CHINESE DEMOCRACY LEAKER ARRESTED BY THE FBI

One of the leaked songs from Chinese Democracy, “I.R.S.”, features the lyric “Gonna call the FBI.” And apparently, Axl Rose wasn’t dicking around.

Yahoo! News reports that 27-year-old Kevin Cogill (whose name had previously been reported as “Kevin Skwerl,” but whatever), a.k.a. the dude who leaked a shitload of Chinese Democracy songs earlier this summer, has been arrested by the FBI “on suspicion of violating federal copyright laws.”

Cogill/Skwerl had previously said that the FBI paid him a visit at a work, and he apparently admitted to leaking the tracks. In hindsight, I’m betting that now seems like a pretty silly move.

ANYWAY, I kinda have to wonder: “Why now?” Tracks from Chinese Democracy have been leaking pretty consistently since 2006; I guess Cogill/Skwerl was way easier to track down than some other leakers since he used his own website, AntiQuiet.com, but at least one other leaker also has his own website (which I’m going to decline to link to here) and was even granting interviews after leaking what may or may not be the new GN’R track “Shackler’s Revenge” this month. Then again, that dude is using an alias, and if the American government can’t find Osama Bin Laden, I guess finding some GN’R fan is just too much to ask.

I don’t know enough about the internal politics of this kind of thing to know if it’s even possible that Axl Rose’s camp pressured the FBI to prosecute, or if it just took them a couple of months to build their case… although, again, Cogill/Skwerl had already pretty much confessed to the crime, so that seems unlikely.

Meanwhile, I’m sure the GN’R dork boards (of which, I admit, I am myself a frequent visitor) have already interpreted this as a sign that CD will finally get released sometime soon (“Why else would Axl send the FBI after this dude?!”). While we wait for that theory to be disproven, please try to keep this story in mind before you once again e-mail us and ask why we don’t do that “Take a Leak” column anymore.

-AR