Blogger Charged with Felony Music Piracy
In June, blogger Kevin Cogill posted nine leaked songs from the unreleased Guns N' Roses album 'Chinese Democracy' on his music blog. The album has reportedly been in the works for more than a decade.
After posting the songs on his blog, Cogill's site became incredibly popular and his server crashed due to the onslaught of Guns N' Roses fans looking to download the unreleased songs. The Los Angeles Times reported that after a few hours, he received complaints from Guns N' Roses' lawyers and decided to delete the songs from his server.
Still, according to the lawyers, the damage was done and so they decided to unleash a new weapon against piracy. Five FBI agents arrived at Cogill's apartment in Culver City, California and arrested him on felony charges of bootlegging.
Cogill was the first person in California to be charged under a three-year-old federal anti-piracy law that makes it a felony to distribute a copyrighted work on computer networks before the work is released. He now faces up to three years in prison and $250,000 in fines.
Craig Missakian, an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, worked with the FBI and recording industry investigators to build the case against Cogill. He says that while music piracy has been viewed as a victimless crime in the past, the reality is that these leaks cause significant damages.
The entertainment industry claims that when songs or movies are leaked on the Internet prior to their release dates, sales are lost. Additionally, leaked songs are often unfinished versions that tend to be of poor sound quality.
In the past, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has gone after individuals for copyright infringement by filing civil cases against them. These cases have generally been against moms, grandmothers and other people who own computers or pay for Internet access on computers that have allegedly been used on peer-to-peer networks to share music.
The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 gave RIAA the opportunity to have alleged music pirates also charged with stiff felony charges. For the most part, the law has only been used a handful of times, and only against big commercial piracy rings in those cases.
However, in 2006, two people were charged with distributing a version of a Ryan Adams & the Cardinals album on the Internet before its release date. These people were ultimately each sentenced to two years house arrest and two years of probation.
Guns N' Roses issued a statement saying that while they do not support what Codill was doing, they are more interested in where the original leak of the material came from. Separately, Slash, the former Guns N' Roses lead guitarist, said that he hopes Codill rots in jail.
Missakian has said his office would bring more cases like this in the future against pirates of unreleased materials.
