Kevin Cogill, the
Antiquiet proprietor who was arrested earlier this week for leaking nine songs from Guns N' Roses' eternally delayed
Chinese Democracy, is out on $10,000 bond, and there's a bounty on his head from none other than ex-Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash: "I hope he rots in jail," the curly-haired guitarist told the
Los Angeles Times. "It's going to affect the sales of the record, and it's not fair." Whether or not Cogill does "rot" in jail (and pay fines, and possible civil damages) rests on the court's interpretation of the the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005, which makes the pre-release dissemination of even one song a felony. The act hasn't been used much; one notable occurrence of its enforcement came when two people who leaked Ryan Adams'
Jacksonville City Nights before its street date were subsequently sentenced to two months of house arrest and two years probation. But lawyers that the
Times spoke to hinted that Cogill's punishment could be a bit harsher, thanks to the continued bottom-line hit that the biz has been taking.
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Idolator
Yesterday's New York Times had a story on how AC/DC is standing up against the digital age: The band is putting out Black Ice via brick-and-mortar outlets only next week, with Wal-Mart getting the CD exclusive and indie stores being allowed to sell it on vinyl. Angus Young told the Times that his band's resistance to going digital was rooted in the idea of iTunes selling chunks of albums instead of full-length records: “It’s like an artist who does a painting... If he thinks it’s a great piece of work, he protects it. It’s the same thing: this is our work.” Well, someone in the chain of getting the album to stores didn't quite get the memo on AC/DC's analog ways, or maybe they just found it hypocritical that AC/DC was OK with selling single songs as ringtones, but not as 99-cent downloads, because Black Ice leaked last week, and according to estimates, it's been downloaded some 400,000 times from BitTorrent alone.
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So the word is that the leak of Metallica's Death Magnetic last night wasn't spurred by piracy rings or someone breaking into Rick Rubin's house—nope, apparently the album's all over the Internet now because a shop in France broke the street date and sold "a number of copies" yesterday morning. There is something about this story that smells totally, utterly fishy to me, especially since Lars Ulrich is acting all zen about the leak ("Everybody's happy. It's 2008 and it's part of how it is these days, so it's fine. We're happy."). Perhaps someone in the Metallica camp is trying to test the "well, Tha Carter III leaked and it was fine for Lil Wayne's sales" theory? [
