Kevin ‘Skwerl’ Cogill and the RIAA
p2pnet view RIAA | Music | P2P:- What was it that led to the downfall of mobster Al Capone?
Right. Tax evasion.
Now corporate mobsters the RIAA have been caught in embarrassing tax disclosures of their own, one of which has Mitch Bainwol (right), the man in charge, pulling down more than $2 million a year in wages .
Thats TWO MILLION DOLLARS!
A YEAR!
For?
Overseeing the victimisation of thousands of completely innocent American families in the name of Vivendi Universal (France), Sony (Japan), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (US, but controlled by a Canadian).
Their crime? Supposedly upsetting the cash flows into Big 4 corporate record label coffers.
“There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest”, said Robert Heinlein, Life Line, 1939.
“This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.”
According Bainwol and his fellow spinsters, when people share music with each other online, a sale is somehow lost.
It’s a patently ridiculous assertion but thanks largely to the lamescream media, significant numbers of whom are owned outright by the entertainment cartels, it’s being reported as fact.
And that’s why Kevin Cogill (right,aka Skwerl) was busted by the FBI for, and on behalf of, the RIAA.
Agents, guns waving, raided his home and arrested him for allegedly uploading nine unreleased tracks from the [at the time] upcoming Guns N’ Roses album Democracy to his blog.
Yeh. Really. 
“Johnny and I sat on a pew in the U.S. District Court building in Downtown L.A. as Skwerl CCogill) sat behind glass, in handcuffs, and still in his jammies since the FBI arrested him at 6:59 this morning,” said Britney Bernstein in Antiquiet,” quoted in p2pnet, which added:
“Ironically, a Google NonSense ad immediately above the headline, The United States Of America Cares A Lot About Democracy, says, ‘Guns N Roses & Other Top Artists Download Unlimited Songs At No Cost’, linking to despised corporate site Spiralfrog.”
Cogill was sentenced to two months’ home confinement and a year of probation, says Wired, pointing out federal prosecutors had demanded six months injailfor Skwerl, “but Cogill got no time after agreeing to do an RIAA public service announcement that would scare future file sharers straight”.
But “nobody has made him perform the PSA. As of Wednesday, and he’s no longer under the court’s jurisdiction. So the deal is no longer legally binding”, says the story, going on >>>
“I knew as soon as this went down, nobody would give a shit about me doing a PSA,” Cogill said in a recent telephone interview.
The closest he came to providing a public service announcement was last August, in a video interview with Current TV. He said file sharers can get “f’d in the A” from the RIAA and get it “right in the butt.”
The proposed court-ordered PSA was vaguely defined from the beginning, he said. “We had some conversations about it, hypothetical conversations,” Cogill said. “I said everybody is going to laugh at it.”
Wired quotes Cara Duckworth, “a spokeswoman for the RIAA, which alerted the FBI to Cogill’s unlawful uploading” as stating her employers have “discretion whether or not to move forward” with a public service announcement.
More RIAA Loony Toons.
… and identi.ca
$2 million a year – RIAA boss Bainwol paid $2 million in 2008, July 12, 2010
p2pnet – RIAA, Big 4 labels, gang up on Skwerl, August 28, 2008
Wired – Guns N’ Roses Uploader Laughs Last, July 15, 2010
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July 19th, 2010 at 7:38 pm
A PSA?! Okay, now they’ve lost it some more. I mean that they lost it before, but now they’ve totally lost it. I wouldn’t do a PSA for them if they had a gun to my head!
August 16th, 2010 at 11:02 am
To the corporate bully boys: Please remember who your taking the truncheon to, yes thats right fans who aid you in getting publicty for your latest hyped artist, without such folks on the internet and in commercial radio rest assured your fortunes would be dwindling.
I would like to hope that scum like yourself die a violent and painful death but I,m a little bit more knowledgable when it comes to consumers so I should best perhaps turn my attention to them directly:
Folks dont purchase anything with the name of some media cartel on it, I cant name a single company that has not joined in the effort to defraud you the consumer by such underhand tricks as price fixing, payola and pressing for political and monopolistic control of the music industry to prevent others from storming their glass palace, they are all greedy and selfish please dont feed such scum, to do so is to pay for attacks on your fellow citizens, artists wont starve, they have two hands like yourself and a pair of eyes to set themselves up an online prescence, big media continues to grow fat on the wholesale theft of community resources to suit itself, stop the rape of our culture and dont buy anything from them. to do so is akin to shooting yourself in the foot.