Is it just me, or is there an incredible disconnect over "intellectual property"? Copyright interests like the RIAA and MPAA pressure governments to perform these raids which typically involve a court order to seize physical property (servers, etc) without any cognizance of the "property" they contain.
"Information wants to be free? Well, part of freeing something is that you can lose it forever."
hang on, thats not right! Being free here means, free to obtain, reuse and distribute. Right now, the information is most decidely NOT free, because the feds are in control of it.
They could've made a copy of the data as evidence - there isn't any need at all to remove the servers. This is digital data, the hardware has absolutely no bearing on the correctness of the evidence. I bet they were somehow 'persuaded' by the MAFIAA to sieze the hardware. I feel its unfair that lobby groups has enough power to use public money to achieve their goals.
They seem to want it both ways.