that request, probably because it was made by a guy named Jose from an aol.com account.
Anyway, this whole case is going to dissolve in front of the prosecutors' faces on Thursday when any trace of offending material is deleted do to discontinuation of service from Cogent & Carpathia. Dr. Evil appears to always get away with it.
From a Carpathia rep: “In reference to the letter filed by the U.S. Department of Justice with the Eastern District of Virginia on Jan. 27, 2012, Carpathia Hosting does not have, and has never had, access to the content on MegaUpload servers and has no mechanism for returning any content residing on such servers to MegaUpload’s customers. The reference to the Feb. 2, 2012 date in the Department of Justice letter for the deletion of content is not based on any information provided by Carpathia to the U.S. Government. We would recommend that anyone who believes that they have content on MegaUpload servers contact MegaUpload. Please do not contact Carpathia Hosting”
> If a file resides on a server, but has no access to the outside world, does the file still exist?
When there are 100 more links to it? Yes. It exists.
> So, there is a huge question as to what probable cause the feds had to search MU's mail server in the first place, given that MU was complying with the DMCA safe harbor provision.
The rest of your post is one assumption after the other, that goes against what is reasonable to assume based on everything we've witnessed in this case.
I guess I should have prefaced my last post by saying that I'm looking at the whole case from a legal perspective.
There is no question in my mind that MU thrived by appearing to comply with the DMCA, while encouraging illegal use of its service.
However, if the gov't wanted to really send these guys to jail for a long time, they appear to have screwed up the foundation of their case pretty well. If the initial search of the MU mail server was not found to be valid, the feds lose. If Cogent & Carpathia delete all of MU's data (i.e. evidence) and the feds can't prove in court that offending material existed, the feds lose. It's turned into a real mess from a prosecution standpoint. No wonder Kim pleaded not guilty instead of taking a plea bargain.
Removing individual links makes sense--if someone filed a DMCA request with Dropbox for a song and it ended up getting removed from my Dropbox as well that would be ridiculous.
In the case of something that is always illegal (say child porn) there would be a duty to remove all instances of a file, but when it's a case by case basis of whether or not there is a copyright issue it does not make sense to take files down en masse. Remember that uploads to MU were private--you received a secret link.
Random question here: Let's say I keep a backup of my movie and music library on Megaupload. Is there anything wrong with it? Like is it my duty to password protect the files in order that nobody else can access it? i.e. what I am trying to say is, does just because there is copyrighted content on Megaupload it has to be automatically illegal?
> Removing individual links makes sense--if someone filed a DMCA request with Dropbox for a song and it ended up getting removed from my Dropbox as well that would be ridiculous.
Dropbox has a very clear concept of private files and public files. If a DMCA request was issued for a file you're storing in your public folder, I would certainly expect Dropbox to remove all instances of that file in all public folders on all accounts.
You seem to be saying that if I write and record a song and put it on a dropbox public folder, then issue a DMCA takedown for another user who has copied my files, dropbox should delete my files as well.
...then that exceptionally rare person will be inconvenienced in the process of correctly dealing with the significantly more common case. In either case it should be relatively easy for them to reacquire the file, if needed.
Hopefully they also remove the one they're hosting for you, the copyright holder.
If I had files in dropbox for personal use removed because someone filed a DMCA request against the same file someone else was sharing with everyone I'd be rather annoyed. Especially in the day of digital downloads.
Just because 1 upload is using it in an infringing manor doesn't mean all of them are.
> Then they conspired (shown in leaked emails) to only follow DMCA requests coming from large US entities (while ignoring requests coming from Mexico, for example).
Color me ignorant, but this doesn't sit right with me. Does the DCMA have international scope? Does the FBI enforce Mexican law?
That's not being asked. The question is wether a Mexican entity has legal standing to take legal action using a US law against a US-based entity in a US court.
