Feds Demand Prison For Guns N' Roses Uploader 590
Defeat Globalism writes with this excerpt from Wired:
"Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles are pursuing a 6-month prison term for a Los Angeles man who pleaded guilty in December to one misdemeanor count of uploading pre-release Guns N' Roses tracks, according to court documents. Kevin Cogill was arrested last summer at gunpoint and charged with uploading nine tracks of the Chinese Democracy album to his music site — antiquiet.com. The album, which cost millions and took 17 years to complete, was released November 23 and reached No. 3 in the charts. The sentence being sought — including the calculation of damages based on the illegal activity of as many as 1,310 websites that disseminated the music after Cogill released it — underscores how serious the government is about punishing those for uploading pre-release material."
He should go to prison, but not for... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't put him in prison for stealing the album. Shoot him for promoting it. 17 years and GNR gives us, what, a big pile of overrated crap.
RIAA got its wish (Score:5, Insightful)
Now tax dollars will be used to keep them in business instead of producing decent products. Federal criminal agents will be involved in what is a civil court issue.
Tho many will say 'good, jail him he's a bad person', few will understand what is really going on here.
Freedom takes another hit.
Gun Point? (Score:5, Insightful)
ANY album (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:He should go to prison, but not for... (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, he did disrespect a major record label. Isn't that a corporate offense that requires jail time?
If you don't like it (Score:2, Insightful)
then organize a nation-wide boycott of music sales.
Whiners.
Mind you, I think the police are becoming an occupying force in this country, an arm of the Dept. of Commerce. But Slashdot makes nothing happen, so log the hell out and go organize.
Poetic justice (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Gun Point? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Gun Point? (Score:5, Insightful)
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! This has got to be one of the most excessive police actions ever. Sending a man to jail for a non-violent offense. I hate this country's legal system.
Going to jail for nonviolent crimes [wikipedia.org] isn't new and it certainly isn't an exclusive feature of the U.S.'s judicial system. At least, he's not very likely to die during his time served. Y'all might want to send him some soap-on-a-rope though.
Re:If you don't like it (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Gun Point? (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>This has got to be one of the most excessive police actions ever. Sending a man to jail for a non-violent offense.
We've been doing that for a long time. Like imprisoning those who steal someone's property. We also jail people for tax fraud, or investment fraud (like that Madoff guy). So yes jailing people for non-violent offenses is acceptable.
Now that we got that out of the way, the question is: did this person commit a crime? IMHO he did. He did the equivalent of taking somebody's work without payment. If you disagree, consider this: You spend a year of your life developing a program, with plans to sell it for income, but instead I simply TAKE the program off bittorrent. I have stolen your labor without just compensation.
Re:Shouldn't this be a Civil matter? (Score:3, Insightful)
>>>We release all of our material--audio, video and written--under a Creative Commons license
How much money do you make doing that? Enough to support yourself without resorting to a second job? And how do you deal with those who taken your creations without compensating you for your labor?
Re:Skewed Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
an administration that is walking us down the path of socialism
No, you have an administration that is walking you down the path of corporatism. The difference is that in socialism, the government takes your tax money and spends it on things that everyone needs, like schools, medical facilities and infrastructure, but in corporatism, the government takes your tax money and gives it to people who already have more money than you can possibly imagine.
The clever bit comes when they tell you that giving money to *everyone* is communism and is bad, but giving money only to people who are already rich is good. That way they can train you to bark like a good little Pavlovian doggie at the eeevil socialists that try to steal money from your corporate masters. Work hard and bark, little doggie, and maybe they'll let you have some scraps.
Re:fp (Score:5, Insightful)
It's worth giving your life for a worthy cause, like protecting you & your neighbors' freedoms from a tyrannical non-representative British government, as the man who uttered that quote was doing.
Otherwise, no.
Re:He should go to prison, but not for... (Score:5, Insightful)
People here in our county know for most crimes they will "maybe" spend a single night in jail for anything other then murder before they are let go the next day.
It's a joke around here when litterally there is no room for rapists, drunk drivers, and other 'violent' criminals in jail, but some one uploads some MP3s and OH MY GOD, get him.. Give me freakin' break.
It's like they talked about on that movie, on COPS (tv show) they'll have 3 cops chasing a guy down the street and beat him to the ground because he just stole $85. But some corporate criminal that steals $85,000,000.00 and well they treat him with kid gloves.
Some people need a reality check.
I really don't care what you call it (Score:3, Insightful)
Changing laws to convert a civil corporate issue into a criminal issue also fall within my statement.
Its still industries buying laws. Its still misuse of public funds/resources.
