Now maybe you’ve already heard about this but last week a Los Angeles based blogger’s house was stormed by federal Marshals and he was taken into custody becoming the first Californian to be charged under a 3-year-old federal anti-piracy law which makes it illegal to transfer copyrighted material over a computer network before its commercail release. The 27-year-old Kevin Cogill, pictured above, was arrested on wednesday of last week and released shortly after than on 10,000 dollars bail.

Cogill had reportedly posted 9 previously unleased Guns N’ Roses tracks from their long awaited Chinese Democracy album on his music blog, “Antiquiet“, but soon took them down after being contacted by GnR’s  lawyer. Cogill has been admitted to posting the tracks and has cooperated with the lawyers and the FBI. This didn’t seem to matter much as they still felt it nessessary to bring a swat team into Cogills small Culver City neighborhood to arrest him. “Read The LATimes Article Here.”

To me, this seems like a bit over the top. I feel like the Fed’s are making a spectacle out of this case; A) because its the first arrest of its kind in California and B) because they want to instill fear in the music blogging community. Yet another part of me thinks that this is just GnR’s technique for drumming up hype for their new album. That they could have settled this matter, maybe even with similar charges, in a less sensational way. So I could post something GnR’s here but I wont. A) Because I don’t support them going after the little guy and doing it in such a tasteless way and B) because hair bands suck. Read Kevin’s thoughts about the subject Here: “The United States Of America Vs. Me”

TR