Case No. ___________ _____________________________________________________________ IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT ____________________________________________________ IN RE: KYLE GOODWIN Petitioner. _______________________________ Petition for Writ of Mandamus to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in United States of America v. Kim Dotcom, et al., No. 1:12-cr-00003-LO _____________________________________________________________ PETITION FOR WRIT OF MANDAMUS ON BEHALF OF KYLE GOODWIN ___________________________________________________________ John S. Davis Mitchell L. Stoltz WILLIAMS MULLEN Counsel of Record 200 So. 10th St. Corynne McSherry Richmond, VA 23218 ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION (804) 420-6296 815 Eddy Street [email protected] San Francisco, CA 94109 (415) 436-9333 [email protected] Abraham D. Sofaer THE HOOVER INSTITUTION Stanford University 434 Galvez Mall Stanford, CA 94305-6010 (650) 723-1754 [email protected] Attorneys for Petitioner Kyle Goodwin STATEMENT REGARDING ORAL ARGUMENT Petitioner Kyle Goodwin requests oral argument on this Petition. i CORPORATE DISCLOSURE STATEMENT Pursuant to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure Rule 26.1 and Local Rule 26.1, Petitioner submits the following disclosures: Kyle Goodwin is a natural person. His business, OhioSportsNet, has no parent corporation and no publicly held corporation owns 10% or more of its stock. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT REGARDING ORAL ARGUMENT ...................................................................... i CORPORATE DISCLOSURE STATEMENT .............................................................................. ii RELIEF SOUGHT .......................................................................................................................... 1 ISSUES PRESENTED ................................................................................................................... 1 STATEMENT OF FACTS ............................................................................................................. 1 I. OHIOSPORTSNET AND MEGAUPLOAD ........................................................... 1 II. OHIOSPORTSNET’S BACKUP POLICIES AND MEGAUPLOAD’S CRASH .. 2 III. MOTION PRACTICE CONCERNING USERS’ DATA ........................................ 6 IV. LOSSES TO MR. GOODWIN ................................................................................ 9 REASONS WHY THE WRIT SHOULD ISSUE ........................................................................ 10 I. MR. GOODWIN IS ENTITLED TO THE RELIEF SOUGHT: PROMPT ACCESS TO HIS VALUABLE DIGITAL FILES. ............................................... 11 II. THE DISTRICT COURT HAS A CLEAR AND OFFICIAL DUTY TO RULE ON MR. GOODWIN’S MOTION. ........................................................................ 17 III. MR. GOODWIN HAS NO ALTERNATIVE MEANS OF RETRIEVING HIS PROPERTY. ........................................................................................................... 18 IV. ISSUING THE WRIT WILL PROMOTE JUSTICE BY PROTECTING MR. GOODWIN’S RIGHTS AND THAT OF OTHER OWNERS OF DIGITAL PROPERTY. ........................................................................................................... 19 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................. 22 CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE WITH TYPE-VOLUME LIMITATION .......................... 24 iii TABLE OF AUTHORITIES Cases Chaim v. U.S., 692 F. Supp. 2d 461 (D.N.J. 2010) ..................................................................... 13 Fort Wayne Books, Inc. v. Indiana, 489 U.S. 46 (1989) ........................................................................................ 14, 15 Helmy v. Swigert, 662 So. 2d 395 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1995) ........................................................... 10 In re Wright, 590 F. App’x 292 (4th Cir. 2015) ........................................................................ 10 Minsky v. City of Los Angeles, 11 Cal. 3d 113 P.2d 726 (Cal. 1974) ................................................................... 11 PBM Prod., LLC v. Mead Johnson & Co., 639 F.3d 111 (4th Cir. 2011) ............................................................................... 15 Roche v. Evaporated Milk Ass’n, 319 U.S. 21 (1943) .............................................................................................. 10 U.S. ex rel. Rahman v. Oncology Assocs., P.C., 198 F.3d 502 (4th Cir. 1999) ............................................................................... 11 U.S. v. Chambers, 192 F.3d 374 (3d Cir. 1999) ................................................................................ 