Government: "Innocent" Megaupload user uploaded pirated music

But EFF chastises the feds for snooping through Kyle Goodwin's private files.

by Timothy B. Lee

When the Electronic Frontier Foundation wanted to vindicate the rights of Megaupload users who used the locker site for non-infringing purposes, they put forward Kyle Goodwin. The Ohio videographer used Megaupload as a backup service, but he lost commercially valuable footage thanks to the unlucky combination of the government's January raid and a personal hard drive crash. Since May, he has been seeking the return of his files.

But the United States government is urging the court to procede slowly. In a Tuesday legal brief first covered by TorrentFreak, the government argued that Goodwin should prove that he owns the files before the court considers whether he should get them back. The feds also suggest that Goodwin might not own all the files he uploaded to the site—some of them were pirated copies of mainstream music.

But EFF's Julie Samuels argues that the government's tactics should frighten anyone who uses cloud computing services. Not only did the raid deprive Goodwin of his data, she said, but the government is now apparently rummaging through Goodwin's files looking for information to discredit him.

Not that innocent?

The government argues that the contractual agreements among Goodwin, Megaupload, and Carpathia (the firm that leased servers to Megaupload) may not actually give users a property interest in data they upload to the service.

"If mere use of the service was sufficient to create a legal ownership interest in servers leased by Megaupload from Carpathia, then there could be hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands, of 'owners' of each and every single Carpathia server," the government argues. "Such a result is absurd."

Moreover, the government questions whether Goodwin owns all the files he uploaded to Megaupload. It says it reviewed Goodwin's website and found that "numerous videos produced by Mr. Goodwin have as their soundtracks recordings of popular copyrighted music."

Even worse, the government contends that Goodwin uploaded "music files with MD5 values that matched the hash values of pirated versions of popular music" to Megaupload.

But Samuels says it's the government who has some explaining to do. "The government's approach should terrify any user or provider of cloud computer services," Samuels told Ars by e-mail. "The government apparently searched through the data it seized for one purpose, in order to use it against someone who was hurt by its actions but who is plainly not the target of any criminal investigation, much less the one against Megaupload."

Samuels told us that the government's response to Goodwin's petition demonstrates "that if users try to get their property back, the government won't hesitate to comb through it to try to find an argument to use against them."

Ira Rothken, an attorney for Megaupload, agreed. "The DOJ's action of bypassing password protection and snooping into Mr. Goodwin's Megaupload storage account data raises some customer privacy rights concerns that will need to be addressed," he told us by e-mail.

Samuels points out that similar tactics could be employed against users of more mainstream file hosting services such as Amazon S3 or iCloud. For example, if the government accidentally seized iCloud servers containing the only copy of priceless family photos, you'd need to be prepared to explain why there are pirated MP3s in your iTunes folder.

Samuels also argued that it's unreasonable to demand an ordinary user such as Goodwin to endure a grueling series of court hearings just to get his own files back. The government's position, she said, would impose a "virtually insurmountable burden" on innocent users seeking to get their files back by "asking the court to do a slow-walking, multi-step process that takes place in a faraway court. Most third parties are not in a position to attend even one court appearance, much less the multiple ones the government envisions."