The MegaUpload saga continued earlier this week in a courtroom in New Zealand as a judge has order the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to start copying data from the PCs that were seized from MegaUpload's founder Kim Dotcom. The New Zealand Herald website reports that the amount of data to be copied by the FBI is a whopping 150 terabytes, including 10 million emails.
The FBI seized Dotcom's PCs, along with other property of his, as part of its raid on the MegaUpload file sharing website in January. The US government claims that MegaUpload and its organizers participated in extensive amounts of online content piracy. In late May, another New Zealand judge said that the government had three weeks to turn over the evidence it collected against MegaUpload and Dotcom to their defense lawyers.
In this week's court visit, government lawyers told High Court Justice Helen Winkelmann that there was simply too much data to copy in the court-ordered three week time span. The lawyers claimed it took 10 days to copy just 29 terabytes. However, Justice Winkelmann ordered that the government start the process of copying the information anyway.
In the meantime, Dotcom and three of MegaUpload's other team members are still awaiting a hearing in August that could determine if they are extradited to the US to face the online piracy charges.
Source: New Zealand Herald
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