[27] Rothken is the lead global defense counsel for Kim Dotcom and Megaupload in what has been called the largest criminal copyright case in US history.
[29] On January 20, 2012, Megaupload and Kim Dotcom were raided by a force involving dozens of members of the New Zealand elite Special Tactics Group and Armed Offenders Squad under the direction of the FBI.
Samuels and Rothken discussed many aspects of the effects of the government actions on innocent parties such as the server company, and customers who relied on Megaupload, as backup storage, who were suddenly denied all access to their personal files.
Samuels asserts that in many similar cases the government has finally admitted, as much as 12 to 18 months after taking sites offline, they did not have sufficient evidence to support the shutdowns.
[32] When the operation was over, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a press release: "This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States and directly targets the misuse of a public content storage and distribution site to commit and facilitate intellectual property crime.
[35] In addition Rothken and his co-counsel, William Burck from Quinn Emmanuel, filed motions to dismiss Megaupload from the case due to failure of the United States to serve the foreign corporate entity.
In Rothken's words, the government is acting over-aggressively and overbroadly by taking down one of the world's largest cloud storage services "without any notice or chance for Megaupload to be heard in a court of law."
Instead, the government's willingness to pursue the case as an international racketeering charge meant "essentially only sticking up for one side of the copyright vs. technology debate."
[41] While the ultimate repercussions of those illegal activities are still unclear, Rothken has written that they lend no credibility to the U.S. prosecution's case against Megaupload and Kim Dotcom.
He did tell the Huffington Post in a March 2013 interview his views about the nature of illegal US spying on the internet and that they are trying to learn more: Rothken has been involved in handling issues in electronic discovery in a legal think tank.
Rothken co-edited a leading Commentary on the issues of preserving, managing, and identifying not reasonably accessible electronically stored information or "NRA ESI".
Rothken has represented some of the most successful web sites in the world on a huge range of matters from startup issues to risk reduction strategies to development of early affiliate programs to e-commerce policies and agreements.
[49] Rothken assisted developers and content creators in negotiating agreements with some of the most valuable intellectual property franchises in the world including for example, Star Wars, The Simpsons, and CSI.
[51] Rothken was involved in the global roll out of cloud storage provider Mega and was introduced on stage by Kim Dotcom in the January 20th 2013 New Zealand press conference where he answered questions regarding the service.