16 U.S. v. Comprehensive Drug Testing, Inc., 621 F.3d 1162 (9th Cir. 2010) ....................................................................... 20, 21 U.S. v. Reckmeyer, 628 F. Supp. 621 (E.D. Va. 1986) ....................................................................... 12 U.S. v. Siegal, 974 F. Supp. 55 (D. Mass. 1997) .................................................................. 12, 17 iv U.S. v. Wu, 814 F. Supp. 491 (E.D. Va. 1993) ................................................................. 12, 13 Will v. Calvert Fire Ins. Co., 437 U.S. 655 (1978) ............................................................................................ 10 Statutes 18 U.S.C. § 1963 ........................................................................................... 7, 12, 13 21 U.S.C. § 853 ....................................................................................................... 12 28 U.S.C. § 1651 ....................................................................................................... 1 Rules Fed. R. App. P. 21 ..................................................................................................... 1 Fed. R. Crim. P. 41 ................................................................................. 7, 11, 13, 22 Other Authorities “Federal agencies seize more than $21.6 million in fake NFL merchandise during ‘Operation Team Player,’” Press Release (Jan. 30, 2014), https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/federal-agencies-seize-more-216-million- fake-nfl-merchandise-during-operation-team ..................................................... 19 Alan Dunn, “A pharma company woke up to find its domain name Vicodin.com seized by ICE,” Business Insider (Mar. 17, 2017), http://www.businessinsider.com/ice-seizes-vicodincom-2017-3 ........................ 19 NZ Court Rules Megaupload Founder Kim Dotcom Can Be Extradited to U.S. for Alleged Fraud, Reuters (Feb. 19, 2017), http://www.reuters.com/article/us- newzealand-internet-dotcom-idUSKBN15Z07C .................................................. 5 v RELIEF SOUGHT Petitioner Kyle Goodwin, by his attorneys, petitions this Court for a writ of mandamus under 28 U.S.C. § 1651(a) and Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 21, directing the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to rule on Mr. Goodwin’s May 25, 2012 Motion for Return of Property. ISSUES PRESENTED 1. Whether the U.S. government, in the course of executing a search warrant, can deny innocent third parties access to their valuable digital property for almost five years (and counting) without creating a process for the return of that property. 2. Whether the district court must rule on Mr. Goodwin’s 41(g) motion for return of property without further delay, when delay risks the permanent loss of that property. STATEMENT OF FACTS I. OHIOSPORTSNET AND MEGAUPLOAD Until January 19, 2012, Megaupload was an online service that allowed users to store, retrieve, and share digital data. Petitioner Kyle Goodwin owns and operates OhioSportsNet, a videography business he founded in 2011 that covers local high school sporting events. Exhibit A, Declaration of Kyle Goodwin (“Goodwin Decl.”) ¶ 1. As part of the business, Mr. Goodwin and his producers travel all over the state and film various high 1 school sports games. Id. at ¶ 2. In order for Mr. Goodwin and his producers to share tape of the games—to prepare that tape for streaming and to create related promotional and news packages—they must exchange the large video files electronically. Id. at ¶ 3. For example, in November 2011, OhioSportsNet was the only outfit to cover, via video, the state high school soccer finals. Id. at ¶ 4. During the early rounds of those playoffs, multiple games occurred on the same night, which meant OhioSportsNet had to dispatch crews to film each game. Id. The logistics behind sharing these and other recordings in short order were challenging, and required a technical means for exchanging large files over the Internet. Id. at ¶ 5. Megaupload’s cloud storage service seemed to offer an ideal solution. Mr. Goodwin registered a premium account there, allowing him to upload and store files of unlimited size. Id. Mr. Goodwin paid 79.99 euros for his two-year premium Megaupload membership. Id. II. OHIOSPORTSNET’S BACKUP POLICIES AND MEGAUPLOAD’S CRASH Mr. Goodwin backed up all the raw footage of the sporting events, player and coach interviews, and promotional packages on a personal hard drive. Id. at ¶ 8. Mr. Goodwin believed that between his own hard drive backups and Megaupload’s cloud storage service, he was protecting the files he needed to continue to grow his business. However, as luck would have it, in mid-January of 2 2012, his hard drive crashed. Id. Upon learning that the files on his hard drive