And i don't care what the purchased laws say, its still not a 'crime against society'.
Re:I't just like that Babylon 5 guy said (Score:5, Insightful)
Or there's this quote:
"The DVDs grossed roughly half a BILLION
dollars (and that was just after they put out S5, without all of the S5
sales in).
So what does my last profit statement say? We're $80 million in the
red.
Basically, by the terms of my contract, if a set on a WB movie burns
down in Botswana, they can charge it against B5's profits."
Is it really pirates who are harming actors, writers and directors, or is it the studios?
Re:Skewed Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
Question: If the plan to bailout/assist people with upside-down mortgages goes through, it will cost about $1000 per taxpaying home. Why should I spend $1000 to pay somebody else's mortgage? And would this be considered corporatism, socialism, or communism?
IMHO whatever it's called, it's a human rights violation.
Taking my money to pay somebody else's housing bill is theft of labor. It's no different than if my neighbor bought a Lexus, and then demanded everyone in the area throw-in money to pay the bill. Nobody has a right to demand I help buy them a car. Or pay their mortgage.
Re:RIAA got its wish (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, really bad. Tell me again: how many bankers, ex-presidents and the like have been arrested at gunpoint for fucking up the economy?
Yes, none so far. Madoff is gone, and if Jon Stewart has any say more will follow him. There is a disproportionate use of the justice system in the USA. Upload some songs or smoke a little weed and you are a federal criminal. Steal millions or billions from the people's pocket and you simply made a mistake, one that deserves more money to help you out.
Justice might be blind, but fairness doesn't seem to come with that particular malady.
Re:He should go to prison, but not for... (Score:4, Insightful)
In other countries, "Disrespect for the president, legislature, or government" is grounds for jail time. In America it's "disrespect for a CEO, the board, or corporation" that leads to jail time.
(shrug). If I was jailed for "stealing" works off the internet, then I'd figure I might as well go ahead & steal the real thing. Walmart here I come.
This is utterly disgusting. It makes me sick. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Skewed Priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
Your not paying $1000 for someone else's mortgage. You're paying $1000 so the criminals who put people up to their eyeballs in debt so they could enrich themselves won't have to five up their bonuses and Manhattan penthouses. They could care less about peoples mortgages as they have amply demonstrated these past few years.
The problem is finding a way to rescue the working class without putting money in the pockets of the parasites.
Re:He should go to prison, but not for... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like they talked about on that movie, on COPS (tv show) they'll have 3 cops chasing a guy down the street and beat him to the ground because he just stole $85. But some corporate criminal that steals $85,000,000.00 and well they treat him with kid gloves.
Well, to be fair, that $85 won't get you much of a lawyer. But the $85 mil will get you a few good lawyers, and if you work it right, a congressman or two.
Brilliant (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it's not like we have enough people in prison now [usdoj.gov].
Our corporate run detention facilities will start losing money is we don't find new reasons to fill them up with relatively minor offenses.
Half of people in prison are there for violent offenses. That half stays. The other half we need to take a good hard look at just why we're so gung ho remove people from their ability to make a living and pay to warehouse them.
Re:Skewed Priorities (Score:3, Insightful)
Taking my money to pay somebody else's housing bill is theft of labor.
I think a financial sector that systematically deregulated any oversight and pisses away over one third of our GDP on derivatives, where nobody knows who owes what to who, is theft of labor. Up another notch if they keep on demanding their executive bonus money from taxpayers, "or else the economy will collapse".
Re:Skewed Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
You should (Score:5, Insightful)
Less risk. Is WalMart going to claim each track on that CD you stole is worth $750? [afterdawn.com]
Steal a CD, you're guilty of a $20 crime. But if you do it with a computer somehow you're liable for (14*$750=$10,500) dollars worth of damage.
Or in this poor sap's case, 6 months in a federal lockup for daring to offend his corporate masters.
Amazing, isn't it? That the feds and corporate America are actually making the case that it's better to physically rob a store rather than simply downloading an mp3? It's unreal.
Re:He should go to prison, but not for... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Skewed Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
No one is demanding anything more than has been demanded for the life of this country, as well as others, and that is that the people pay for the benefits of the government. In this case we also pay for the faults of that government, one which we chose I might add. This is the government of the US paying for it's past mistakes of unregulated distribution of resources, thank you Reagan and Greenspan (who at least admitted his mistake and apologized, unlike the rest of the free market economists of the world).
Oh and since you consider debt relief to be a human rights violation I can't wait to hear what you call forced homelessness and starvation.
Re:Gun Point? (Score:3, Insightful)
So yes jailing people for non-violent offenses is acceptable.
