[epoxyhockey]

I guess I should have prefaced my last post by saying that I'm looking at the whole case from a legal perspective.

There is no question in my mind that MU thrived by appearing to comply with the DMCA, while encouraging illegal use of its service.

However, if the gov't wanted to really send these guys to jail for a long time, they appear to have screwed up the foundation of their case pretty well. If the initial search of the MU mail server was not found to be valid, the feds lose. If Cogent & Carpathia delete all of MU's data (i.e. evidence) and the feds can't prove in court that offending material existed, the feds lose. It's turned into a real mess from a prosecution standpoint. No wonder Kim pleaded not guilty instead of taking a plea bargain.