Comments on: FBI arrests blogger accused of leaking Guns N' Roses tracks

Los Angeles-area music blogger has allegedly admitted to streaming tracks of an unreleased Guns N' Roses album on his site.

[tcardone05]

That's a seemingly unreasonable punishment if he gets the max sentence.

[marc_90292]

Who is Guns n Roses anyway???

[mattumanu]

Tcardone05,

He deserves what he gets, for obstructing the right of an artist ownership of their own work. They didn't even have the chance to release their material before he posted their material.

He deserves it. Yeah, people these days just want to take whatever they want to take, but there has to be limits.

[thelemurking]

Obstructing the right of artist??? most people have given up on this album ever seeing the light of day. 15 years in the making and the tracks that have been leaked aren't even that good. One would assume if you have been working on a music project for 15 years, it would be absolutely stellar and mind blowing, but it's not. Heck, it's no where near the original GNR line up.

It's a sad world we live in where streaming music is considered a horrendous crime and we waste lots of time, money and resources to convict a blogger where there are far more serious crimes going on that actually have an effect on society. Imagine if we channeled all the energy wasted on hunting down people who download music and actually use that go after drug dealers, rapists, gangs, etc... you know, REAL CRIME?

[turoa76]

He won't get a jail term, just a hefty fine. The jail terms will be reserved for the big time pirates burning thousands of copies and selling them at flea markets pre-release.

[kuliddar]

Heck, at least he had the guts to put them out to the public. Something that Axel Rose has yet and probably will never do.

[make_or_break]

Heck, at least he had the guts to put them out to the public

As if he actually had the right to do so. If Rose or GNR didn't feel any of the material was ready to be released, then it's their right to do as they please. Cogill's actions were self-serving and tromped over the band's own right to their own material.

[thelemurking]

dude... Axel has been working on it for 15 years... if it's not ready to be released by now, it never will be. no matter how hard you try, you can't polish a turd.

[gregorytga]

Interestingly enough, a quick search of some well known torrent trackers, such as the Bay, shows that versions of this album have been floating around for for two years, and the newest version 3 months ago. A rather large number of music blogs simply just link rapidshare/zshare/whatevershareservice links to direct downloads of the entire albums. While the courts will never recognize/understand this, streaming the songs at least is a little ethical as that it ensures generation loss if the songs are compressed and redistributed, as it'll require re-capturing the streams (assuming he's using streaming format that isn't easily traced back to the source file).

This seems to be more going after the little guy as opposed to the actual source as various torrent sites seem to be either too elusive or too numerous to actually stop. The only point to sending 5 FBI agents to arrest a non-violent intellectual crimes offender as opposed to sending a summons is to send a message. Had there not been the FBI, this story wouldn't have made the news, and the copyright holders wouldn't be generating news stories that people, such as myself, whom have never visited said blog nor have listened to Guns N Roses would have known about this.

[kaibelf]

Honestly, I doubt this guy has the money FOR a hefty fine. Throw him in the clink!

[Dr_Zinj]

No, you send 5 FBI agents so that 2 can process the arrest, and 3 others can handle the warrant search and seizure of evidence.

[marc_90292]

That keeps them from doing more important stuff, like arresting Congressmen who take bribes from corporations - and no I do not mean to vote on legislation, they do it to call judges or their law clerks ex parte to intimidate them, a felony under the law. But then, the Bush DOJ doesn't allow them to do it.

[mooney101]

Copyright laws are completely unreasonable when it comes to punishment. I'm a professional photographer and the laws associated around copying photographs and art in general are ridicules when it come to the general public. They must be sever for those who are making money of copying someones work but need to be rewritten for the general public.

[mtnelson]

does anybody really care about guns & roses anymore?.... i mean really?... are you listening larz, your next....

the fact that he was just streaming (and streaming is the keyword here...) the songs and was ordered to remove them (which he did) doesn't give the fbi the right to arrest him because of someones else's actions. i'm not condemning what he did, but come on. the fact that the riaa and the u.s. government can do this is appalling. every citizen of the u.s. should be peaved that the government has allowed a group of lawyers representing a washed up rock star to have this kind of control. the dmca and most of the copyright laws in place in the u.s. are garbage and should be treated as such.

[marc_90292]

Funny, that reminds me of the Lenz video on YouTube where a Todler dances to battle ground noise, later to be claimed to be a Prince song :)

[wnew813]

It was interesting to see all the negative comments to Kevin Cogill. I was wondering how many of those people, quick to condemn Kevin, have or know someone that has a My Space page that has music on it. Should all those 12 and 13 year olds be arrested for streaming music? He was not putting his music to download, and they did not even know if he owned it in the first place, he was just putting it on his blog for anyone to here. I guess the RIAA has done their job by prosecuting the little guys to scare the little guys and convince the public that they are always in the right.

[finalatk]

This is a totally unacceptable waste of government resources. As a taxpayer it?s insulting to me to see FBI agents wasting time on this obviously corporate motivated attempt to scare people. When the top 10 most wanted list DOESN?T include terrorists, rapists, and murders then you can think about sending the FBI to investigate online music theft. Also if you insist on chasing online crimes maybe think about, oh, I don?t know child predators or possibly kiddie porn peddlers?

[realized]

seems he admitted to it 2 times in writing (one signed), go here for updated information and the real court documents:
http://www.piracyisacrime.org/In-The-Courtroom/updated-information-about-guns-n-roses-leak.html