Guns N’Roses Blogger Arrest Results In Even More Downloading of “Chinese Democracy” Leak

by Guitar Bassman

Last month, there was a huge news story about a blogger being arrested for leaking songs from Guns N’ Roses forthcoming “Chinese Democracy” album. This story was ridiculous in many ways, namely the fact that the FBI was involved in the arrest of the blogger and that the blogger also faces the possibility of many years in jail. This was looked at as extremely heavy-handed and very anti-fan, on the part of Guns N’ Roses. Apparently though, the Blogger’s arrest has now resulted in even more downloading of the leaked “Chinese Democracy” songs than ever before.

Website TechDirt.com has an interesting piece on this…

“Bob Lefsetz does a quick email back-and-forth with Eric Garland of BigChampagne, the company that tracks file sharing activity. Garland points out that prior to the arrest, there was almost no file sharing of the album, despite the fact that the leak happened a while back. However, since the arrest, the numbers have shot way up, as the arrest has really only served to alert the public that the album is available for download on BitTorrent.”

Now what they’re implying here is that this may have all been an elaborate viral marketing campaign perpetrated by the band and their management. This actually does make perfect sense, but it still doesn’t explain why the FBI is involved or why a fan/illegal downloader could go to jail for years. And you thought this whole “Chinese Democracy” fiasco couldn’t get more ridiculous.