No, no, no, just because our country seems to think that all bad people should go to jail, doesn't mean that its right. Tell me, what is the purpose of jail? It is not a "time out" like our country seems to think it is, it is where you should put violent criminals so they no longer terrorize the street until they are reformed. Yes, as in, full civil rights, etc when they get out. We wonder why we have overcrowded prisons, well this is why.
Is what they are doing good? No. But put them on house arrest, forbid them for taking public money, make them pay reparations to those they have defrauded. Madoff is a bad person, I'm sure we can all agree on that, but is he a danger if he lives next door? Is your life or property in danger if he comes to your house? No. Therefore, he should not be sent to jail. Similarly tax fraud should be the same way, if they aren't a danger to the passerby then they should not be jailed, plain and simple.
he did the equivalent of taking somebody's work without payment
Sure, but if your boss doesn't pay you, does that make him a violent criminal? No. He should have to pay you for your work, but should he have to go to jail at taxpayer expense. Heck no.
Performing Music (Score:2, Insightful)
... is work. You get paid for working. Historically for hundreds of years, people paid to see performing arts. Now, we have a problem.
Then, we had radio and advertisers who played the performances in public, for everyone to watch.
Now, it would seem, unless your shafted by paying for a piece of plastic, your a criminal because you did not buy the plastic the performance is on.
My problem is that it would seem greed has continued to encroach upon our rights because the middle man people here refuse to acknowledge how they have turned business models that made millions for them and they refuse to use anymore because they do not want a limit to how much money they can make.
So they came up with download a single for $4 dollars and then complain when people will not download it and pay for it, calling them criminals.
In fact, this corporatism that is dictating business models to its citizens, even when they do not work, then turn consumers into criminals when they feel the old models of advertising and performances is how people get paid for music, I think THEY are the criminals.
People with music talent should perform and hit the stage to get paid.
Same thing with people who write books, and print media. You get paid, and you put it on the web. People who download it pay through advertising.
It works.
As far as I am concerned people are going to jail because we are being ORDERED TO CONSUME by corporations and the penalty for not consuming is prison.
-Hack
Re:He should go to prison, but not for... (Score:3, Insightful)
"In other countries, "Disrespect for the president, legislature, or government" is grounds for jail time. In America it's "disrespect for a CEO, the board, or corporation" that leads to jail time."
That's really silly and some of the complaints about capitalism here on Slashdot are really poor.
First of all, you're completely equivocating on what is meant by "disrespect" here. "Disrespect" for the RIAA in this case is due to dogmatic adherence to an outdated view of property rights and even worse the idea that information can be copyrighted. And it wasn't for "stealing", it was for "providing." Well, it's true that the government only cares about the bigger fish in the sea here, but that's actually due to the nature of democracy, or our republic--the more "pull" or influence you have, the more you get shit done, and big businesses inherently get more influence.
Don't take this as support for one-man-one-vote, though. Then politicians cater not to the so-called "elite", but the middle of the bell curve.
Who's really to blame? (Score:4, Insightful)
The album, which cost millions and took 17 years to complete, was released November 23 and reached No. 3 in the charts. The sentence being sought -- including the calculation of damages based on the illegal activity of as many as 1,310 websites that disseminated the music after Cogill released it -- underscores how serious the government is about punishing those for uploading pre-release material.
Are they trying to insinuate that because this album cost millions of dollars more to develop than most albums should, that pirating it is in some way worse because it will take even longer for them to recuperate such losses?
News flash big business: if you spend 10x as long, and 10x as much money as anyone else in that industry would on creating a product, it is not society's responsibility to compensate you. You deserve to lose money, and probably deserve to go out of business over the project.
Besides the ridiculous cost and timeline for developing the album, it seems the primary stakeholders were determined to tank this project regardless (see: http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/india-news/axl-rose-blamed-for-band-missing-no-1-album_100126311.html/ [thaindian.com]). Blaming piracy for any financial difficulties this album has suffered is more ridiculous than usual.
Re:Gun Point? (Score:3, Insightful)
Now that we got that out of the way, the question is: did this person commit a crime? IMHO he did. He did the equivalent of taking somebody's work without payment. If you disagree, consider this: You spend a year of your life developing a program, with plans to sell it for income, but instead I simply TAKE the program off bittorrent. I have stolen your labor without just compensation.
What if the world has changed in such a way that intending to "sell" some easily-copied series of ones and zeros is no longer a viable business plan? Should medieval scribes have convinced the King to have Gutenberg burned at the stake or have him thrown him in a dungeon and his invention destroyed? Should the horse-carriage and buggy-whip makers have had Henry Ford imprisoned?
