U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady in Virginia has scheduled a hearing to adjudicate a claim from Kyle Goodwin, a sports videographer in Ohio whose videos have been lost since the illegal raids in May on Megaupload, a file-locker service. The MPAA has asked to participate in the hearing in order to object, in principle, to the idea that the millions of Megaupload users who’ve had their files seized in the raid should be able to access them without “safeguards.” More from CNet’s Declan McCullagh:
The MPAA said today that while it takes no position on Goodwin’s request to have his own copyrighted videos returned, it wants to participate in the hearing to describe “the overwhelming amount of infringement of the MPAA members’ copyrighted work on MegaUpload.” (The MPAA’s six members are Paramount Pictures Corporation, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Universal City Studios LLC, Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., and Warner Bros. Entertainment.)
To those Hollywood studios, MegaUpload and its flamboyant founder Kim Dotcom represent the darkest elements of Internet file-sharing. MPAA chairman Chris Dodd has dubbed it “the largest and most active criminally operated website” in the world, and MPAA vice president Michael P. O’Leary claims it’s one of the most popular Internet sites “for streaming and downloading illicit copies.”
“It makes little sense for the MPAA, or MegaUpload, or Carpathia, or even the government — despite its actions otherwise — to prevent third parties access to their legal property,” Julie Samuels, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told CNET this afternoon. “Not only does it harm those individual third parties, but it negatively impacts all cloud storage providers and customers, who, in order for the technology to work, need to be able to rely on access.”