Canada (United States of America) v. Equinix Inc., 2013
ONSC 193

This was an application by the Attorney General of
Canada on behalf of the United States pursuant to s.15(1) of the Mutual
Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act for an order to send mirror-imaged
copies of thirty-two computer servers to authorities in the United States.

The American prosecutors alleged that the respondent
Megaupload Ltd. was party to criminal infringement of copyright, conspiracy to
infringe copyright, money laundering, and racketeering. In particular, they
alleged that Megaupload facilitated wrongful dissemination of copyrighted
material such as movies and music. Megaupload argued that there is an enormous
volume of information on the servers and that sending mirror image copies of
all of the data would be overly broad.

The Court balanced the state interest in gathering
evidence against privacy interests in information, and ordered that the servers
be brought before the Court pursuant to s.15(2) to allow it to make an order
refining what is to be sent.