Two companies, Microhits and Valcom, filed a civil suit against Megaupload on March 21, alleging the site induced and contributed to infringing copyright.

Microhits holds the copyrights for recordings by artists such as Billie Holiday, Marvin Gaye and Rod Stewart, while Valcom owns audio and video rights to films featuring entertainers such as Bill Murray, Jackie Chan and Ryan Seacrest.

The civil suit names Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, the company itself; Vestor, a company owned by Dotcom; and Mathias Ortmann, Megaupload's CTO. The suit came about two months after Megaupload was shut down on Jan. 19 and charged with criminal copyright infringement, the first time a cloud storage service provider has faced such charges in the U.S.

In its motion, Megaupload said the civil suit allegations "appear to be copied verbatim" from the indictment filed in January. If the civil suit progressed in parallel with the criminal case, Megaupload's defendants may be forced to assert their Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination but then waive it as part of the civil case, the motion said.

"This would be an unfair burden on their constitutional rights," the document contends.