[codeoclock]

Leaseweb isn't closed. They just had to store some servers. They could just turn them off, put them in storage, then sue law enforcement or the DOJ equivalent for the opportunity cost and storage costs. That's not an accurate analogy at all.

[Shish2k]

> then sue law enforcement or the DOJ equivalent for the opportunity cost and storage costs

Does suing the government ever actually work?

(Honest question, I'm not an American and I've only seen people try to sue in high-profile cases like PRISM, which never seems to get them anywhere)

[Theory5]

Yes, Henry Ford did it in the 1950's to recoup the losses after the Allies bombed his tank making factories in Nazi Germany and Axis controlled territory.

There are certain laws in place to keep people from willy-nilly suing the government, but there are situations where it is possible to sue them and sometimes even win. (not sure about this case in particular, anyone want to weigh in?)

[pluies]

Do you have any source for this trial? I can't seem to find any trace of it when googling. Also Henry Ford died in 1947 and had cerebral issues before that, so if the trial did happen in the 50s it was either brought by his successors or Ford Motor Company.

[Theory5]

My mistake, I contributed factually inaccurate information. Thanks for the help!

"1946: Ford sues the allies for damages done to his factories in Dresden during the infamous bombing, and wins compensation."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ford_Motor_Company </br> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_Wa...

[bhousel]

Yes this is done all the time.

[rmc]

Turning them off might not be an option. Disks that are encrypted would them become unreadable when turned off.

[eridius]

Disks that become unreadable when they lose power aren't called disks, they're called RAM.

[stephengillie]

With which encryption software?

[brokenparser]

GMemcachePG

[stephengillie]

How many servers? How many HDDs? How much of Leaseweb's "digital floorspace" were they unable to use because of this case?

[cschmidt]

According to this it was 630 servers with pentabytes of data. I'm sure keeping those idle was a significant loss for Leaseweb.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9240179/LeaseWeb_wipe...

[dkl]

Not even the servers, just the hard drives. No reason to store anything else, right?