Megaupload recently claimed the US government indirectly "planted" evidence leading to the file-sharing site being shut down. It's not that the US literally planted copyrighted files on Megaupload servers—rather, Kim Dotcom's legal defense says the government compelled Megaupload to keep user-uploaded files in order to cooperate with a separate investigation in June 2010, then charged them in 2012 with not getting rid of those same files.

The US responded Friday in US v. Kim Dotcom (PDF), saying Megaupload isn't telling the truth. "[T]he allegations in the pleading are irrelevant and based on unfounded assertions regarding imagined violations of its rights as a criminal defendant," the US wrote. "Megaupload alleges that the government 'affirmatively [led]' Megaupload to retain certain files on its servers. Yet Megaupload does not cite a single communication between the government and Megaupload or a single instruction from any member of the government to Megaupload; there are none."

That's because the government didn't speak with Megaupload directly in that June 2010 investigation, instead communicating indirectly through Carpathia, Megaupload's hosting provider. According to Megaupload's brief on Jan. 2, the government told Carpathia in the 2010 case that 39 infringing copies of copyrighted movies were on Megaupload servers. Megaupload was not told explicitly to either delete or keep the files, but says it was led to believe it should keep them so as not to tip off the real target of the government's investigation. In shutting down Megaupload one year ago, the US charged the company with keeping 36 of those files despite knowing they were illegally shared.

The US says it didn't tell Megaupload to keep those files and had other evidence against the company as well. "Similarly unfounded is the allegation by Megaupload that the government 'planted Megaupload’s alleged knowledge of infringing files' and misled the Court," the US wrote in its brief Friday. Megaupload argued the US obtained search warrants based only on Megaupload's failure to remove content identified in the June 2010 warrant. That's false, the US said.

"[T]he search warrant executed at Carpathia Hosting in January 2012 does not even mention the June 24, 2010 search warrant," the US wrote. "Instead, that search warrant included other, substantial evidence of criminal intent on the part of Megaupload. For instance, paragraphs 13 and 15 of the search warrant affidavit that supported the search warrant executed at Carpathia on January 19, 2012, explain how Megaupload affirmatively concealed the presence of infringing content on its website. Conspiracy also ignored takedown notices regarding certain infringing content, personally uploaded infringing content to the website, and selectively eliminated links without eliminating infringing content. As each of the individual defendants were employees of the corporate defendant, their individual acts are all attributable to Megaupload."

This particular aspect of the Dotcom case surfaced after the affidavits used to obtain warrants against Megaupload were unsealed due to a related case involving innocent bystander Kyle Goodwin's attempt to retrieve the legitimate files he stored on Megaupload. Megaupload has asked the court for an opportunity to "address the validity" of the warrants the US used to raid Megaupload. The US is obviously opposing that motion.