TMZ Runs Story About Leaks, GN'R Management Publicly Responds

[Amaya]

The Daily Mail. I cannot cut n paste right now. Fan R is sent cease and desist letter by Universal Music Group.  Google it at the daily mail.   Someone cut n paste it for us. Thnx. Fan R, needs to get a new hobby. Needlepoint. Knitting.  This , dude, is so not worth it. It is not worth 15 mins.

Edited January 3, 2020 by Amaya

[GoForJMark]

5 minutes ago, Amaya said:

The Daily Mail. I cannot cut n paste right now. Fan R is sent cease and desist letter by Universal Music Group.  Google it at the daily mail.   Someone cut n paste it for us. Thnx. Fan R, needs to get a new hobby. Nerdlepoint. Knitting.  This man is so not worth it.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-7847017/Guns-N-Roses-fan-accused-leaking-unreleased-tracks-buying-bands-storage-unit.html

 

[Amaya]

8 hours ago, RussTCB said:

Edit-

I was originally confused as to why TB would respond now. I see now that TMZ just ran the story today, which prompted TB to reply. My apologies. 

TMZ, Blabbermouth, The Daily Mail. All too late. The story was broken here first. Lol. This place  was the source.

Edited January 3, 2020 by Amaya

[nodeerforamonth]

6 hours ago, janrichmond said:

Blabbermouth have picked up on the story now 

Not really.  They just copied and referenced the TMZ story. That's what they do!

[Sydney Fan]

2 hours ago, double talkin jive mfkr said:

TB's MO not axls 

is to cut everyone out from his pre 91 life 

meegan is a threat 

erin is a threat

slash is a threat 

izzy and canter are a big threat 

zutaut is a threat 

niven is an inconvenient reminding threat 

goldstein is a loser 

adler is not a threat hes a nippy dog 

even duff is a threat if he didn't share the same 100% greed trait with them 

stephanie is a question mark ? they must think well its how we met him and axl loves her like an enigma so maybe shes in some other weird category

TB want to take credit for axl's success as in him being gigantically successful b/c of their involvement in his life post 91 and all they have to show for it is some bichy little argument about some stolen bunk CD's from a stupid highschool changing room locker 

Nope beta hates stephanie to.

I remember the twitter photo of stephanie and susan together, some one made a post on susans twitter around the comment about axl stuffing up and losing stephanie and beta responded to the twitter poster that stephanie was also to blame etc. Stupid beta having to feel that she needed to respond and get involved as per below,

https://mobile.twitter.com/gnrnewsbrazil/status/1173774110259908608?lang=en

 

So to answer your question stephanie is on Betas shit list to.

"adler is not a threat hes a nippy dog", i must admit i really laughed at that 

 

Edited January 3, 2020 by Sydney Fan

[Sydney Fan]

3 hours ago, Blackstar said:

Tom Zutaut attended one of the festival shows last autumn. I wonder what went down there and if he talked with anyone.

It's also worth reminding that Zutaut has said that his ousting from the project back then was due to a setup by people around Axl who didn't want him there (implying Beta probably). So TB and Zutaut don't like each other, to put it mildly.

I thought slash still has a relationship with Tom and a very low key one with niven?. Hence why niven calls slash "curly" to this day.

I have a conspiracy theory that TB doesnt like tom because either Tom wanted the recordings to stay more old school and not be positive towards axls "vision" or TB thought Tom was being brought in to make the project fail and was also being used as a mole from the record company and possibly slash in order to reestablish the old band again.

Edited January 3, 2020 by Sydney Fan

[DieselDaisy]

Susan is rather like that drunk woman at parties who blurts secrets out such as pregnancies and relationship histories. 

[willl]

Has UMG actually filed a lawsuit against Rick?

[jamillos]

I wonder how they imagine they can prove it was the Rick guy who leaked it, since more people were involved as far as we know. 

[Azifwekare]

The reason why Rick is being blamed for it is because he is the only one dumb enough to be bragging about it all over the internet every chance he got. It's his own fault.

I hope he got some soap on a rope for xmas.

[Lio]

6 minutes ago, Azifwekare said:

The reason why Rick is being blamed for it is because he is the only one dumb enough to be bragging about it all over the internet every chance he got. It's his own fault.

I hope he got some soap on a rope for xmas.

Since Rick is the only one going public, we had no way of knowing if more people were being targeted. Now with the GNR rep's official statement, it seems to me that at least Tom Zutaut is in trouble too, and there might very well be more people who are under scrutiny.

[Blackstar]

8 minutes ago, Lio said:

Since Rick is the only one going public, we had no way of knowing if more people were being targeted. Now with the GNR rep's official statement, it seems to me that at least Tom Zutaut is in trouble too, and there might very well be more people who are under scrutiny.

"Fernando" had posted on reddit that he didn't have proof yet that the original buyer of the storage locker (who Rick and at least another person bought from) was still selling to other people, after he sold to Rick (like Rick said). I think this suggests that the original buyer had been approached by the label's/TB's lawyers and there was a deal with him, as well.

