Yup, Leaking Albums Can Still Get You Arrested

The album leak has been such a given for so long that bands either spring their album release on the public without much build up, or just live with the leak. The website “Has it Leaked” may as well swap its domain to “.yet.”

So it’s pretty surprising to hear that the Spanish police arrested someone for the first time for leaking an album before its release date. If not him then someone else, right? As it turns out this guy did more than simply leak the Spanish band Extremoduro’s album.

According to TorrentFreak, on October 24 someone going by the handle of “E.Q.T.” posted a photograph of a pre-release copy of Extremorduro’s new album, which wasn’t slated for release until late November, in a Spanish rock forum with an offer sell copies of the CD for 10 euro.

This isn’t exactly true to the only real principle of the “information wants to be free” crowd—if anything, one guy stepping into the role of profit-seeking middleman feels like a step down even from Warner Brothers, who at least were going to pay Extremurduro something for each album sold.

Anyway, the band caught wind of this and contacted him to ask him not to release the album. E.Q.T. got defensive and told them, “Do not threaten to report me, because [if you do] tomorrow I will [release the album] to all music forums and YouTube,” according to TorrentFreak.

Put off by this “cocky attitude,” the band called up the Guardia Civil. The police found, arrested and charged E.Q.T., who turned out to be a 31-year-old employee in the warehouse at the CD manufacturer. The album leaked on November 4 anyway, and in three days it spread to over 54 websites. Warner Brothers scrambled and released “Para todos los públicos” a few weeks earlier than planned, on November 8.

Rather than being viewed sympathetically like the (also Spanish) man who was arrested for leaking a Madonna single early, everyone seems pretty pissed at this guy, who could face between six months to four years in jail for copyright infringement without even successfully selling any copies.

For what it’s worth, North Carolina State economist Robert Hammond found that pre-release file sharing can actually benefit well-established artists. As Rolling Stone’s sixth “greatest Spanish rock band,” now on their twelfth album, Extremurduro is nothing if not well-established—and sales have reflected that. A pushed-up release date and leak didn’t get in the way of “Para Todos Los Públicos” becoming the top-selling album in Spain upon release.

So the lesson—but certainly not any sort of legal advice—in this particular case really isn’t “don’t leak albums,” as much as it is “don’t be a dick about it.”