Feds Want Six Month Prison Term for Guns N' Roses Leaker

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on March 16, 2009 - 11:40am.

Los Angeles - The federal prosecutors handling the case against Kevin Cogill, who posted tracks from the new Guns N' Roses album "Chinese Democracy" to his website Antiquiet before its commercial release, are seeking a six-month prison term on the one misdemeanor count of pre-release piracy he faces, Wired.com reported. The government also calculated that Cogill should owe damages of $371,622, based on estimates it made on how many times the tracks were downloaded as a result of the leak; the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which has been pushing the case, itself estimated damages of $2.2 million.

The RIAA also, however, said it would accept a damages award of $30,000 if Cogill would "participate in a public service announcement designed to educate the public that music piracy is illegal," according to court documents.

"Making a pre-release work available to the worldwide public over the internet where it can be copied without limit is arguably one of the more insidious forms of copyright infringement," prosecutor Craig H. Missakian wrote in court documents.

"That is because once released it is virtually impossible to prevent unlimited dissemination of the work."

Cogill is scheduled to be sentenced on May 4.

http://snipurl.com/dyam5 (DMW previous coverage)

Published in DMW Daily, March 16, 2009

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Comments

Kevin Cogill

Submitted by Brittni (not verified) on March 20, 2009 - 5:49am.

I don't think that it is such a big deal, i mean yes, piracy is illegal and bad but if you really think about it... Axl is sort of dumb and needs to realize that the world was waiting 13 years for this album and to just have the album finished and locked up is stupid, people should riot this act.