Edited January 3, 2020 by Blackstar

[Lio]

3 minutes ago, Blackstar said:

"Fernando" had posted on reddit that he didn't have proof yet that the original buyer of the storage locker (who Rick and at least another person bought from) was still selling to other people, after he sold to Rick (like Rick said). I think this suggests that the original buyer had been approached by the label's/TB's lawyers and there was a deal with him, as well.

Yeah, that would make sense that they tried to find every buyer and strike a deal with them as they did with Rick. Then everything leaked anyway and they had to find out who was behind that. We're always just getting the story of one person that's involved, and then sometimes we get a glimpse of the other parties involved by 'Fernando' and the GNR rep now. Hard to try and piece together the whole puzzle when we only have some parts of it.

I guess if this goes to court, we'll hear more about it.

[Blackstar]

This is what "Fernando" had posted on reddit (the OP in the thread he replied to has since been deleted):

-------

PS: At the same time I'm posting about all this, I'm aware of how ridiculous it is that this b-spy movie like story has been taking place because of some songs that a small community of diehard fans only cares about.

[Padme]

8 hours ago, Blackstar said:

I think the alleged storage locker wasn't in Virginia (the alleged original buyer of it was from there), but anyway, this detail is not important.

Apparently Zutaut had these copies from the time he worked on the project, and as he was out of it abruptly, he didn't give them back, no one asked them from him and then everyone forgot. Probably other people who worked with the band through the years (producers etc) have copies of material, but I assume everyone had signed contracts (including Zutaut).

Rick claims that he had informed TB when he heard about the auction. However (according to the story we knew until now, also as claimed by Rick) the original auction was done by that point and Rick and another person found out when the original buyer was selling part of the content. The other person bought from the original buyer.

The alleged locker didn't contain only these 20 CDs, but also stuff from the AFD and UYI eras (nothing unheard, though, so not so "valuable") as well as Izzy's unreleased demos from the Ju Ju Hounds era. Those were bought by other people.

We don't know what, if anything, TB or the label did at that point (always supposing that Rick's story is true). The other two buyers haven't said anything in public.

Then Rick went public about it last summer and said out in the open that he was going to the original buyer in Virginia to buy the leaks for $15,000 and other fans got involved to share the cost with him. Another individual, who has been accused for the video takedowns, allegedly accompanied Rick in his trip to Virginia. At that point TB and the label got involved, approached Rick (through lawyers) and made a deal with him in writing: they would buy back from him the usb stick with the songs. So they paid him $15,000 to give the fans who had "invested" their money back. All that, I assume, on the condition that nothing would leak.

About two months later, in September, though, everything leaked. And while everything was leaking, Rick and the "unnamed" individual were accusing and ratting each other to TB. Also audio from Rick's phone conversations with various people during the trip were posted on the internet (probably the person who accompanied him on the trip had recorded him). The alleged Fernando account on reddit said hadn't he had a clear picture yet of what exactly had gone down, but said Rick had gotten himself into trouble.

Then, in October, there was Rick's "banning" from the band's shows when he showed up at one (around the day the last of the CDs leaked), because he supposedly had breached his contract.

Now it seems that the label threatens to take legal action. Or maybe this is not a recent development, the C&D letter was sent in October but Rick gave it to TMZ now.

The new thing, though, is that TB in their response to TMZ directly accuse Zutaut not of simply "forgetting" the CDs in an unpaid storage locker, but auctioning them himself. So it seems that TB don't buy the "storage locker" story and think that Zutaut just had the CDs and put them in an auction - what they're basically implying is that the whole storage locker story was bogus. The question is if they have proof for this.

We know what the articles said. The reall issue is that this seems to be the (in)famous vault we all heard about. The fact remains that Zutaut took all the recording. He put them in a storage.

Did Axl and UMG allow Zutaut to do this? If the answer is yes them why didn't he care about. Why Axl never made sure that those tapes were well protected?

I don't think Zutaut stole the recordings and hide them from Axl. But if Zutaut stole it. It's obvious Axl didn't care until now. How come he never noticed that a bunch of tapes were missing?

The fact is that for years nobody remembered or care about the material in the storage.

I don't care if Rick found it in Virgina or elsewhere. Nor I care if Rick was not allowed to go some show. Nobody paid to keep the storage. So somebody decided to put them up for auction. That wasn't Rick's responsibility. I guess Rick should've known better. He should've thought that sooner or later the bomb he was holding was going to explode. But it's not his fault if Axl and UMG didn't protect the tapes

 

[double talkin jive mfkr]

7 hours ago, kiwiguns said:

Absolutely no proof of any of that, only your assumptions. 

If you read the article the main entity involved is an individual and UMG. 

No mention of the bands current management being involved. 

The article states a band representative  as making a comment on the situation.

That could be anyone including a UMG rep to a legal representative who are separate from the bands management team. 