From what I've read about Dotcom he seems like a shady guy. But in all honesty, how is he worth persuing over some drug cartel in a different country. (Note: I'm not making an opinion on whether drugs should be legal or illegal). Was it really worth the potential international relations fiasco, dollars spent on investigators; agents et al. All this wasted time and money to go after a set of people who have allowed internet users to write 1's and 0's and share them.
Oh the humanity! How can these people be allowed to live. /s
The time for cyber villans is not now, when the streets are still full of their ancestors.
Considering some people will neither stop doing drugs nor sharing copyrighted files against the copyright holders' will, the authorities felt they could go against the folks who were least likely to shoot back.
Now, seriously, comparing the amount of misery illegal drugs cause with the amount illegal file sharing does is, at best, ludicrous. It's like all the more serious problems are solved and now they have to turn their attention to the copyright infringers.
This is crucial: the difference between the state of mind (mens rea) requirement for the criminal charges, and the clear(!) violations of the civil statutes at hand.
Even if, for some reason, this isn't getting Megaupload off the hook, it's worth remembering why exactly this isn't going to (gasp!) destroy that "cloud" thing everyone keeps writing about.
She is general council for a company that would really like a 'hey we tried' interpretation of the DMCA [1] and only a 'Non Resident Fellow', so I'm not sure I would read the posting as having the full editorial weight of Stanford Law.
Jennifer Granick used to be the Director of Stanford's Center for Internet and Society. She still teaches at Stanford Law regularly, and she was previously Civil Liberties director at EFF and counsel at a boutique Internet law firm. I don't know what you mean by "editorial weight" here, but you certainly shouldn't discount anything the author says on account of where she works or her current affiliation with the Center for Internet and Society.
Well if you read the article that doesn't matter in this case since it's a criminal case not civil (in which it could be argued that the system in place was inadequate). The article claims that what needs to be shown is intent on violating the DMCA requirements which I'm not sure the FBI has that strong of a case about. They had a system in place and responded to request showing that they were at the very least doing the bare minimum to comply and thus weren't (in my opinion, with what I know), blatantly trying to violate the DMCA.
Yes I understand the argument put forward in the article, but I was curious about the steps Megaupload took to try to conform with US law.
All of this is crazy, and the point in the article is very much valid in my opinion, on the other hand if the copyright holder allegedly affected were to sue Megaupload in a civil case in the country that Megaupload operates from then that would be perfectly fine in my opinion. I don't agree with the copyright laws that exist at the moment, but everyone should have the right to try to protect their rights in court, even if I don't personally agree with the law.
The reason I asked about what steps Megaupload made to comply with DMCA complaints, and what the law says about DMCA take downs, was out of curiosity about the legal landscape and the chances of Megaupload in this case, even though it shouldn't be a criminal case.
Apparently they responded to DMCA requests to take down individual links. But they did nothing to stop the same file from being uploaded again with a new link.
I am not sure if that is required by the DMCA. I know youtube has this "fingerprinting" system that stops copyrighted uploads, but is that the law?
The argument they will presumably make is that their system is a deduplicating file storage system. That one instance is infringing does NOT automatically mean another instance is infringing. For example, assuming the court agrees that personal backup copies can legally be kept, deleting the actual file instead of the links could delete legitimate backup copies. See the number of artists that were features as claiming to use Megaupload in their ads, for example...
Even other public links might be legitimate, and Megaupload would not have a way of determining that based merely on the presence of links.
Do I think they were aware that there were tons of illegal copies? Absolutely. But whether or not they could blanket delete content without in effect deleting content the people filing the DMCA takedown requests had no rights to request taken down is an entirely different matter.
Indeed, a fingerprinting system doesn't tell you what "legal color" the bits are (http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23). One copy of a file can be infringing while another, identical copy, is legit.
I know this might sound like a conspiracy theory, but why did kim dotcom host servers in the U.S., clearly he knew about the issues that would present, so maybe he wanted to test the system legally and get a bit of spotlight for himself, the scapegoat turned avenger?
