Yeah, that's sort of what I thought. This "On the flip side, Kim Dotcom will lose the ability to use the data to defend himself after pleading not guilty to piracy," seems very strange to me. Obviously, if the data were to be deleted, it would be because the FBI stopped Megaupload from paying for those data-center services. Thus, we would get a situation where the feds are at least indirectly responsible for destroying evidence, and then argue "well, prove that the data which has just been conveniently destroyed wasn't pirated!" That makes no sense at all, only makes for a stronger defense, so I don't think that's what they're going to try (which is why they had better preserve the damn data).

Perhaps even more importantly, if this data gets destroyed and they can't find further evidence to use against the Megaupload bosses, this would mean a federal bureau effectively destroyed a company without having any evidence of them having committed a crime. That would be a very bad thing, and would set a very, very bad precedent.