Later this week discussions will begin over what to do with the data taken offline when file-sharing site Megaupload was shut down earlier this year. Over 25 petabytes of data has been left in legal limbo since January 19th 2012 when a raid coordinated by US law enforcement closed the site and arrested Kim Dotcom, Megaupload’s founder.

On April 26th lawyers for Megaupload and the US government will meet in Virginia to begin talks to decide what to do with the data. The file-sharing site was shut down in a series of raids after the US government said there was evidence of massive copyright infringement by the company.

Film companies and the MPAA say that the data should not be released to users unless there is action taken to police any pirated material that is within the cache. However, privacy and web campaigners such as the EFF have said that this retention of data is affecting many innocent users, such as small business owners and military personnel who have been cut off from their data since Megaupload was shut down in January.

Carpathia, the hosting firm that looked after Megaupload’s servers, have been told by the US government that they can delete the data, provided that enough had been done to try to return the information to users. However, a US judge has ruled that Carpathia must continue to keep the servers in a warehouse for a few more weeks while the negotiations are ongoing.