Re: Megaupload.com seized

[Rodrick Brown <rodrick.brown () gmail com>]

On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 11:30 PM, James Smith <james () smithwaysecurity com>wrote:

> I can only imagine the bloodbath this will cause.!!


Show me a file sharing site with no illegal content! This is just insane.
What's quite interesting is that Rapper/Producer Swiss BeatZ is the current
CEO of megaupload how ironic.

> -----Original Message----- From: Steven Bellovin
> Sent: Friday, January 20, 2012 12:07 AM
> To: Suresh Ramasubramanian
> Cc: james () smithwaysecurity com ; NANOG
> Subject: Re: Megaupload.com seized
>
> 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 <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?
> >
> > If megaupload's corporate email was siezed to provide due diligence in
> > such a prosecution - it would quite probably not constitute private
> > mail
> >
> > On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 8:49 AM, Steven Bellovin <smb () cs columbia edu>
> > wrote:
> >
> > >       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’s operators in an effort to show
> > > they
> > >       were operating in bad faith.
> > >
> > >       "The government hopes to use their private words against them,"
> > > Mr. Kerr
> > >       said. "This should scare the owners and operators of similar
> > > sites."
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Suresh Ramasubramanian (ops.lists () gmail com)
>
> --Steve Bellovin, https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~**smb<https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb>