Online storage websites are gaining popularity as they free drive space and make pictures, documents and other stored files available from any Internet-connected computing device. Users of Megaupload, however, may lose all their stored data by Thursday.

US federal prosecutors blocked Megaupload access whilst they charged seven men with facilitating illegal downloads of movies, music and other content, totalling in the millions.

Even users without copyright-protected media files stored there have been unable to retrieve their stored files since US federal authorities locked the gates.

Megaupload is based in Hong Kong but hires outside, regional servers to store regionally uploaded files, some of which are in the United States. Because the investigation caused Megaupload’s funds to be frozen, they have been unable to pay the leasing fees.

Outside companies such as Carpathia Hosting, Inc., and Cogent Communications Group, Inc., could cancel Megaupload’s lease on bandwidth and dump the stored data, allowed for non-payment by contract.

Both US federal authorities and Megaupload estimate that 50 million users around the world could be affected by the data dump, which Megaupload is trying to prevent: They state the stored data is important to their defence.

When authorities executed their search warrants, they copied some of the data but did not remove it. Because there is no legal cause to access those storage servers again, the data dump issue must be resolved with the contracted companies.

Ira Rothkin, Megaupload’s attorney, stated regarding the data salvage:

“We’re cautiously optimistic at this point that because the United States, as well as Megaupload, should have a common desire to protect consumers, that this type of agreement will get done.”

US federal authorities had the right to execute the search warrants because the servers mentioned in the warrants were on US soil in the state of Virginia, regardless of where Megaupload itself is based.

Spokesmen for neither the US Attorney’s Office nor the contracted server hosts responded to messages left last night.