When MegaUpload went down in January, there were complaints from many legitimate users of the site saying that their personal files, including files for work, were gone. One of the solutions has been in the form of a lawsuit being brought against the FBI by the Pirate Party.
Kit Dotcom, finally out on bail, has told TorrentFreak that he is now also working with the Department of Justice to get legitimate users their files back. The deal described by Dotcom would have Megaupload users being allowed temporary access to their files to retrieve them.
The most interesting news, however, comes from the revelation that many users of MegaUpload included government officials from the DoJ and US Senate.
This isn’t the first time that the very people who are trying to stop copyright infringement have been caught with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar. It was revealed in December that employees at the RIAA and Department of Homeland Security were found to be downloading illegal copies of files. In our original report for example, it was found that people at the RIAA had been downloading all five seasons of Dexter over BitTorrent.
This is just another case of government officials’ hypocrisy. They push for stricter anti-file sharing laws while their own employees use the benefit of their office’s high speed Internet connection to download all the illegal files they want.
Going back to Kim Dotcom’s attempt at getting users their files back, the revelation that government officials use the service as well probably won’t help him in his upcoming extradition case. It will, however, make people more aware of the hypocrisy in government which could have an effect on other proceedings and the push for new laws like H.R. 1981.
We’ll keep you updated on any and all developments in the continuing MegaUpload saga.