Slash hopes Guns N' Roses leaker "rots in jail"

Ex-Guns N' Roses and current Velvet Revolver lead guitarist Slash slammed a blogger who leaked nine unreleased tracks from his former band online last June, telling the Los Angeles Times, "I hope he rots in jail. It's going to affect the sales of the record, and it's not fair. The Internet is what it is, and you have to deal with it accordingly, but I think if someone goes and steals something, it's theft." The blogger, 27-year-old Kevin Cogill, was charged with a felony and faces up to three years in prison and $250,000 in fines. Cogill, who lives in Los Angeles, was arrested last Wednesday (August 27th) by five FBI agents at his apartment.

Cogill was charged under a three-year-old federal anti-piracy law that makes it a felony to distribute a copyrighted work on computer networks before its release. He was released on $10,000 bail.

Assistant U.S. attorney Craig Missakian, who pursued the case with the FBI and recording industry, said, "In the past, these may have been viewed as victimless crimes. But in reality, there's significant damage."

Cogill posted the songs at a website called Antiquiet, 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 took them down again after he was contacted by representatives of Guns N' Roses.

The tracks were allegedly taken from the band's yet-to-be-released Chinese Democracy album. Cogill, who used to work in distribution for the group's record label, says he received them from an anonymous source.

Guns N' Roses issued a statement saying, "Though we don't support this guy's actions at that level, our interest is in the original source. We can't comment publicly at this time as the investigation is ongoing."

In other news, bassist Duff McKagan, Slash's bandmate in both Guns N' Roses and Velvet Revolver, told This Is Nottingham that the latter group has been jamming with a British singer recently as it continues it search for a replacement for Scott Weiland. McKagan said, "We have a singer we've been working with for a couple of months and he's actually a product of your fair country -- but I won't say who. But we've also had a very interesting call from someone who's a big, big name, so it would be amazing if that worked out. Slash and I have been fighting adversity our whole careers, so the scenario of upheaval is nothing new."
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