S. Samuel
Just hours after 50 Cent informed fans he was responsible for popular urban video website World Star Hip Hop being mysteriously shutdown yesterday (January 24), the webpage is back up and running.
Calling in to New York City radio station Hot 97 Monday (January 24) evening, World Star Hip Hop owner Q cleared up the confusion.
“It’s a technical difficulty and has nothing to do with 50 or homeland security or hackers,” he said. “We’re more or less having difficulties with the site itself as far as our server. We’re getting so much traffic we constantly have to upgrade.” To further discredit 50’s claims, Q reminded listeners that the site had been down before. “We were down in ’07 because we got hacked. We got hacked last year and we’ve also had problems with our bandwith before,” he said. According to Q, the site will be up in the next 24 hours. Q also gave 50 Cent a shout out for the “good promo,” although he admitted that he and 50 do have personal beef due to miscommunication and a “falling out a while back.” (Billboard)
Yesterday, 50 took credit for the site mysteriously being shutdown.
“I don’t know why people underestimate me. I just shut downWORLDSTAR for future advertising contact thisis50.com suckers lol,” 50 tweeted Monday (January 24).
“I put worldstar to bed, you don’t believe try me I will shut your sh*t down. Lol”
“I predict 2 more web sites will shut down this week. Take a guess who they are. I’m sick of the hate I’m to strong.” (50 Cent’s Twitter)
One of World Star Hip Hop‘s associates, G, responded on Twitter and denied 50 having taken part in the shutdown.
“WE WILL BE BACK!!! CAN’T SHUT US DOWN #WORLDSTAR.,” G tweeted Monday.
“Smh I f*cks wit @50cent but n*ggaz clownin yall he aint done sh*t” (G’s Twitter)
In late November, multiple urban websites were taken down over piracy and illegal sales accusations.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), announced on Monday that it had executed court approved seizure orders “against 82 domain names of commercial websites engaged in the illegal sale and distribution of counterfeit goods and copyrighted works as part of Operation In Our Sites v. 2.0.” Operation In Our Sites is an ICE initiative aimed at Internet counterfeiting and piracy that began earlier this year with seizure warrants against nine domain names of websites that were offering first-run movies. The ICE press release for Operation In Our Sites v. 2.0 said that the “… operation targeted online retailers of a diverse array of counterfeit goods, including sportsequipment, shoes, handbags, athletic apparel and sunglasses as well as illegal copies of copyrighted DVD boxed sets, music and software.” (IEEE Spectrum)
Check out 50 Cent speaking on yesterday’s shutdown below:
