Poor Kevin Cogill. One minute he's lying in bed, dreaming whatever dreams a 27-year-old mp3 blogger who calls himself Skwerl is wont to dream, the next he's being shaken awake by armed FBI agents, and arrested on suspicion of violating federal copyright laws.
Cogill's apparent crime is the streaming on his website, two months ago, of nine unreleased tracks by Guns N' Roses - taken from an album, Chinese Democracy, which fans have been waiting on for, oh, just over thirteen years. According to an arrest affidavit, Cogill readily admitted to agents that he had posted the songs on antiquiet.com; prosecutors said that the leak could result in a "significant" financial loss for the band. After Cogill's court hearing, which saw him released on a bail bond of $10,000, his girlfriend addressed the crowd with the words, "Rally the troops," but declined further comment.
The question I have is this: who are "the troops", and exactly what duty do they have to Cogill? The appeal for support is being made not just to friends and familiars, but to a larger, international network of which Cogill has long been a poster-boy and lynchpin - the international "community" of mp3 bloggers and downloaders. As a former mp3 blogger myself, not to mention an avid, if somewhat guilty, beneficiary of illegal downloads, should I be rallying around Cogill with the rest of the blogosphere? Should we support this self-styled Robin Hood of audio, who steals from the supposedly rich artist to give to the supposedly poor consumer? Is there some kind of bloggers' trade union I should be campaigning with? Or is Cogill simply getting his dues? Is he, as federal law would have it, nothing but a criminal?
The success of several pay-for-download stores tells us that there are plenty of people willing to pay for digital music, but the startling proliferation of mp3 blogs like Cogill's Antiquiet - sites that offer music for free, invariably illegal download - suggests that there are plenty more who would rather not. We can trace this demand for free digital music back to 1999 and Shawn Fanning's Napster site, the first significant peer-to-peer file-sharing network to emerge at the turn of the century. Napster's forced closure in 2001 (it has subsequently re-opened as a legal, pay-for-download store) at first seemed to signal an end to the burgeoning sub-culture of P2P piracy, but networks like Kazaa, Soulseek and Audio Galaxy took up the slack, helping establish the digital download as the savvy music fan's format of choice. The subsequent launch of Apple's attractive, user-friendly iPod and fast, legal download service iTunes, heralded digital music's arrival in our cultural mainstream - record labels and retailers' business models haven't been the same since.
It was around this time that the mp3 blog rose to prominence. The digitalization of music and wider availability of broadband meant that pretty much all the recorded music in the world was up for grabs; naturally, prospective downloaders begun to crave filters. Traditional media outlets couldn't possibly get involved, for fear of legal repercussions. Instead, it was the "humble" figure of the blogger, working at home or in stolen hours at the office, who became your go-to person for the latest sounds - mp3 blogs are essentially music stores where the music is free, and in the case of Antiquiet and many others, served with a healthy dose of guidance, criticism and opinion untainted by commercial or PR imperatives. Napster was easy to shut down because it was a network with a central brain, so to speak; the new mp3 blogosphere is decentralized, a network of numerous brains (some a great deal smarter than others) that continues to grow by the minute.
"I take the rise of 'illegal' distribution at face value: more people are listening to more music," Cogill explained in a prescient interview with Record of The Day back in July. "Meanwhile, dwindling CD sales represents nothing more to me than an obsolete technology losing ground among consumers."
He's right, you know. The ways that people obtain music have changed beyond all recognition, and even though, in terms of copyright infringement, his crime is undeniable, it's also easy to see Kevin 'Skwerl' Cogill as the the proverbial shot messenger, a victim of scapegoating. Such ambivalence currently pervades the comments section of Antiquiet. Cogill is not without his well-wishers, most of whom agree that his arrest at gunpoint was "excessive". What surprises me is the large number of people - many of whom I venture, downloaded the songs in question - who are a great deal less than sympathetic. Most comments are far from measured, echoing former Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash's words "I hope he rots in jail", but some are less and inflammatory and more exacting. Joseph Rose equates the FBI agents "unnecessary" drawing of firearms to Cogill's unnecessary sharing of the Guns N' Roses songs: "They are both [acts] designed very specifically to draw attention."
Rose's intimation that Cogill's blogging of the Guns N' Roses tracks was fundamentally an attention-seeking gesture is, I think, a fair one. All writing, all blogging, is inherently egoistic, and mp3 blogging, with its added payload of free music, is just that little bit more so - I mean, what better way to win friends in the oversized school-yard of the global village than by hooking everyone up with the new Guns N' Roses? Indeed, Cogill's original post is perfectly self-aware in this regard, beginning with the hubristic overture, "Well, to say that I'm living up to my reputation today is an understatement."
A transfer has occurred - now, it is not only the artist who made the music, but the pirate who made it available, who is enjoying a ground-level celebrity status. Cogill's original, incriminating blog-post isn't so much about the new songs by Guns N' Roses so much as it is about him possessing them, enjoying access to them before anyone else, and having the power, magnanimity and audacity to share them with the wider world.
A post-arrest, September 2nd post finds Cogill in contrastingly dignified, chastened voice:
"I am trying to take full responsibility for my predicament. I consider the burden of legal fees ultimately mine to bear; I have independently raised the funds required to retain my attorney. However, it has definitely been by far the biggest expense I have ever faced in my entire life, and my resources are very limited while formidable costs shall continue to pile up. It's beyond daunting, being a single independent citizen facing a full-force prosecution by the most powerful government in the world."
For this reason, Cogill has set up a defense fund which we're invited to contribute to. The exquisite irony of this fundraising drive is surely not lost on our bandit blogger. Will those same virtual friends who've downloaded mp3s from Cogill for absolutely free be willing to cough up some real-life dough to help him out of his real-life sticky situation? Or will they simply forget him, and move on to the next blog? This question which no doubt weighs heavy on our defendant as he awaits trial.