DOJ Claims It Did Not Entrap Megaupload
The U.S. Department of Justice did not mislead a court and attempt to entrap file storage site Megaupload on copyright infringement charges, the agency said in a new filing in the case.
Megaupload's charges that the DOJ conspired to entrap the site on criminal copyright charges are "baseless," an official with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia wrote in a court document filed Friday. Earlier this month, Megaupload filed court documents saying that in 2010 the DOJ asked the site, through its hosting vendor, to keep infringing files as part of a DOJ investigation, then later charged Megaupload with copyright infringement.
But the search warrant contains no request for Megaupload to keep files, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Peterson wrote in the DOJ's Friday filing. "Megaupload does not cite a single communication between the government and Megaupload or a single instruction from any member of the government to Megaupload; there are none," Peterson wrote.
