
Leaseweb has wiped all Megaupload servers - Peroni
https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/347342896174866433
======
gizmo
I was under the impression that the megaupload servers weren't paid for after
Kim's assets got frozen. Leaseweb was forced to keep the data for the duration
of the investigation, and had to eat the losses. My guess is that Leaseweb
reached the point where they just want to cut their losses and move on. I
highly doubt Leaseweb wiped the Megaupload servers "just because".

This looks like an attempt by Kim to create outrage and bad PR for Leaseweb.

~~~
s_henry_paulson
Disagree.

Let's say you are accused of robbing a convenience store. The police take the
security footage, review it, and then erase it. According to everyone that saw
the tape, you did it, and perhaps they even retain a few seconds of footage
that shows something like a coat that you own.

Would you think it fair that one party gets to use evidence to convict you,
that you yourself are not allowed to see, or use for your own defense?

~~~
stephengillie
What if the police had to keep the convenience store closed until the trial? I
believe that's a more accurate analogy.

The convenience store owner would be furious about the lost business from
having to shutter the store for months or years, watching as formerly faithful
customers just walk on by.

~~~
codeoclock
Leaseweb isn't closed. They just had to store some servers. They could just
turn them off, put them in storage, then sue law enforcement or the DOJ
equivalent for the opportunity cost and storage costs. That's not an accurate
analogy at all.

~~~
Shish2k
> then sue law enforcement or the DOJ equivalent for the opportunity cost and
> storage costs

Does suing the government ever actually work?

(Honest question, I'm not an American and I've only seen people try to sue in
high-profile cases like PRISM, which never seems to get them anywhere)

~~~
Theory5
Yes, Henry Ford did it in the 1950's to recoup the losses after the Allies
bombed his tank making factories in Nazi Germany and Axis controlled
territory.

There are certain laws in place to keep people from willy-nilly suing the
government, but there are situations where it is possible to sue them and
sometimes even win. (not sure about this case in particular, anyone want to
weigh in?)

~~~
pluies
Do you have any source for this trial? I can't seem to find any trace of it
when googling. Also Henry Ford died in 1947 and had cerebral issues before
that, so if the trial did happen in the 50s it was either brought by his
successors or Ford Motor Company.

~~~
Theory5
My mistake, I contributed factually inaccurate information. Thanks for the
help!

"1946: Ford sues the allies for damages done to his factories in Dresden
during the infamous bombing, and wins compensation."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ford_Motor_Company](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ford_Motor_Company)
</br>
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_Wa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II)

------
pheew
A very good friend of mine is high up the management tree at Ocom (parent
company of Leaseweb) and told me they wiped the servers 2 weeks after he got
arrested because there were no requests from the dutch government to seize the
servers. It's standard policy for Leaseweb to wipe servers 2 weeks after the
account is closed and my guess is that Mr. Dotcom knew this very well.

~~~
philliphaydon
I don't believe you, I just spend the last 30 minutes looking through all the
legal, privacy, terms etc of lease web and NO where does it warn you that data
will be kept for 2 weeks after the closure of an account before its deleted.

But apparently monthly backups are kept for 2 years.

I bet Leaseweb wants to cover their ass incase they got in trouble for what
ever was on the drives.

~~~
uxp
Kim DotCom seems to agree that they were wiped a while ago:

[https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/347346908462841856](https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/347346908462841856)

------
piqufoh
"They informed us TODAY that servers were deleted on February 1st, 2013."
[https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/347346908462841856](https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/347346908462841856)

~~~
tripzilch
Huh, so the evidence against Mega/Dotcom was already gone since February? Why
didn't they say anything?

How far was the case at that time?

While LeaseWeb should've given some advance warning (that would've been
reasonable, considering Mega was probably one of their biggest customers), the
destruction of all this data is on the US gov's hand, obviously.

