The U.S. government shutdown of MegaUpload left lots of users in the lurch. Though many of MegaUpload’s users were no doubt guilty of the copyright infringement that brought the site down, many were not. Though there are no clear percentages, a great many of MegaUpload’s users were undoubtedly innocent, and the data they stored on MegaUpload’s servers was completely legal.
Now the Electronic Frontier Foundation is partnering with Carpathia, one of the two hosting companies that own MegaUpload’s servers, to help users get their data back. They have set up a MegaRetrieval to provide users information on recovering their data. The project is still in its early days, so don’t expect to get your data back any time soon. Nevertheless, it’s good to see that someone is looking out for MegaUpload’s law-abiding users, in light of the government’s refusal to do so.
There is no word yet on whether the other company that hosted MegaUpload’s servers, Cogent, will be participating in this program as well. As we reported yesterday, the government informed the two companies that they could begin deleting MegaUpload data as early as Thursday. TorrentFreak reported this morning that users had at least another two weeks, however, while the authorities, hosting companies, and MegaUpload’s attorneys tried to work out a solution.
Did you have legitimate data stored with MegaUpload? Let us know in the comments.