India's e-commerce business is set to boom as incomes and consumer demand climb in a country of 1.2 billion people with a steadily ballooning middle class, analysts say.

Amazon's move, announced late last week, "is to get an insight into the Indian market," Asheesh Raina, a principal research analyst at global consultancy Gartner, told AFP.

"This market could be a game-changer for Amazon -- these e-commerce retailers survive on volume. India with its large number of people could be a huge opportunity," he said.

Junglee, which means "wild" in Hindi, is a modified version of the world's top online retailer's shopping portal, allowing customers to search for different products and compare prices.

It will offer over 12 million products from more than 14,000 Indian and global brands -- but buyers must make their purchases through a network of third-party suppliers either by ordering online or visiting them in person.

The set-up allows Amazon's Indian website to sidestep government rules forbidding foreign multi-brand retailers from operating in India as it only directs shoppers to sites rather than selling the products directly.

"It's a clever way of getting into the Indian market that works with the rules," Saloni Nangia, president of Indian research consultancy Technopak, told AFP.

The government announced last month it would allow foreign multi-brand retailers such as supermarkets into India but then did a U-turn over fears the move would hit small family-run stores that dominate the retail landscape.

Analysts say they believe the government still wants to ease regulations to let in multi-brand players but cannot say when it will happen.

Amazon, which has operations in neighbouring China, is aiming to give customers "a single online starting point", Amazon.com vice president Amit Agarwal said last Thursday.

"They can shop a wide selection of products sold by local and global retailers and make informed purchasing decisions," Agarwal said.

The company did not reply to repeated requests by AFP for comment on its next step in India.

Gartner's Raina said the move was a "low-cost way for Amazon to find out what the Indian market is about --- build brand loyalty -- and hopefully when the retail regulations loosen in India take their customers with them".

The launch of Junglee comes after Amazon said last month it was setting up its first warehouses, known in its corporate parlance as "fulfilment centres", in India. The warehouses allow Amazon to store products and ship them swiftly.

Some of Amazon's biggest competition in India will come from e-commerce portal Flipkart.com, set up in 2007 by two ex-Amazon employees and based in the southern city of Bangalore, that sells a range of goods from books to television sets, analysts say.

As an Indian company Flipkart is exempt from the restrictions that prevent Amazon launching a full-service site.

It is targeting at least $100 million in sales for the current financial year and $1 billion by 2015, up from only $11 million last year as India's e-commerce market grows exponentially.

Internet penetration is still low in India, which has around 52 million active Internet users -- those who go online at least one a month, according to the Internet and Mobile Association of India.

But that figure is expected to grow rapidly, helping e-commerce to take off.

"This is just the beginning of the market with the number of smart phones, debit and credit cards rising so quickly," Technopak's Nangia said.

Technopak forecasts the e-commerce market, which includes travel and financial services, will grow to $200 billion by 2020 from $10 billion in 2011.

"Many Indian young people have no history of only going to retail stores -- of only consuming in a certain way -- making prospects for e-commerce even bigger."

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:06:22 AEST San Francisco (AFP) Feb 7, 2012 - Yahoo! chairman Roy Bostock announced Tuesday he was stepping down from the board of the struggling Internet company along with three other directors.

Bostock, in a letter to shareholders, also said Yahoo! was in "active discussions" with its partners in Asia on restructuring its holdings in the Alibaba Group and Yahoo! Japan.

Bostock said he had decided not to stand for re-election at Yahoo!'s next shareholders meeting, along with board members Vyomesh Joshi, Arthur Kern and Gary Wilson.

He said the board elected two independent directors Tuesday: Alfred Amoroso, former president and chief executive of Rovi Corp., and Maynard Webb, a former chief operating officer at eBay.

Bostock said a strategic review of Yahoo! has made "significant progress" and has included "a wide range of discussions with potential partners.

"We have engaged with potential investors and reviewed proposals concerning an equity investment in the company, although at this time there have not been any proposals which have been deemed by the committee to be attractive to our shareholders," he said.

"We are also in active discussions with our partners in Asia regarding the possibility of restructuring our holdings in Alibaba Group and Yahoo! Japan," Bostock said.

"While we continue to devote significant resources to these discussions, we are not in a position at this time to provide further detail or to provide assurance that any transaction will be achieved," he said.

Yahoo! shares were virtually unchanged at $15.83 in after-hours trading that followed the release of Bostock's letter.