------
Avenger42
Sounds like spoliation to me:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoliation_of_evidence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoliation_of_evidence)

> The spoliation inference is a negative evidentiary inference that a finder
> of fact can draw from a party's destruction of a document or thing that is
> relevant to an ongoing or reasonably foreseeable civil or criminal
> proceeding: the finder of fact can review all evidence uncovered in as
> strong a light as possible against the spoliator and in favor of the
> opposing party.

~~~
mtgx
So will the case simply be dismissed now, like Daniel Ellsberg case was
dismissed when the court found out the government was illegally wiretapping
him?

------
preinheimer
What were they supposed to do? They filed motions a long time ago that the
cost of simply being forced to store a lot of data for a client who couldn't
pay them (because their funds had been frozen) was incredibly high.

The government wasn't going to let them sell the servers to dotcom, and they
had a business to run.

~~~
smackfu
And maybe at the end of all this, the government will get a conviction. Maybe.

------
downandout
I can't imagine that this is a big deal, even though Kim Dotcom is trying to
make it one. His lawyers have had ample time to copy anything they needed, and
for trial purposes a backup of every file is not necessary. A copy of their
database containing names and descriptions of files, along with their actual
code for the site, should be more than adequate to present a defense that they
aren't criminally liable for copyright infringement.

He may have had dreams of resurrecting MegaUpload as a business, but any hope
of that was gone within a few days of the domain seizure. That's why they
seize domains - it doesn't matter whether they win or lose at trial or drop
the charges. They get to give target sites the death penalty long before the
owners ever set foot in a courtroom.

~~~
kamjam
_He may have had dreams of resurrecting MegaUpload as a business, but any hope
of that was gone within a few days of the domain seizure. That 's why they
seize domains - it doesn't matter whether they win or lose at trial or drop
the charges. They get to give target sites the death penalty long before the
owners ever set foot in a courtroom._

You don't seriously believe that do you? PirateBay domain has been blocked
from the UK but it it still accessible if you know how or through a different
domain names. KickAssTorrent (kat.ph) domain name was recently seized by
Phillipine authorities but it was back up within hours. A simple Google search
will point you to the new domain name, in this modern age the domain name
really doesn't mean _that_ much once you have the brand established.

[http://torrentfreak.com/kickasstorrents-domain-seized-
after-...](http://torrentfreak.com/kickasstorrents-domain-seized-after-music-
industry-complaint-130614/)

~~~
downandout
Something tells me that, even if it still had its data and was free to operate
again, MegaUpload would not get most of its previous users back (except
perhaps to download their stuff and move it elsewhere). That is what I was
saying. You take a site off the internet for a week, and in the minds of most
people, it is gone forever.

~~~
kamjam
Most likely so, but I haven't read any about any figures about exactly what
percentage of MU users we "legitimate", storing personal or business
documents/images/files etc vs videos, music and other questionable files.

If it's more of the latter, then I suspect the user base would largely be
unaffected.

------
stephengillie
Apparently Carpathia just shoved Mega's HDD's (or maybe full racks?) into a
warehouse instead of wiping them.

[http://inagist.com/all/347346225932165120/](http://inagist.com/all/347346225932165120/)

------
mark-r
So how much trouble would it have been to spin the disks down, take them out
and store them in a closet somewhere and tell Kim "We know you're having
financial difficulties now but you can have them back for $X when some of your
funds get unlocked"? It's not like his troubles were a secret. That would
eliminate the majority of the daily cost of keeping the data online.

~~~
preinheimer
A lot.

They're undoubtedly in some sort of raid, so they're going to need to un-rack
every device, pull every single drive, label its position within the raid set,
pack them properly, then store in a temperature controlled environment. Then
follow along, slotting new drives they purchased in every single slot, then
re-rack the whole device.

All in the hope that one day Kim will 1) Win and 2) decide it's worth it to
get the data back for a business model & product he's left behind.

~~~
X-Istence
You don't need to store the hard drives in a temperature controlled
environment. Look at the range they can exist in when turned off...

Not only that, but I imagine that even if a couple drives died in the mean
time, it wouldn't be a big loss.

------
technifreak
Isn't that tampering with evidence?

~~~
andyjohnson0
Different jurisdictions. The court case is in the US but the servers are in
the Netherlands.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
That doesn't make it not "tampering with evidence" it just makes it unlikely
to be legally actionable.

