[148655] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Megaupload.com seized
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven Bellovin)
Thu Jan 19 23:08:48 2012
From: Steven Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
In-Reply-To: <CAArzuosF+UkmGLQBmBy9M8Jw-mc4gThrZAn+VVnfBWRCOZ9MGg@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2012 23:07:50 -0500
To: Suresh Ramasubramanian <ops.lists@gmail.com>
Cc: NANOG <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
I don't mean either -- I've only skimmed the indictment. But from the
news stories, it would *appear* that they got a search or wiretap =
warrant
to get at employees' email. I don't see how that would make it "not
private". (Btw -- "due diligence" is a civil suit concept; this is a
criminal case.) The prosecution is trying to claim that the targets
had actual knowledge of what was going on.
I do know Orin Kerr, however. He's a former federal prosecutor and he's
*very* sharp, and I've never known him to be wrong on straight-forward
legal issues like this. He himself may not have all the facts himself.
But here are two sample paragraphs from the indictment:
On or about August 31, 2006, VAN DER KOLK sent an e-mail to an
associate entitled lol. Attached to the message was a =
screenshot
of a Megaupload.com file download page for the file Alcohol 120
1.9.5 3105complete.rar with a description of Alcohol 120, con
crack!!!! By ChaOtiX!. The copyrighted software Alcohol 120 is
a CD/DVD burning software program sold by www.alcohol-soft.com.
and
On or about June 24, 2010, members of the Mega Conspiracy were
informed, pursuant to a criminal search warrant from the U.S.
District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, that =
thirty-nine
infringing copies of copyrighted motion pictures were believed =
to
be present on their leased servers at Carpathia Hosting in =
Ashburn,
Virginia. On or about June 29, 2010, after receiving a copy of
the criminal search warrant, ORTMANN sent an e-mail entitled Re:
Search Warrant Urgent to DOTCOM and three representatives of
Carpathia Hosting in the Eastern District of Virginia. In the
e-mail, ORTMANN stated, The user/payment credentials supplied in
the warrant identify seven Mega user accounts, and further that
The 39 supplied MD5 hashes identify mostly very popular files =
that
have been uploaded by over 2000 different users so far[.] The =
Mega
Conspiracy has continued to store copies of at least thirty-six
of the thirty-nine motion pictures on its servers after the Mega
Conspiracy was informed of the infringing content.
(I got the indictment from =
http://static2.stuff.co.nz/files/MegaUpload.pdf
-- while I'd prefer to use a DoJ site cite, for some reason their web
server is very slow right now...)
On Jan 19, 2012, at 10:48 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:
> Er I'm sorry but do you mean joeschmoe@corp.megaupload.com type
> emails, or joeschmoe@hotmail.com type emails?
>=20
> If megaupload's corporate email was siezed to provide due diligence in
> such a prosecution - it would quite probably not constitute private
> mail
>=20
> On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 8:49 AM, Steven Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu> =
wrote:
>>=20
>>=20
>> The Megaupload case is unusual, said Orin S. Kerr, a law =
professor
>> at George Washington University, in that federal prosecutors =
obtained
>> the private e-mails of Megaupload=92s operators in an effort =
to show they
>> were operating in bad faith.
>>=20
>> "The government hopes to use their private words against =
them," Mr. Kerr
>> said. "This should scare the owners and operators of similar =
sites."
>=20
>=20
>=20
> --=20
> Suresh Ramasubramanian (ops.lists@gmail.com)
>=20
--Steve Bellovin, https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
