It’s been two weeks since the Department of Justice arrested seven employees of Megaupload and shut it down. After all of the back and forth discussion about how this landmark case affects our online rights, the actual users of the site have been forgotten.

While the story of Megaupload conjures up thoughts and feelings of the Napster downfall, the site had over a million users, and surely not all of them were downloading or storing “illegal” files. With rumors that all Megaupload data would be wiped this Thursday, the site’s lawyer tweeted that the data would be held onto for an additional two weeks:

Carpathia and Cogent agreed to preserve consumer data for additional time of at least two weeks so #Megaupload can work with US on proposal

— Ira Rothken (@rothken) January 30, 2012

Whether you believe that Megaupload carried out an elaborate and illegal scheme to make money, as the DoJ contests, innocent users of the site have lost information that they currently can’t access. Not only is that a scary thought if you relied on the site, but it’s a black mark for future cloud services and the industry in its entirety.

In hopes of representing these users, the Electronic Frontier Foundation along with support from hosting provider Carpathia, has set up a website for those who are seeking legal representation to get their legitimate Megaupload files back.

The site is called MegaRetrieval, and is offering free legal assistance to Megaupload users:

When the United States Government shut down access to Megaupload, a multitude of innocent users who stored legitimate, non-infringing files on the cloud-storage service were left with no means to access their data.

If you believe you are one of these users, are based in the United States, and are looking for legal help to retrieve your data, please email the best contact information for you to the EFF at:

Megauploadmissing@eff.org

Please do not send us the details of the materials you have uploaded. Also, please note that EFF is a small donor-supported nonprofit and does not charge for its legal services. It may not be able to represent everyone who inquires.

With the two-week stay of deletion for the Megaupload files, the EFF hopes that it can come to some agreement with the US government to help some of these users access their files and information. Imagine how you’d feel if you stored personal things like photos or business files on the service. It’s easy to cast judgement on the service after reading media reports, but until Megaupload’s employees are found guilty, it’s unfair to withhold data from its rightful owners.

➤ MegaRetrieval

Tell us what you think in the comments, should Megaupload users be able to get their files back?

Megaupload is clearly gearing up for legal warfare amidst its takedown and indictments this week.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, as it prepares for those legal proceedings, the company has dropped its lawsuit against Universal Music Group over the takedown of its horrendous, yet somehow catchy, “Megaupload Mega Song”. That was the promo song that featured such stars as Will.i.am, Diddy, Lil John, Kanye West, and Kim Kardashian which we wrote about in December.

The video, which has over 14 million views on YouTube, was taken down due to a complaint by UMG, and left Megaupload not so happy about it. The company was so unhappy, it decided to sue over it. While the lawsuit has been dropped at the moment, The Hollywood Reporter says that it could be back in full swing soon:

Megaupload’s lawyers filed a notice in California federal court to dismiss the claims against UMG without prejudice, but also told the judge that the claims against anonymous John Does who participated in the takedown of the viral video continues. Megaupload also wants to pursue further discovery in the case and is attempting to get Google to cooperate on this front by preserving records.

What this means is that Megaupload might still go after the parties who participated in the takedown on both UMG and YouTube’s side. This whole Megaupload saga has more twists and turns than an off-road race track.

In case you haven’t seen the Megaupload Mega Song, take a look for yourself. It points out the site’s user numbers, all of whom aren’t so happy about losing all of their files during the DoJ raid:

Whether this lawsuit ever comes back or not is anyone’s guess, but something tells me that the company has more important things to deal with right now.

This morning, we reported on a lawsuit directed at music streaming site Grooveshark by Universal Music Group, one of the top record labels.

In the lawsuit, Universal claims that top executives at Grooveshark, including the CEO, have uploaded 100,000 tracks to its database illegally.

Grooveshark has fired back, saying Universal is mischaracterizing information it found in a comment on a blog post:

We have reviewed the Complaint that Universal Music Group filed last Friday against Grooveshark in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Universal’s claims rest almost entirely on an anonymous, blatantly false internet blog comment and Universal’s gross mischaracterization of information that Grooveshark itself provided to Universal. While Universal has deliberately engaged the media prior to serving a copy of the Complaint on Grooveshark, Grooveshark intends to fight this battle before the Court, not in the press. Grooveshark welcomes the opportunity to present the facts to the Court and has full confidence that it will prevail in the litigation.

Regards,
Marshall Custer
Grooveshark
General Counsel

The anonymous blog comment that Grooveshark is referring to is this one, found on the Digital Music News blog:

We are assigned a predetermined amount of weekly uploads to the system and get a small extra bonus if we manage to go above that (not easy).The assignments are assumed as direct orders from the top to the bottom, we don’t just volunteer to ‘enhance’ the Grooveshark database.

Since the quote is anonymous, you have to come to your own conclusion on whether it comes from an inside source, perhaps a former or current Grooveshark employee, or was planted to make the service look bad.

Regardless of the he-said, she-said, if Universal can prove that the executive team uploaded tracks illegally to its own service, the music streaming will surely die for Grooveshark.

Universal contends that CEO Samuel Tarantin uploaded more than 1,791 copyrighted songs, SVP Paul Geller 3,453 songs and VP Benjamin Westermann-Clark 4,600 songs, respectively.

As Grooveshark’s General Counsel points out, the company is prepared to fight the court battle and leave the press out of it. Considering that this remark was made to the press, it’s not a good start for Grooveshark’s plan of defense. We’ll keep an eye on this story for you as it continues. I’ve reached out to the company but haven’t gotten a response as of publishing this piece.

UPDATE: Grooveshark responded to me with its initial statement.

You may have read the stories about the recent lawsuit against Facebook in which Timelines.com claims the company infringes upon its “Timeline” trademark.

Here is a section from the court complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court of Chicago:

Facebook’s use of the term “Timeline,” and its redirection of Internet traffic from Timelines’ Facebook page to Facebook’s new “Timeline” offering, infringes on Timelines’ federally registered trademarks in that it causes confusion as to the source of the services offered to users of the Internet. Indeed, Facebook’s “Timeline” offering and its misdirection of users attempting to access Timelines’ offering is intended to prevent Internet users from accessing information about Timelines.com and to allow users to instead use Facebook’s “Timeline” offering.

There have been other reports today that Facebook is “delaying” its release of the Timeline feature, and that the root cause of that could be this particular lawsuit. See Mashable’s report:

The public launch of Timeline is now at least delayed until Tuesday, when representatives from Facebook and Timelines.com will meet again in front of another federal judge to debate whether an injunction should be issued against Facebook.

However, if you pay attention to the actual filing of the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO), you will see that Facebook contests that it has not changed any public release plans or dates for Timeline, as Mark Zuckberberg himself said at f8 that the company would release Timeline “in the coming weeks”, therefore the TRO was rejected by the judge and Facebook has delayed nothing.

You can read the full document here:

Timelines v Facebook

This is a developing story, check back for updates.