US prosecutors want to jail a US citizen who posted tracks from a Guns & Roses album “Chinese Democracy” to his website Antiquiet before its commercial release.
US prosecutors want to jail a US citizen who posted tracks from a Guns & Roses album “Chinese Democracy” to his website Antiquiet before its commercial release.
The Federal prosecutors claim that Kevin Cogill should be jailed on the one misdemeanor count of pre-release piracy 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.
