On August 26th, 27-year-old Kevin Cogill was arrested on suspicion of violating federal copyright laws. FBI agents say Coghill had nine unreleased Guns N’ Roses songs on his site in June.
The blogger allegedly had been streaming songs from the still unreleased new Guns N’ Roses album “Chinese Democracy” on his site for some time.
Coghill, despite admitting twice in writing to the FBI that he was guilty, pleaded not guilty in court today. He faces up to three years in federal prison if convicted of copyright infringement and up to five years if the court believes he posted the songs for commercial gain.
The defendant was originally given a public defender attorney but has now retained his own lawyer and is fighting the charges.
The FBI reported that in June, Coghill admitted to the crime and signed it in writing, confessing that he uploaded the songs but then took them down because the traffic took down the servers running his site.
Guns N’ Roses added that they do not condone Coghill’s actions, but that their real “interest is in the original source” of the material.
Result for: commercial gain
On August 26th, 27-year-old Kevin Cogill was arrested on suspicion of violating federal copyright laws. FBI agents say Coghill had nine unreleased Guns N’ Roses songs on his site in June.
The blogger allegedly had been streaming songs from the still unreleased new Guns N’ Roses album “Chinese Democracy” on his site for some time.
Coghill, despite admitting twice in writing to the FBI that he was guilty, pleaded not guilty in court today. He faces up to three years in federal prison if convicted of copyright infringement and up to five years if the court believes he posted the songs for commercial gain.
The defendant was originally given a public defender attorney but has now retained his own lawyer and is fighting the charges.
The FBI reported that in June, Coghill admitted to the crime and signed it in writing, confessing that he uploaded the songs but then took them down because the traffic took down the servers running his site.
Guns N’ Roses added that they do not condone Coghill’s actions, but that their real “interest is in the original source” of the material.
Result for: commercial gain
According to TorrentFreak, British police have arrested a former user of the private torrent tracker OiNK for uploading and seeding a single album. There was word that police are currently questioning others and more arrests seem likely.
The popular tracker was shutdown in late 2007, and the British authorities made the claim that they would be investigating, not anti-piracy agencies such as the RIAA, MPAA, or BREIN. Until today though, no one has been charged with anything, that even includes OiNK founder and admin Alan Ellis.
The man arrested, who was from the Cheshire area, was questioned and later released on police bail. He has no prior convictions or arrests and is in trouble for uploading a single album early last year.
The bigger questions however, are why the arrest happened now, for such a trivial user, and whether the charges will stick. There was no commercial gain for the user, and his only crime may be that the album was a pre-release, meaning it hit the Internet days or weeks before the actual street date.
We will keep you updated.