Selling something is business. Business is risk. The world changes, peoples' tastes change. There are no guarantees of continuing profit. Should the Lawrence Welk estate have had Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry imprisoned because their "rock n' roll" destroyed the incomes of thousands that profited from "Big Band", jazz, and other musical styles?
The ability to make a profit from a particular business model is an opportunity, not a right. The only way to guarantee future profitability of current business models is to halt all scientific, technological, and cultural/societal change or progress.
Strat
Re:RIAA got its wish (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I't just like that Babylon 5 guy said (Score:3, Insightful)
I will have to keep contributing to that problem if the people that want my money to put food on their tables don't start working out ways to give me a chance to pay them. Simple enough I'm not buying a DVD box for most shows since I watch the episodes once. Then what? I have useless discs sitting around that I wasted money on. No thank you. There are little to no English cinemas where I live and I won't wait to see movies until they release DVDs (the basic purpose of movie going nowadays is to talk about it to people that have also just seen them, a 6+ delay is not very helpful).
When it comes to profit the makers, producers and rights holders seem to fully understand how to exploit outsourced production, cheap prop making and other effects of globalization. But then, when it comes to treat the market as it is, an interconnected global real-time market
Re:You should (Score:5, Insightful)
He isn't being punished for stealing music, he's being punished for distributing it without authorization.
Go ahead and steal a CD from Walmart - but then also advertise that you'll give a copy to anyone who asks, and give a copy to thousands. That's an apples to apples comparison.
Re:He should go to prison, but not for... (Score:3, Insightful)
Businesses getting more influence is not democracy. That is a slide towards corporate government, commonly known as Fascism.
No, politicians do cater to the elite. The media is used to get those in the "middle of the bell curve" to vote for who the elite want. Why do you think Bush's popularity took so long to wane? All the information you needed to know how horrible his presidency was going to be was available before he even campaigned. Lots of people predicted that everything would get this bad under a Bush presidency. For fuck's sake, even the frigging Onion predicted this [theonion.com].
Re:He should go to prison, but not for... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You should (Score:5, Insightful)
At least the laws about copyright infringement here were passed by a popularly elected, semi-almost-functioning legislature. We should be blaming ourselves for electing politicians that pass laws mandating criminal penalties inthis instant.
Re:You should (Score:5, Insightful)
Slight difference: He uploaded the songs to his website. That's not something you can do accidentally. He knew exactly what the hell he was doing. These were also pre-release tracks, which makes it harder to argue it won't have an impact on sales.
Finally, his "too cool for school" pose in front of the courtroom isn't doing much to generate sympathy from me. Excessive punishment? Yeah, it is. But I still don't feel sorry for him.
I think I'll save my concern for some housewife, grandmother, or student who gets financially ruined by the RIAA just for downloading a few songs.
Re:You should (Score:3, Insightful)
When is the "Average Joe" American going to get it through their thick skulls that they don't live in a "Free" country, the US gummermint just has a different way of distributing oppression that other authoritarian regimes do!
Due Process? we don't need no stinking due process!
Re:He should go to prison, but not for... (Score:1, Insightful)
Just curious, why did you say "for fuck's sake" and follow it with "frigging Onion?"
Why not "for frig's sake" and "fucking Onion"?
Re:You should (Score:4, Insightful)
..who were receiving millions in campaign donations from the "music" industry.
Re:You should (Score:3, Insightful)
It is a political act first and foremost. The person who uploaded the tracks almost certainly did not profit from it, unlike the record company and the RIAA. Of the three, I'd say that only one party cares a bit for music.
I will only buy music directly from the artist. I don't want one penny of my money going to support the RIAA or the people who support them. I never, ever go to any concerts organized by Live Nation or any other conglomerate for the same reason. Although I'm not a fan of U2, I have always enjoyed the production work of Brian Eno. Still, I won't spend a nickel on any of their products or concerts because of their relationship to Live Nation.
Finally,that this band spent "millions" making an album constitutes a hostile act toward their fans and the very art of music. Seventeen years and millions of dollars to put out a record of three-chord, blues-based rock and roll? They have lost their fucking minds.
Re:You should (Score:3, Insightful)
..who were receiving millions in campaign donations from the "music" industry.
Funds they use to buy advertising that has a huge effect on undecided voters. If we stopped voting for the guy with the convincing advertisement, there would be no need use for any of that money.
Politicians get money because voters chose to be influenced by the things money buys. Fancy consultants, advertising gurus, branding specialists -- they pay big bucks for these things because they work, which is no one's fault but our own.
A democracy is defined by giving the populace the government that it richly deserves (credit to Mencken, I think).