The boardroom house cleaning comes just two weeks after Jerry Yang, who co-founded Yahoo! nearly 17 years ago and had an ill-fated stint as chief executive, resigned from all of his positions with the California-based firm.

Yang, 43, one of the original dotcom billionaires, had been on the boards of Yahoo!, Yahoo! Japan and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

Yang served as chief executive of Yahoo! from June 2007 to January 2009, during which time he notably turned down a $47 billion takeover bid from Microsoft, earning the ire of many shareholders.

Bostock and Yang have been the targets of stockholder anger as Yahoo!'s stock price sank to about half of what it was when company leaders snubbed Microsoft's generous buyout bid.

Since Carol Bartz stepped down as chief executive in September, Yahoo!'s board has reportedly been looking at selling all or part of the company and Yang was seen as a fierce opponent of a breakup by some shareholders.

Microsoft has reportedly been collaborating with private investors to assemble another multi-billion-dollar offer for Yahoo!.

At least nine private equity firms are also reported to be eyeing Yahoo! and its global audience of 700 million monthly visitors to the company's various websites, including Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance and Yahoo! Sports.

Chinese online commerce titan Alibaba is 43 percent owned by Yahoo! and Alibaba Group chairman Jack Ma has a long-standing offer to buy all or part of the company.

Once seen as the Internet's leading light, Yahoo! has struggled to build a strongly profitable, growing business out of its huge Web presence and global audience.

Yahoo! has popular websites but has been losing advertising business to search giant Google, social networking king Facebook and specialized websites.

Yahoo!'s revenue and net profit dropped in the fourth quarter of 2011, capping off its third straight year of declining results.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:06:22 AEST Washington (AFP) Feb 7, 2012 - The explosion of software applications for smartphones, tablet computers and Facebook has created nearly 500,000 jobs in the United States since 2007, according to a study published on Tuesday.

The study, sponsored by TechNet, a bipartisan organization of top technology executives, found that the "App Economy" employs 466,000 people in the United States.

"The incredibly rapid rise of smartphones, tablets, and social media, and the applications -- apps -- that run on them, is perhaps the biggest economic and technological phenomenon today," the study said. "Almost a million apps have been created for the iPhone, iPad and Android alone.

"On an economic level, each app represents jobs -- for programmers, for user interface designers, for marketers, for managers, for support staff," it said.

California tops the list of US states with app-related jobs, according to the study performed by Michael Mandel, a Harvard-educated economist with the consulting firm South Mountain Economics.

One in every four "App Economy" jobs is located in California. New York is the top metropolitan area for app-related jobs although the number of jobs in San Francisco and San Jose, California, combined exceeds those in New York.

Rey Ramsey, president and chief executive of TechNet, said the rise of the App Economy, "demonstrates that we can quickly create economic value and jobs through cutting-edge innovation.

"Today, the App Economy is creating jobs in every part of America, employing hundreds of thousands of US workers today and even more in the years to come," Ramsey said.

The study dates the rise of the App Economy to Apple's 2007 introduction of the iPhone and noted that the California gadget-maker's App Store now offers more than 500,000 applications.

According to a study published in September, the ecosystem of applications built for Facebook alone has created at least 182,000 jobs.

The study by the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business said using "more aggressive estimates" the Facebook "App Economy" has created a total of 235,644 jobs.

The Palo Alto, California-based Facebook has 850 million members and tens of thousands of applications have been developed by third parties to run on top of the social network.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:06:22 AEST Rome (AFP) Feb 6, 2012 - An Italian computer science professor whose research helped inspire Google launched a new search engine and social media network on Monday that he hopes will challenge the US technology giant.

The new site entitled "Volunia" allows users to view the components of particular websites to find the subject of interest more quickly and to interact with registered users who might be looking at the same web pages.

"The web is a living place," said Massimo Marchiori, who came up with the algorithm for the Internet page ranking service "HyperSearch" in the 1990s and used to teach at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

"There is information but there are also people. The social dimension is already present, it just has to emerge," he said in an online demonstration.

Marchiori said he believed the functions available on Volunia would soon become normal on all the major search engines including Google and Yahoo!

He has been working on the project for four years and has been praised by Italian commentators for giving up a more high-profile career in the United States to return to Italy, where his salary is 2,000 euros ($2,600) a month.

Marchiori teaches at the University of Padua in northeast Italy.