MegaUpload ran a net profit margin of around 40%. Hosting anywhere else probably would have wiped a lot of that out. Their main competitive advantage was download speeds in the USA - if you read online comments there was constant bitching about the speeds of other sites vs Megaupload.
But forget the download servers being hosted in Virginia - what is much much worse is that they hosted their email servers at the same colo. This entire case and almost all of the evidence is built up around the contents of that email server. The feds obtained a secret warrant to get the details and most of the facts in the indictment are based on what they found.
That's a rational, measured assessment. You bring up an excellent point at the end: if all of their evidence is from the emails, how did they get the warrant to obtain the emails?
I submitted it, but it looks like you already did so last week, and it didn't get much attention. I hope more people can see it from this thread.
I have also been spending some time reading over the Viacom vs YouTube case. The parallels between it and Megaupload are striking - the difference being that Megaupload is a criminal case while YouTube was a civil case. I found that the YouTube internal emails were much more incriminating than the MegaUpload emails. I plan on writing up the details of the emails and other parallels between the two cases sometime this week.
Another excellent argument to use encryption. It seems every couple of weeks there is another high-profile incident where a lot of trouble would have been saved if people had taken the time to set up Enigmail.
I would also love to see some advances in client-side steganography that could be usable as easily as GPG. Probably the closest thing we have now is TrueCrypt hidden volumes but that doesn't really work for email.
It is not a settled question whether you can be forced to decrypt or not; some judges have considered encrypted drives protected and others have not. And the UK has compelled individuals to decrypt as well.
The fact remains that you are much better off encrypting in the first place even if you are eventually forced to decrypt. You can challenge the order to decrypt, you can add more time to the investigation and give your lawyers more time to put together a strategy for whatever angle they consider most prudent, you can prevent surreptitious listening that may arouse interest in your activity in the first place, and so on.
Even if you ultimately are forced to comply with an order to decrypt, which again is by no means guaranteed, you still do yourself a lot of favors by encrypting from the get go. And we haven't even mentioned protection from non-governmental entities like script kiddies, competitors, or tabloids.
Unfortunately this is the case now. I am hoping that someone invents something that makes steganography more usable. "----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----" is a little obvious for my taste, though of course encryption is much better than nothing.
Encryption is not so foolproof. A judge in Colorado has ordered a women to decrypt her laptop. The authorities will find ways to plug the loopholes that technology creates. If they can't break mathematics, they can break your will.
or just don't host in the USA, since apparently now you can be forced to decrypt. I wouldn't trust the UK, EU, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand etc. either - which rules out most countries that have decent peering and colocation infrastructure.
Can anybody suggest a country/host that is cheap, fast and outside of the reach or co-operation of a US federal investigation?
I don't think so. If you're really concerned about communication staying irretrievable by hostile players you will have to use some alternate channels and take care to ensure that you don't leave tracks on the devices that would get confiscated. I wouldn't just plop something in Costa Rica and expect it to be OK.
You'd want to look at where the spammers and malware pushers host or are located, mostly china, russia and a few eastern european countries. Of course you're trading one set of problems for another: depending on the location you'll likely lack most IP protection, be subject to constant surveillance, extortion and organized crime.
The indictment mentions NinjaVideo as an affiliate of some sort. Given that they were recently taken down for criminal infringement, it is possible that they found something in their emails or whatever which they were able to use against MU. Assuming that's true, one would expect them to go after any affiliates of MU next, using the evidence they've gathered in this case.
So you're saying that a german national and convicted white collar criminal may have intentionally had his hundred million dollar plus company shuttered and himself and his employees held without bail so that he could force a legal showdown with the US government over whether or not he was adequately exploiting loopholes in the DMCA?
Last week I read somewhere that Megaupload ended owning the servers after a legal dispute ended with the bankrupcy of an american company called Alpha Red. That meant it started to be reachable by USA, as evidenced by a civil demand a year ago by https://www.perfect-10.tv/
(I never said that Megaupload is innocent though, but I like well followed procedures, they are the guardians of our liberties)