the law

Swizz Beatz Is Not Megaupload’s CEO, It Turns Out

NEW YORK, NY - DECEMBER 06: Swizz Beatz attends the
NEW YORK, NY - DECEMBER 06: Swizz Beatz attends the “Bronx Arts Recognize” event to benefit the Bronx Charter School for the Arts at the Avenue on December 6, 2011 in New York City. (Photo by Jerritt Clark/Getty Images) Photo: Jerritt Clark/Getty Images

It has been a truly dramatic week for file-sharing, as SOPA protests blacked out large parts of the Internet, Megaupload was shut down by the Feds, and most perplexingly, Swizz Beatz got “outed” as the CEO of that very company. The Swizz reveal helped explain how that awesome Kanye and Kardashian-featuring “M-E-G-A” video came to be, but apparently his publicist had the wrong intel: VentureBeat has a quote from Megaupload attorney Ira Rothken, who states that to his knowledge, “Swizz Beatz was never involved in any meaningful way. He was negotiating to become the CEO, but it was never official.” Swizz is not named in the Megaupload indictment, and so far no dramatic arrest reports have made their way to major media outlets. But Vulture assumes that Swizz still had a big hand in the Megaupload music video, so: Congrats, man, on gifting that to the world and still managing to avoid a legal fiasco.

Swizz Beatz Is Not Megaupload’s CEO, It Turns Out