I am not a lawyer, but as far as I understand, that civil recovery depends on if anything was recovered to return. If, for example, the servers were confiscated, and no one has given passwords to access the servers to retrieve content, then Civil Recovery is not possible. This would still leave Megaupload as the entity who would get sued. If civil recovery is however possible, then there would be due process and retrieving X amount of files for X amount of people as well as supplying burden of proof that they are indeed the legitimate owners of said content, then this would be a lengthy process that could be surrounded in bureaucratic red tape for a while - and still such a lawsuit, especially at this point in time would not do anything.

I am not arguing if the whole thing is right or wrong, nor am I arguing that the law is right or wrong - but from my understanding this is correct. If anyone can clarify my possible misconceptions then that would be greatly appreciated.

So the feds swoop in, run off with multiple terabytes of data on the pretense that some percentage of it might be pirated, and there isn't fuck all a mere mortal can do about it.

And people wonder why US law enforcement is so reviled?