He has been quoted as saying that future Google founder Larry Page approached him after a conference in which he presented HyperSearch.

Page "was fascinated by it and asked if he could use it. Since it was not patented, he used it in the best possible way," Marchiori said.

Volunia, which has a US copyright, was only launched to selected users on Monday and will be rolled out more widely and in 12 languages including Arabic, English, Japanese and Russian over the coming days.

Organisers said they hoped to fund it by selling advertising space.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:06:22 AEST Madrid, Spain (SPX) Feb 06, 2012 - A new protocol, IPv6, is being introduced across the Web. Researchers at Universidad Carlos III of Madrid (Carlos III University - UC3M) who are participating in the Trilogy project have defined technology that allows users of this protocol to access Internet contents that are currently only available to users entering the Web using IPv4 protocol.

The protocol that any device uses to connect to Internet, IPv4, (Internet Protocol version 4), has a problem: due to the Web's tremendous growth, all of its addresses have recently run out, worldwide. According to the experts, the solution lies in IPv6, a protocol that is in the early phases of implementation and that is expected to eventually replace its predecessor. However, there is another problem: the two protocols are incompatible.

"Machines that only have IPv6 cannot communicate with those that only have IPv4, which is the case with the majority of those being used to connect to the Internet today, and vice versa", explains Marcelo Bagnulo, professor of the NETCOM research group at UC3M, where a solution to the problem has been developed.

The group's objective was to make it possible for the machines that, in the future, connect to the Internet using IPv6 addresses, to access earlier content, which will be in IPv4.

In order to do this, these scientists have defined translators that permit understanding between contents in both protocols by means of a technology called NAT64 and DNS64, a standard used by the major manufacturers of routers, such as Cisco or Juniper, and the major sellers of DNS, such as BIND or Microsoft.

"We have designed and standardized these transition tools, which have been adopted by the industry and which are now available commercially", states Marcelo Bagnulo, who is a professor in the Telematics Department and the Director of the Catedra Telefonica de Internet del Futuro (Telefonica Internet of the Future Chair) at UC3M.

"It is relatively easy to invent a new protocol, but it is extremely difficult to design one that is then really introduced and used, since standardization is an important step toward the future use of a technology", he explains.

Three keys to improving the Internet's future
This research, which was accepted for publication in the journal IEEE Communications, and which has two standard RFCs, falls within Trilogy, which received the award for the best project in the most recent Future Internet Award prizes, which are given by the ceFIMS (Coordination of the European Future Internet forum of Member States of the European Union).

The objective of this project - whose name is derived from the trilogy "routing, congestion control and cost effectiveness"- is none other than to improve the quality of the flow of information and the internal workings of the Web, which is basically characterized by the interrelation of two systems. The first (routing) serves to define the route, while the second (congestion control) determines the quantity and volume of data that flow.

"At present - points out Professor Bagnulo - they function independently, because the mechanism that decides where the data will flow through does not take into consideration how much other data are flowing through that same path".

This means that, when there is congestion, the new data do not consider this and, therefore, choose an alternate path. The scientists make a comparison: It is as if there were no illuminated signs or notices sent by radio to warn of upcoming delays so that drivers can change their itinerary and, thus, avoid the traffic jam.

One of the main objectives of Trilogy is that these systems can function in a more coordinated manner. To do this, they propose various technologies that control and redirect data flow from the congested routes (as can occur in the case of peer-to-peer applications) to other less congested parts of the network. To this end, they have designed, implemented and standardized the Multipath TCP protocol in the IETF, which allows a connection of this type to flow through multiple paths.

In the case of a smartphone connected to Internet through wifi, communication is lost when the user leaves the area with coverage, and a new connection must be made. However, using this new MPTCP protocol "it is possible to pass this communication to the alternate interface, so that the connection can be maintained, in addition to increasing the speed of the data transfer", comments the expert.

Another technology proposed by these scientists is CONEX, which allows the user to be charged for the volume of congestion s/he generates rather than for the quantity of traffic he creates. It is like applying the management model used in pricing low cost airline tickets to the Internet, the researchers state. That is, if there are a lot of people who want to send data at the same time, they pay more; and vice versa.

"Currently, what happens is that all users pay the same prices, so they use the Internet indiscriminately, not considering the weight of the packet, which means that the service provider must arbitrarily reject packets", explains Professor Bagnulo.

