Megaupload, the file-sharing site with over 150 million registered users and about 50 million hits daily, was raided yesterday by the U.S. Justice Department. Four men who ran the company were subsequently indicted.
STORY: RAIDED! Feds Indict Megaupload Head Honchos
Now, rumors have been flying that super producer Swizz Beatz was a silent partner at Megaupload.
STORY: BLACK OUT! Wikipedia, Reddit & Google Go Dark Against SOPA
According to the Associated Press, the company did in fact list Swizz Beatz as its CEO, although he was not named in the indictment. Swizz did help cast the company’s promotional video from 2011, in which will.i.am, Diddy, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West endorsed the site.
According to the 72 page indictment, former CEO and current chief innovation officer Kim Dotcom owns 68 percent of Mega’s holding company, and six other investors – none of them celebrities – own smaller stakes, adding up to 32 percent.
The Justice Department claims Megaupload facilitated millions of illegal downloads of films, music and other content, costing copyright holders at least $500 million in lost revenue.
Even though the company is based in Hong Kong, with Dotcom living in New Zealand, some of the alleged pirated content was hosted on leased servers in Virginia, and that was enough for U.S. prosecutors to act.
The five-count indictment alleges copyright infringement, as well as conspiracy to commit money laundering and racketeering: the site would reward users who uploaded pirated content for sharing, and turned a blind eye to requests from copyright holders to remove copyright-protected files.
Users would receive cash bonuses if they uploaded content that generated massive numbers of downloads, according to the indictment. Such content was almost always copyright protected, the indictment said.
The Justice Department said it was illegal for anyone to download pirated content, but their investigation focused on the leaders of the company, not end users who may have downloaded a few movies for personal viewing.
