Man who leaked Guns N' Roses tracks arrested

A 27-year-old blogger named Kevin Cogill was arrested on Wednesday (August 27th) at his Los Angeles home on suspicion of violating federal copyright laws for leaking nine Guns N' Roses songs online, according to the Los Angeles Times. Cogill, who used the name Skwerl, was accused of posting the songs at a website called Antiquiet in June, where they were available for public access. The site crashed from the amount of traffic it received once word of the leaked tracks got out. Cogill admitted to federal agents that he posted the songs and was expected to appear in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Wednesday afternoon.

Cogill operates Antiquiet himself and used to work in the distribution department of Universal Music, which owns Guns N' Roses' catalog.

It is not yet known how Cogill obtained the tracks, which are taken from the yet-to-be-released Guns N' Roses album, Chinese Democracy. He told Rolling Stone that he received them from an "anonymous online source," and took them down after being contacted by "a really cool guy from the G N'R camp that was a middleman between someone who was very angry and me."

Cogill was also visited at his office by two FBI agents who questioned him about the leak.

Kathy Leodler, director of investigations for the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) Western region office, told the Times, "The arrest of Kevin Cogill is great for the recording industry related to our online investigations. We are very pleased with the FBI's interest and the U.S. attorney's office's aggressiveness in pursuing this investigation. We think we'll see more and more of these pre-release cases."
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