The woes that have befallen Megaupload are about to go just a notch higher. Following the closure of the file sharing giant and the subsequent indictment of founder Kim Dotcom as well as a number of executives, the company’s data is now on the verge of being deleted, according to a communication from attorneys representing the fallen company. Before its closure, the company handled hundreds of tera bytes worth of users’ data and this data was stored in a number of data warehouses in the US and other parts of the world.
With a the closure of the business and ceasing of business operations, the company now has no money to pay for these data warehouses that are leased from third-party providers. Now these third-party providers are planning to delete all the data on their servers if Megaupload fails to pay up the rates due for storage. This will definitely upset very many users as a good number of them used Megaupload to store and share legitimate data and would be very displeased if this data were to be lost.
Megaupload lawyers say they are lodging a complaint with authorities on behalf of users arguing that the case must be fair to both the media companies as well as users who were unwittingly caught up in issues that did not concern them. The lawyers feel they have a good shot at convincing the authorities to resolve the data issue because one of the things the curt ruling sites was the fact that the users must not be victimized even as the court orders are executed. The deadline for some form of recourse is Thursday and we shall be waiting to see how the authorities respond to this new twist in the Megaupload saga.
