EDITOR’S NOTE: Pop ‘stache mistakenly reported last week that hip-hop producer Swizz Beatz was Megaupload’s CEO. It turns out that is untrue as other news sources, such as Time Magazine, were also confused as to how exactly Beatz was involved with Megaupload.
Pop ‘stache regrets the error. Here is what we know so far:
Ira Rothken, an attorney for the embattled file-sharing site, said Beatz was never involved with the company, as was previously reported according to this Vulture.com article. Rothken said Beatz was in negotiations to become the CEO and that the deal was never official.
Megaupload was shut down by federal prosecutors Friday after the arrest in New Zealand of four of the seven defendants named in charges of content piracy. According to Rothken, the company is trying to recover its servers and get back online. New Zealand authorities seized not only the company’s servers, but also money, domain names and other assets in the United States and other countries.
Rothken said Megaupload will vigorously defend itself and is looking at its legal options to get back online. He said the site simply offered online storage, and that it is offensive to think that just because people can upload bad things, Megaupload is automatically responsible.
But U.S. authorities claim Megaupload readily made available copyrighted material, including music, television shows, movies, pornography and even terrorism propaganda videos.
In a twist to the story, there appeared to be an attempt to resurrect the site. A new web address circulated on Twitter less than a day after Megaupload was shut down, but the site offered no substantive content. Rothken said he wasn’t familiar with any official effort to get the site back up, as the United States currently possess Megaupload’s major servers.
