Blogger to plead guilty for Guns N' Roses leak?

The 27-year-old American blogger who was arrested by the FBI in August for leaking some unreleased Guns N' Roses tunes to the interweb has reportedly agreed to plead guilty to one federal count of copyright infringement.

According to Wired, Kevin Cogill – the man at the centre of the G N’ R storm – is required to appear in the US District Court of California on 8 December to change his plea.

The FBI said Cogill, who is from Los Angeles, confessed to uploading nine songs from Guns N’ Roses' first studio album for nearly 15 years, Chinese Democracy, onto his music site, Antiquiet.

Terms of the plea deal have been kept secret. It is also unclear where the tracks that Cogill is accused of uploading on 18 June had originally come from, or if he will reveal that information as part of his change of plea.

Cogill saw the charge against him reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor last month – which might go some way to explaining why he has changed his plea. He will reportedly be handed a maximum one-year prison term if found guilty.

In an arrest affidavit in August, Cogill admitted to streaming the tunes, and the Feds accused him of violating US copyright law.

Not long after that the nine songs were removed from the Antiquiet site, though not before a deluge of traffic from impatient G N’ R fans, who have waited well over a decade to hear the new album, broke the site.

Best Buy will be exclusively selling Chinese Democracy in the US to kilt-wearing, head-banging, air guitar wannabes on 23 November. G N' R fans outside of the States can get their beer-stained mitts on the new release on 24 November.

Meanwhile, Chinese Democracy has already tipped up on BitTorrent sites, and is, according to world-weary sources familiar with the matter, a bit crap really. ®