The following entities participate in the Trilogy project: Deutsche Telekom, NEC, Nokia, Roke Manor Research, Athens Business and Economics University, Universidad Carlos III of Madrid (UC3M), The University College of London, Catholic University of Louvain and Stanford University, under the coordination of British Telecommunications (BT).

This initiative was presented at the first call for proposals to the Seventh Framework Program of the EU, where it was approved. It is an integrated IP project that was financed by the European Commission.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:06:22 AEST Wellington (AFP) Feb 3, 2012 - Megaupload boss Kim Dotcom on Friday failed to overturn a ruling that he remain behind bars in New Zealand while US officials seek his extradition for alleged copyright piracy, reports said.

Dotcom appeared in the Auckland High Court to appeal a judge's refusal last week to grant bail because he had the wealth and connections to slip out of the country.

The appeal was rejected after lawyers representing US authorities told the court a man with a history of producing fraudulent travel documents unsuccessfully applied to visit Dotcom while in custody, TVNZ reported.

Dotcom denied any knowledge of the man and said he was not friends with him, Fairfax Media reported.

"If people were to approach me and to offer such a service, I would tell them to go to hell," the German businessman, who changed his name from Kim Schmitz, said. "I have no desire to run away."

The decision means Dotcom will remain in prison until at least February 22, when a US application to extradite him is scheduled to be lodged in court.

The founder of file-sharing website Megaupload.com has been detained since January 20 when New Zealand police, cooperating with a major US probe, raided his sprawling "Dotcom Mansion" in Auckland.

The US Justice Department and FBI allege Megaupload and related sites netted more than $175 million in criminal proceeds and cost copyright owners over $500 million by offering pirated copies of movies, TV shows and other content.

During his court appearance, Dotcom also complained that he had received unwanted attention from female inmates wanting to become penpals while in custody, the New Zealand Herald reported.

It said Dotcom accused police of punching him during his arrest and also claimed he was visited by a man claiming to be a prosecutor who offered to ensure he was granted bail for a fee.

The black-clad millionaire, who spent his 38th birthday in a cell, said he wanted to remain in New Zealand with his family and regain the fortune that was seized when he was arrested.

"What I want to do is stay here to fight and get my money back," said Dotcom, who earned an estimated $42 million in 2010 alone.

The raid on Dotcom's home netted a 1959 pink Cadillac, numerous other luxury cars and valuable artworks -- all of which the US Justice Department and FBI allege was obtained through "massive worldwide online piracy".

Since his arrest, there has been a steady stream of media revelations about his extravagent lifestyle.

The Herald detailed claims he had a swimming pool filled with imported spring water, while a waitress who worked at the mansion told Women's Weekly magazine that fittings included gold toilet roll holders and silver plates.

And a documentary uploaded online shows Dotcom, surrounded by topless women, spraying champagne on board a superyacht during a "crazy weekend" in Monaco that reportedly cost $10 million.

"Fast cars, hot girls, superyachts and amazing parties. Decadence rules," said the blurb accompanying the documentary, which Dotcom dedicated to "all my fans".

The portly millionaire also reportedly had a butler in his mansion whose duties included retrieving stray ping pong balls when Dotcom was playing table tennis.

Dotcom paid for a NZ$500,000 (415,000) fireworks display in central Auckland on New Year's Eve 2010 and watched the extravaganza from a hovering helicopter, uploading the video on YouTube.

Prime Minister John Key said this week that since Dotcom's arrival in New Zealand in early 2010, his office had received complaints from the public about loud parties and cars speeding around the mansion, which is in his constituency.

Key said his staff had passed the complaints on to police.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:06:22 AEST Washington (AFP) Feb 2, 2012 - As Facebook readies for Wall Street's richest high-tech debut, it is wrangling with litigation and bracing for potential new suits.

The social network filed Wednesday for a $5 billion stock offering that could create one of America's largest publicly traded companies.

But even as Facebook reinvents the way people around the world communicate, it anticipates a mountain of legal challenges which will take armies of lawyers years to disentangle.

In its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Facebook hinted at some of the legal tangles ahead, writing that it is already embroiled in litigation and anticipates "numerous" more lawsuits in coming years.

"We are currently, and expect to be in the future, party to patent lawsuits and other intellectual property rights claims that are expensive and time-consuming, and, if resolved adversely, could have a significant impact on our business, financial condition, or results of operations," Facebook said.

Legal experts said there is virtually no corner of public life where Facebook's impact is not felt.