------
av500
that's what you get when you store data "in the cloud"...

~~~
TallGuyShort
And the physical seizure is what you get when you store data "on bare
metal"... I agree that cloud services have their risks, but it's hardly
relevant here.

------
codesuela
Aren't the Leaseweb servers just a mirror of the US servers? Being an
international hoster it wouldn't make much sense to host individual files on
just one server.

Also while this sure sucks for people who had files hosted there what was
Leaseweb supposed to do? Can't really fault them for wiping servers that
nobody paid for. Also this prevents them getting dragged into any legal
proceedings like when the proscuter decides he needs more data for his case.

~~~
codeoclock
Looks like it was the only place European users data was stored.
[https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/347373843767238658](https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/347373843767238658)

------
will118
I haven't been following his case in too much detail;

I understand that some people used Megaupload for genuine cloud storage, even
though it was a small fraction.

I have noticed Kim is always talking about wanting his data back, can anybody
tell me why?

I thought some of the evidence was conversations essentially about enticing
people to upload more (pirated) content, what exactly was on the Leaseweb
servers that would help Kim out?

I'd always thought he would have wanted them wiped?

~~~
dagw
_I 'd always thought he would have wanted them wiped?_

Maybe he did want it wiped, but didn't want it to look like it he wanted it
wiped. Being able to go "They destroyed all the evidence, now I can never
prove of my innocence" is a pretty nice PR card to play irregardless of the
facts.

~~~
antoko
I hate to be "that guy" but "irregardless" is not actually a word. I have
known some people to use the word ironically but that doesn't come across well
in text.

regardless - without regard to

irrespective - without respect to

adding the prefix ir- _and_ the suffix -less is doing the same thing twice,
its a double negative.

Ha, there's even a wikipedia entry[1], I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irregardless](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irregardless)

~~~
sejje
You sure stepped up in spite of your distaste. The word has been in print
since 1795? Yep, better chastise this guy!

Also, double negatives are common in many languages, and were common in
English in the past. It's a relatively recent evolution that it's considered
bad practice.

Additionally, there's no authority on words, so to speak. "Proper language" is
a reflection of how people speak the language. Irregardless isn't going
anywhere, it's in widespread use.

~~~
antoko
Why would you think I'm chastising rather than educating?

You're reading snark where none was intended, and responding in kind.

Double negatives are a problem when you're actually trying to use a single
negative which is the case here.

I wasn't offering myself up as an authority on words, I'm pretty bad at both
spelling and grammar.

Also, as a Brit living in the US I'm also well aware of different uses of
words/spellings and agree that the point of language is communication, and
irregardless doesn't cause confusion, as it is obvious what someone means when
they use the word.

The whole point of prefacing my comment with, "I hate to be that guy", was to
suggest that I'm not actually that guy to soften any perceived
insult/criticism.

------
shared4you
I can't believe Kim Dotcom stored the data on only Leaseweb's servers. I hope
he has backup copies or mirrors from another storage provider.

~~~
benguild
Agreed. Normally server companies backup to tape. Where are the tapes?

~~~
duskwuff
I don't believe that's been common practice in quite some time.

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showsover
Why is "without warning" in quotes? Did he get a warning but chose to ignore
it? Didn't they send a warning?

I'm also pretty wary about believing wat mr. Dotcom says without a different
side of the story.

~~~
mikeevans
He claims that they informed him today that the data was deleted in February.

[https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/347346908462841856](https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/347346908462841856)

~~~
sigzero
Yeah, not sure I believe him about that.

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richkuo
The irony is that Leaseweb's slogan is "reliable hosting"

~~~
jacquesm
And they are extremely reliable. If you pay your bills. Happy Leaseweb
customer for over 5 years.

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thesmileyone
I firsthandedly had dealings with Kimdotcom and I hope he gets everything he
deserves. He is pondscum.

Was partly my own fault (for being naive) however he still broke his word!

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EugeneOZ
Such big service without backups? Can't believe.

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Apreche
No backups?

~~~
wmf
Do CDNs back up customer data?

------
danielweber
But, encryption!

