An Ohio videographer has stepped forward to be the poster boy for innocent users who lost access to data due to the January seizure of Megaupload's servers. He has asked the Virginia court overseeing the case to order that his files be returned.

Kyle Goodwin runs a business taping high school sporting events across the state. He kept two copies of his videos: one on a personal hard drive, the other on a premium Megaupload account. But in January, disaster struck. The hard drive failed, and shortly afterwards, the federal government raided Megaupload. As a result, Goodwin lost access to hours of valuable footage.

With the assistance of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Goodwin has been attempting to negotiate for the return of his data. But now EFF says those negotiations have reached an impasse. So it has asked the courts to establish a procedure for Goodwin, and other innocent users like him, to retrieve their files.

The brief argues that it's unreasonable to force Goodwin to wait more than five months for the return of his data. For example, "at least four parents have agreed to pay Mr. Goodwin to put together highlight reels of their chidlren's sports season to send to colleges for recruitment purposes." But the footage he needs is trapped on Megaupload's servers. Goodwin's company has also lost "the original files of all of its promotional videos and other news packages, leaving Mr. Goodwin and his producers unable to extract the video to make more packages and promote their site as they try to secure crucial additional funding for the growing business."

EFF argues that the law is on Goodwin's side. The courts have repeatedly held that when governments seize property, they must take care not to trample the property rights of innocent third parties. While most of those cases have focused on tangible property, EFF contends that exactly the same principles apply to valuable data.

And the stakes are high. While EFF has chosen to make Goodwin the public face of innocent Megaupload users—his unlucky hard drive crash makes him particularly sympathetic—there could be many other innocent users who were harmed by the shutdown of the Megaupload servers. Moreover, EFF points out, the seizure of digital goods has become an increasingly common practice, so the handling of this case will set an important precedent.