"Social media drastically affects almost every aspect of how society communicates," said Brian Wassom, a partner at Honigman Miller Schwarz and Cohn law firm in Detroit.

Wassom said the numerous types of possible legal challenges reflect the unprecedented reach that Facebook has achieved in its few years of existence.

The company says it has over 845 million users including nearly half a billion who log in daily.

Ryan Calo, director for privacy at Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society, said the social network is "a real transformative communication platform."

"For better or for worse, this pattern is really accelerating," Calo said, speaking about Facebook's expanding reach.

Legal experts said the untold number of unresolved legal issues for users of Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and other social networking sites cover every aspect of financial and personal transactions carried out between individuals.

For instance, can a prosecutor use elements gleaned from Facebook in making a legal case against a defendant? Is it possible to use Facebook to establish whether a loan applicant is a good credit risk?

Can law enforcement officials prosecute threats or intimidating statements posted on Facebook? How and when can an employer use information gathered on Facebook to discipline or terminate an employee?

Calo said the ubiquity of Facebook increases the urgency to update the legal roadmap governing how it can be accessed, and by whom.

"Facebook has become almost as indispensable as the telephone or radio," he said. "We need to make changes in laws or update our laws to reflect a new reality."

Pedram Tabibi, an attorney at the New York firm Melzer Lippe, said three businesses in four use some form of social media.

"The dependence on Facebook in people's personal lives is high, (and) the dependence on Facebook in business is increasing," Tabibi said, alluding to what he called the "intersection of two roads."

But slightly less than half of US companies have put in place ground rules on how their workers are to proceed in using social networking sites, Tabibi said, adding that firms that tarry are leaving themselves open to headaches.

Equally opaque are the conditions under which the US government can access the information on an individual's Facebook account, legal experts said.

Nebulous rules have not stopped the government however from deporting migrants or conducting broader investigations based on tips gleaned from Facebook.

"People now put their lives on Facebook," said Tabibi, adding that they need to exercise caution because that information "might be used against them."

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:06:22 AEST Wellington (AFP) Feb 2, 2012 - Megaupload boss Kim Dotcom will appeal Friday against a ruling that kept him behind bars in New Zealand while US officials seek his extradition for alleged copyright piracy, his lawyers said.

The German millionaire was refused bail last week when a judge ruled that he posed a serious flight risk because he had the money and shady connections to slip out of the country.

Dotcom was remanded in custody until February 22 but a spokeswoman for his lawyer Paul Davison told AFP on Thursday that an appeal would be heard in Auckland High Court on Friday.

She declined to give further details, although a High Court official confirmed the hearing was scheduled for Friday.

The founder of the file-sharing website Megaupload.com has been in detention since New Zealand police, cooperating with a major US probe, raided his sprawling "Dotcom Mansion" in Auckland on January 20.

Davison argued at his client's original bail hearing that Dotcom, who spent his 38th birthday behind bars, should be released to prepare his defence.

The US Justice Department and FBI allege Megaupload and related sites netted more than $175 million in criminal proceeds and cost copyright owners over $500 million by offering pirated copies of movies, TV shows and other content.

Davison also said Dotcom was on medication for diabetes and hypertension, adding that there was no danger he would flee because his assets had been frozen and his family remained in Auckland.

Refusing bail, Judge David McNaughton raised concerns that Dotcom had bank accounts and passports in different names and may try to escape to Germany, which does not extradite its citizens to the United States.

He also said an unlicensed, sawn-off shotgun found in a "panic room" to which Dotcom retreated when police swooped on his home raised the possibility that the Internet tycoon had criminal connections who could help him flee.

The raid on Dotcom's home netted a 1959 pink Cadillac, numerous other luxury cars and valuable artworks -- all of which the US Justice Department and FBI allege was obtained through "massive worldwide online piracy".

Dotcom, who legally changed his name from Kim Schmitz, has denied any wrongdoing.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:06:22 AEST Washington (AFP) Feb 2, 2012 - As Facebook and Google jockey for dominance of the Web, the social networking titan's $5 billion stock offering will give it a hefty warchest for the ongoing fight, analysts said.

"It gives Facebook the ability to roll out more services," Gartner technology analyst Michael Gartenberg said. "It's going to be harder for companies to compete with Facebook."

Facebook, in its filing for an initial public offering, cited Microsoft and Twitter as competitors but made it clear its chief rival is Google.

