Well, a couple of days ago, it finally happened, a blogger was arrested by the FBI for releasing Gun's N Roses 'Chinese Democracy' on his site. "Kevin Cogill, who uses "Skwerl" as an Internet name, is charged with violating copyright laws by putting nine of the band's unreleased songs on his www.antiquiet.com website for visitors to hear." Read more about it here.

This also raises some interesting questions about the future of online music sharing. While the RIAA has been cracking down on peer to peer networks and universities, the arrest of an individual blogger could have serious repercussions for the rest of the blogging world. Currently, the RIAA has been mainly focused on P2P networks like Kazaa. However, MP3 blogs are generally ignored for a couple of reasons. Firstly, they usually don't cover mainstream music as much, the content ranges from niches like indie to folk to urban hip hop. While recording companies spend millions on marketing for their biggest artistes, indie labels often depend on word of mouth or other methods to get by and they are not part of the RIAA. Secondly, MP3 blogs usually release a couple of songs by the artiste and although some are visited by thousands of visitors a day, the impact is not as wide as downloading from P2P networks. As a precaution, most blogs that feature downloadable MP3s post a notice saying that the songs are for evaluation purposes only, most tracks are also taken down after a certain period of time. Make no mistake here though, MP3 bloggers are very different from the torrent downloaders. Most blogs are works of love, set up to support great music from more obscure bands, its a community of people sharing their thoughts and feelings on exciting new music without succumbing to the marketing blitz of the record companies.

Slash also speaks out against the 'piracy' claiming that "It’s going to affect the sales of the record and it’s not fair. The internet is what it is, and you have to deal with it accordingly, but I think if someone goes and steals something, it's theft."

While it's true that the RIAA have been making much less money since 1999. The idea that downloads affect sales is highly debatable, lets look at Radiohead's release of 'In Rainbows' in '07. Radiohead set up inrainbows.com for two months in October, people could download the album from the site as a Zip file with DRM free mp3s and they would decide how much to pay starting from $0.00. While reports of the digital sales were not released by the band (they reportedly made $10mil for that duration), the interesting thing is what happened when they did release the CD version. 'In Rainbows' hit no.1 on the Billboard charts in their 2nd week, with 122,000 albums sold. Apparently, the fans weren't content with just their digital downloads. While I am not saying that every band could be this successful, it does make an interesting case, any band famous enough could still sell many albums without the middleman. We've established that music fans in general will support their bands and artistes, but does downloading cause a person not to buy an album or does sampling the music turn them into consumers? While the RIAA attempts to litigate against the downloaders in America, it faces a never ending tidal wave of piracy across the globe, especially in Communist China.
-Ed

Read also a collection of quotes about the legality of Mp3 blogging and a Harvard Law blog
While Chinese Democracy reportedly costs $13 million and has yet to be released after 13 years, it is not alone, here's a list of other projects in limbo.