

25 petabytes bringing storage firm, court case to the brink of collapse - anigbrowl
http://aceds.org/news/25-million-gigabytes-brings-prosecution-megaupload-and-its-eccentric-founder-standstill

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mokus
> Federal prosecutors say they should not have to sort through the files at
> taxpayer expense, but have objected to their erasure.

Umm, what? The prosecutors don't think they should be responsible for
obtaining and examining the evidence to build their case? Who the hell else
should be? It's _exactly_ what they are being paid to do!

I fully agree that they shouldn't be wasting taxpayer money on it, but only
because they shouldn't be wasting it on this case in the first place. If it
were a case that actually merited attention, though (say, 25 PB of child porn
or snuff video), "we shouldn't have to pay to store and handle this much
evidence" would be an unacceptable response. I can only hope that it's
motivated by a desire to somewhat gracefully rid themselves of a toxic case.

~~~
rdtsc
> The prosecutors don't think they should be responsible for obtaining and
> examining the evidence to build their case?

Unless the whole shebang was done for political reasons just to bring
Megaupload down. Then they don't actually want to look at the evidence, expect
the case to lose, but the end goal of would be achieved, nevertheless.

~~~
devb
Does a defendent have any recourse at all in such cases? If the government
succeeds in shutting down a company without any finding of guilt, what's to
stop them from continuing to use that strategy?

~~~
Zirro
Or put another way, is the government liable to pay for the damages caused to
infrastructure and reputation of Megaupload, not to mention the psychological
pressure experienced by it's founder and his family? Considering all of this,
we must be talking extreme amounts.

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bunderbunder
_Federal prosecutors say they should not have to sort through the files at
taxpayer expense, but have objected to their erasure. MegaUpload attorneys
suggested hiring an e-discovery vendor to recreate samples of the data as
“read-only” files, but those efforts have been rejected._

If federal prosecutors don't like the US's discoverability rules, then maybe
federal prosecutors should think about trying to get the US's discoverability
rules changed. There's no shame in admitting that the standard is
unnecessarily broad and is part of the reason why it's so ridiculously
expensive to pursue a case in the USA.

For now, though, they helped make this bed and they should have to sleep in it
just like the rest of us. If not, well then I wish Carpathia the greatest of
luck in pursuing their hopefully forthcoming and definitely non-frivolous
lawsuit against the federal government.

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jack-r-abbit
Holy shit! I thought when the feds seize something... they actually _take_
it... you know... like evidence. They just left it with the hosting company to
store for them... and aren't paying them for it? What a bunch of asshats.
Whether MU is guilty or not, the hosting company should not be on the hook to
store the evidence. Hell, you'd think that would be enough to get the case
tossed since it doesn't sound like they have a very solid chain of custody
there.

~~~
notaddicted
And it is mystifying how they can justify not giving the data back to
MegaUpload. If it is evidence for the case, it must be available to the
defence right? And if it isn't evidence, then why can't they have it back?

~~~
bunderbunder
Well, there's a distinction made between making it available to the defence,
and giving it back to the defendant.

Apparently the data they have gotten around to collecting has been shared with
the defence. But presumably MegaUpload is not allowed to start serving that
data again.

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NLips
Surely the only sensible cost of the data is the lost business (assuming they
would be using all the storage for other purposes). No one can access the
data, so power consumption - the main cost of big data centres - should be
zero.

Have I missed something?

~~~
rmc
The hard drives might be encrypted, since the servers are on, they might be
mounted un-encypted. Turning them off would loose access to the decrypted
files, and hence make them inaccessible.

~~~
corin_
> _It says it has spent $65,000 to transfer the servers to a climate-
> controlled center. It is leasing the new facility for $37,000 per month,
> after its contracts with a prior facility expired._

I would imagine that means they were powered down for the move.

~~~
rdtsc
Not necessarily. There are setups to keep seized hardware powered up during
the move. They have it for laptops so I would guess someone sells that for
whole racks as well.

~~~
stephengillie
<http://www.wiebetech.com/products/HotPlug.php>

------
TeMPOraL
Is this me, or the comma in the submission title is in a weird place? I just
can't parse it. English is not my first language though.

~~~
andyjohnson0
Its a common practice in American English to use a comma in place of 'and' in
newspaper headlines. It is sometimes called 'the Headline Comma', and he
justification seems to be to save space.

There's a Metafilter thread about it here:
<http://ask.metafilter.com/20720/Headline-Question>

English is my first language and I find it hard to parse too, but its not
commonly used where I live (UK).

EDIT: Clarified that use is normally restricted to headlines

~~~
jerf
I would emphasize it's only in the headline dialect of English. Non-native
speakers should probably just avoid using it altogether. It certainly can't be
used to replace any "and" you'd like in a normal essay or anything.

~~~
andyjohnson0
Thanks. I've edited my comment to make the usage clear.

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cellularmitosis
The article links to an infographic ("25 Petabytes by the numbers"), which
claims that 800 years of MP3 audio is equivalent in size to 332 years of HD
video.

Sorry, I've never heard of any "HD" video codec which is only 2.4x as large as
MP3 audio.

------
Cyndre
Once Carpathia decides to delete/sell/get rid of the data the case will be
dropped. The US government only has to keep this tied up in court until
Carpathia (which legally could delete the data) deletes the data. Once the
evidence is gone they can easily escape from this horrible mess they have
created. "Your honour, I have some bad news. Since Carpathia has deleted the
data we no longer have a plausable way to continue with this case."

Megaupload destroyed, goverment doesn't have to pay them anything (after all
it was Carpathias fault) etc.

They can't just drop the case because mega upload is an email blast away from
being full on running again. Users don't have to resign up, reupload data or
anything. That is why the data needs to be destroyed, which I believe is the
end goal of the United States Government.

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sp332
The government could "unfreeze" enough of MU's frozen cash to pay Carpathia
for the data storage.

------
adventureful
25 million gigabytes

I had to read that a couple of times to remind myself just how big a petabyte
is. It's easy to forget the incredible scale of jumping from giga to tera to
peta.

~~~
moe
It's not very much in terms of hardware anymore.

As a rule of thumb, 1PB = 1 Rack. Depending on your redundancy strategy you
can fit more.

~~~
83457
Oh, only 25 racks of storage?

~~~
moe
They probably have significantly more, considering their deployment has grown
over years. Storage density roughly doubles every 2 years.

Would you start a new deployment from scratch today then yes, 25 racks, give
or take a few (that's roughly 1.5mio dollars, give or take a few).

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rsanchez1
What a mess the government has caused. They refuse to allow Carpathia to
delete the data, but refuse to compensate them for holding on to junk data.
It's outrageous.

