Feds Demand Prison For Guns N' Roses Uploader

Defeat Globalism writes with this excerpt from Wired: "Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles are pursuing a 6-month prison term for a Los Angeles man who pleaded guilty in December to one misdemeanor count of uploading pre-release Guns N' Roses tracks, according to court documents. Kevin Cogill was arrested last summer at gunpoint and charged with uploading nine tracks of the Chinese Democracy album to his music site — antiquiet.com. The album, which cost millions and took 17 years to complete, was released November 23 and reached No. 3 in the charts. The sentence being sought — including the calculation of damages based on the illegal activity of as many as 1,310 websites that disseminated the music after Cogill released it — underscores how serious the government is about punishing those for uploading pre-release material."

Comments

Shouldn't this be a Civil matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm confused: all the merits of the case are civil in nature. How in hell do they justify prosecuting this man in criminal court? I don't understand: can someone please explain (and prove I'm just dumb)?

(My logic is that he made no money off his actions, and they were of absolutly no benefit to him.)

Re:Shouldn't this be a Civil matter?

[davidbrucehughes]

Exactly. And that is why we have moved out of the US to a more civilized country. We release all of our material--audio, video and written--under a Creative Commons license, and urge both artists and consumers to boycott the mainstream content providers. They are simply trying to maintain a business model that has been obsolete since Napster. Just let them die.

Re:I't just like that Babylon 5 guy said

[TheRaven64]

I lost some respect for JMS when he wrote that. The thread was in connection with some scripts that he had written for Crusade episodes, which had not been produced. He was complaining about people distributing them online, even though the only studio that had the rights to produce them, wouldn't. His email basically said to me 'I have no more creative output to contribute. Don't advertise my talents as a writer and demand more shows written by me, because I can't create anything new anymore.'

Babylon 5 was created by someone with a story to tell, who was willing to work hard and struggle to tell that story. Crusade was created by someone who wanted to make money from a franchise. That the two were the same person is a tragedy.