LOS ANGELES - A man accused of placing songs on the Internet from an unreleased album by the rock band Guns N' Roses pleaded not guilty on Monday in federal court.
Kevin Cogill, 27, is charged with violating federal copyright law.
Cogill pleaded innocent to the charge on Monday and no date has been set for the trial, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. AThe FBI says that Cogill posted nine tracks from Guns N' Roses' upcoming album "Chinese Democracy" on a Web site called antiquiet.com.
Cogill was arrested in August at his Los Angeles home and released on bail the same day. He faces three years in federal prison if convicted, and five years if the court finds he posted the songs for commercial gain.
Guns N' Roses said in a statement at the time of the arrest that while it did not condone Coghill's actions, "our interest is in the original source" of the material. Mrozek declined to comment on whether there would be any additional arrests.
One of the biggest bands to emerge from the American metal scene in the late 1980s, Guns N' Roses has not released an album of new material in more than 17 years. "Chinese Democracy" will reportedly come out later next month, but the project has been delayed multiple times over the years as singer Axl Rose shed all his original bandmates.
I remember that when I was in college and Napster was first getting big there was a lot of buzz going on about record companies busting students for downloading thousands of songs illegally and making them pay huge fines. Now it seems as if they are targeting someone for posting songs earlier than the release date to make an example of him. The article doesn't go into detail about how he might be trying to make a profit on this but it does suggest there was a motive of monetary gain. I wonder how he got ahold of these songs early, that might be something to look into as well.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27287280/
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