"We compete broadly with Google's social networking offerings, including Google+," Facebook said of the social network launched by Google which has attracted 90 million users to Facebook's more than 800 million.

"Some of our current and potential competitors have significantly greater resources and better competitive positions in certain markets than we do," Facebook said.

At first glance, Google would appear to have the upper hand.

Google sites, which include the popular YouTube in addition to the eponymous search engine, attracted 1.09 billion unique visitors in December, according to online tracking firm comScore.

Facebook saw 794.3 million unique visitors in December.

But users spent more time on Facebook -- a key metric for advertisers.

Visitors to Facebook spent an average of 377.3 minutes on the site in December compared to 207.2 minutes on Google sites.

Google, which launched six years before Facebook, is also flush with cash.

Facebook, opening its books for the first time in the filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, said it had net income last year of $668 million and revenue of $3.7 billion.

Google posted a net profit of $2.71 billion last quarter alone on revenue of $10.58 billion.

But Facebook may have more upside.

"What Facebook's management would like us to believe is that Facebook's growth potential is much greater than Google's," said Virginie Lazes of investment bank Bryan, Garnier & Co.

"Google is a cash machine but what more can they do in terms of growth?" Lazes asked. "Google's growth is a maximum of around 15 percent a year."

Facebook's revenue meanwhile went from $777 million in 2009 to $1.97 billion in 2010 to last year's $3.7 billion.

"That's what the market will try to put a value on, this future growth potential," Lazes said.

The battle between Facebook and Google comes down to a contest for eyeballs and online advertising dollars.

Google is the dominant player in online advertising with a 44.9 percent share of US online ad revenue last year to Facebook's 6.4 percent, according to eMarketer.

Most of Google's revenue comes from search advertising while Facebook is the top player in the rapidly growing display advertising space.

Facebook's share of total US display advertising revenue was 16.3 percent last year to Google's 12.3 percent and Yahoo!'s 12.5 percent, eMarketer said.

"What's not to 'like' about the Facebook IPO?" asked Kathleen Smith of IPO investment adviser Renaissance Capital. "The social networking king is an advertiser's dream, accessing the intimate social interactions of one in every 10 people in the world."

Gartenberg said that because Facebook has become such a dominant force in social networking it may be better positioned than Google in the long run.

Social networking is not a "passing fad," he said. "It also seems to be pretty profitable.

"Facebook is the dominant player here and it's become dominant in such a relatively short period of time," he said. "To the point where we talk about companies like Google being the underdog."

Google, however, "is not going to stand idly by and allow Facebook to become the center of gravity of the Web," Gartenberg said.

"The only type of company that could mount a challenge to Facebook is a company of the size and scale and with the resources of a Google," he said. "That makes for what could be a very interesting year going forward."

Lou Kerner, social media analyst at secondshares.com, said the struggle between Facebook and Google is "about how people discover the Web."

"We've been used to periods of one king: it was Yahoo!, then it was Google," Kerner said. "Now we're entering a period of two kings of the net.

"Google is not going away."

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:06:22 AEST Washington (UPI) Jan 30, 2012 - Federal prosecutors say two U.S. companies hosting Megaupload's servers could begin deleting all user content as early as Thursday.

The people behind Megaupload have been charged with online piracy that allegedly brought them almost $175 million in revenues and caused more than $500 million in damages to legitimate copyright holders.

But Megaupload.com claims millions of people used the site to store legitimate data including work-related documents, family photos and other personal information.

U.S. law enforcement has completed its search of Megaupload's servers and copied all relevant data from them, court documents show.

No longer in the custody of law enforcement, the servers have been released back to Carpathia Hosting and Cogent Communications, the two U.S. companies Megaupload leased them from, Computerworld reported Monday.

The servers were never removed from the premises of the two companies, it reported.

People seeking access to the data contained in those servers should contact Cogent or Carpathia directly, federal prosecutors said in a court document filed Friday.

"It is our understanding that the hosting companies may begin deleting the contents of the servers beginning as early as Feb. 2, 2012," it said.

If the companies decide to delete data, tens of thousands of users who used Megaupload.com to store documents, photos and videos could lose the data forever, Computerword reported.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:06:22 AEST Subscribe to our daily selection of space, military, environment and energy newsletters responseText http://visitor.constantcontact.com/manage/optin/ea?v=0016gbbKsaiGSpQFojVO8ZoHw%3D%3D