Carpathia, EFF Team to Assist Megaupload Users

Managed hosting provider Carpathia Hosting says it will work with The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to assess the scope of potential data loss from legal users of Megaupload, the file-sharing service that was recently shuttered by the U.S. government. Megaupload was a Carpathia Hosting customer, and housed some of its servers inside a data center in Virginia.

Carpathia Hosting has created the website MegaRetrieval.com to help lawful users in the United States work with EFF to investigate their options for retrieving their legitimate, non-infringing files from Megaupload.

Megaupload's domain names and data were seized Jan. 19 by the U.S. Justice Department, which alleges that the company enabled users to upload and share pirated TV shows and films. The data seizure created a problem for many users that stored legal content on Megaupload.

“EFF is troubled that so many lawful users of Megaupload.com had their property taken from them without warning and that the government has taken no steps to help them,” said Julie Samuels, Staff Attorney at EFF. “We think it’s important that these users have their voices heard as this process moves forward.”

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a letter saying that it was done with the data on Megaupload’s servers, acccording to the Washington Post, and that it "understood that the companies hosting the data for the file-sharing site could begin deleting data from the site starting Thursday."

But Carpathia Hosting says it has does not have, and has never had, access to the content on Megaupload’s servers. The company said it is working with the EFF to assist lawful users of the Megaupload service by promoting EFF and its non-profit legal services.

“Carpathia does not have access to any data for Megaupload customers," said Brian Winter, Chief Marketing Officer of Carpathia Hosting. "We support the EFF and their efforts to help those users that stored legitimate, non-infringing files with Megaupload retrieve their data.”