The U.S. Justice Department, which killed popular online file-sharing and storage site Megaupload, is facing growing criticism over its action.
"The Justice Department has faced criticism over the takedown for not distinguishing between material stored on Megaupload's servers that may have infringed U.S. copyright laws, and non-copyrighted material that was legitimately stored there by users, some of whom had purchased a premium subscription from Megaupload. Lawyers in other countries have also accused the Justice Department and FBI of overstepping their authority by taking Megaupload offline not just in the United States, but worldwide," InformationWeek reported.
The indictment, too has been criticized for not distinguishing between civil case and criminal case. Some of the copyright infringement case such as YouTube was not dealt as criminal matter. However, the Megaupload case is being treated as a criminal case.
"The bigger lesson may be simply that the Obama administration is attempting to satisfy demands from music and movie trade associations that it do something about piracy. "We have an administration that's very captive to that industry" Megaupload lawyer Ira Rothken told InformationWeek.
Meanwhile, some negotiations between Megaupload and its hosting companies have resulted in good news for Megaupload users. The hosting companies - Carpathia Hosting and Cogent Communications - said they have agreed to give two weeks of relief to Megaupload users so that they can find a way to retrieve their data. It also gives Megaupload some time to release some of its frozen funds so that it can pay the hosting companies. On Monday, the companies had threatened to begin deleting Megaupload user data from Thursday as Megaupload had not cleared its dues.
"The hosting companies have been gracious enough to provide additional time so we can work out some kind of arrangement with the government," Rothken said, according to news reports.
Meanwhile, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, who is awaiting extradition to the U.S., is reportedly piling up a strong defense. Dotcom has denied all the charges against him.
