Legal News

Where Does He Go Now That He?s Charged With Gun N? Roses Piracy?

By Dan Slater

Axl Rose at the MTV Video Music Awards in New York, on Aug. 31, 2006. (AP/Stephen Chernin)

Welcome to the jungle of online music piracy. In an unusual move, the FBI has arrested a 27-year-old Los Angeles man on copyright-infringement charges for posting on his Web site nine songs from a yet-to-be-released album by Guns N’ Roses called “Chinese Democracy.” Here’s a report from the WSJ’s Sarah McBride.

The songs appeared in June on a music Web site, antiquiet.com, which is registered to Kevin Cogill under the alias Kevin Skwerl.

Even in cases in which music is uploaded before the release of an album, writes the WSJ, the uploaders usually receive cease-and-desist notices, as Cogill did. He responded by telling the attorneys who sent the letter that he had removed the songs from his site and deleted them from his computer.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian said the Recording Industry Association of America had alerted the Department of Justice to the case, and he planned to prosecute similar cases as they arose. “We take this type of crime very seriously,” he said.

Anthony Eaglin, an attorney for Cogill, had no comment. If convicted of the copyright charges, Cogill faces a max sentence of three years in federal prison, or five years if it is proven that he uploaded the songs for financial gain.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on August 28, 2008 (boomark / email).