Did you ever stop to think that the bands management team are not commenting because, this issue is being handled by others or UMG as they are the ones taking legal action against the individual. 

my assumptions are right 

the wording is a slight remark on a long standing employee from gnr's early days which is the big sign 

also it looks like axl wrote it himself or fernando after all they've become the same person, its his type of writing and voice!! brainwash city --

Edited January 3, 2020 by double talkin jive mfkr

[Blackstar]

17 minutes ago, Padme said:

We know what the articles said. The reall issue is that this seems to be the (in)famous vault we all heard about. The fact remains that Zutaut took all the recording. He put them in a storage.

Did Axl and UMG allow Zutaut to do this? If the answer is yes them why didn't he care about. Why Axl never made sure that those tapes were well protected?

I don't think Zutaut stole the recordings and hide them from Axl. But if Zutaut stole it. It's obvious Axl didn't care until now. How come he never noticed that a bunch of tapes were missing?

The fact is that for years nobody remembered or care about the material in the storage.

I don't care if Rick found it in Virgina or elsewhere. Nor I care if Rick was not allowed to go some show. Nobody paid to keep the storage. So somebody decided to put them up for auction. That wasn't Rick's responsibility. I guess Rick should've known better. He should've thought that sooner or later the bomb he was holding was going to explode. But it's not his fault if Axl and UMG didn't protect the tapes

Everything that there is in the article about the storage locker was already known with much more detail to those of us who have been following the leaks story closely since last summer.

But now we aren't sure if the storage locker even existed or Tom Zutaut just had the material in his house, for example, since the band rep in the article implies that it wasn't about an unpaid bill for a storage locker.

These CDs were obviously just copies that Tom Zutaut, among other people who worked on the project (the producer etc.) had and not the original tapes that Axl had and still has, so this explains why they might have been forgotten, as I said earlier.

So it's not the "vault" - it could be said that it's copies of part of the "vault" of what Axl was working on during the time period the CDs are from (2000-2001).

Edited January 3, 2020 by Blackstar

[double talkin jive mfkr]

1 hour ago, Blackstar said:

This is what "Fernando" had posted on reddit (the OP in the thread he replied to has since been deleted):

-------

PS: At the same time I'm posting about all this, I'm aware of how ridiculous it is that this b-spy movie like story has been taking place because of some songs that a small community of diehard fans only cares about.

fuck his engllish is bad and sounds like a complete idiot 

[MidnightToker]

2 hours ago, Azifwekare said:

The reason why Rick is being blamed for it is because he is the only one dumb enough to be bragging about it all over the internet every chance he got. It's his own fault.

I hope he got some soap on a rope for xmas.

Your "soap on a rope" comment seems to be a reference to prison rape, so let me clarify something that should be clear to any reasonably educated adult. The legal dispute between Universal and Rick is a civil one, meaning he will not go to prison. There are instances in civil cases where people can be held in contempt of court and jailed for up to 30 days, but generally speaking, civil remedies are monetary. So they can take every penny he has but he won't be imprisoned for leaking GNR recordings. Anyone who thinks so is insane. Imprisonment is reserved for criminal cases, where the government is charging you. (I'm sure some members here with way too much time on their hands will cook up a conspiracy theory about the government getting involved in this, but let's please not go there.) 

[Padme]

29 minutes ago, Blackstar said:

Everything that there is in the article about the storage locker was already known with much more detail to those of us who have been following the leaks story closely since last summer.

But now we aren't sure if the storage locker even existed or Tom Zutaut just had the material in his house, for example, since the band rep in the article implies that it wasn't about an unpaid bill for a storage locker.

These CDs were obviously just copies that Tom Zutaut, among other people who worked on the project (the producer etc.) had and not the original tapes that Axl had and still has, so this explains why they might have been forgotten, as I said earlier.

So it's not the "vault" - it could be said that it's copies of part of the "vault" of what Axl was working on during the time period the CDs are from (2000-2001).

The storage locker existed. Unless Axl or Tom Zutaut say otherwise

If those tapes were copies of copies of copies of the original material. Why Tom Zutaut kept them? How Rick and others ended up with a bunch of copies? How come Axl, producers and UMG never noticed that copies of material were missing? They were careless.

Besides Rick and Zutaut other people fucked it up here. And those are Axl, TB, UMG, producers and previous managers

[Lio]

6 minutes ago, Padme said:

Besides Rick and Zutaut other people fucked it up here. And those are Axl, TB, UMG, producers and previous managers

You can throw Izzy in as well then. His JuJu Hounds stuff was auctioned off as well.

The storage locker story is only what we were told by someone who hasn't been 100% honest and reliable. We don't know if it existed. The GNR rep saying Zutaut 'found it appropriate to auction off' the stuff implies that it was not just some silly thing that happened unconsciously.

And TB wasn't involved in GNR management in 2000. You can hardly blame them for this. I'm not in the music industry, but seen as Zutaut had discs of GNR, but also of JuJu Hounds (and maybe more), it would seem normal practice to have people working with you have copies of the stuff you're working on. (I think there were some UYI or older material circulated by Alan Niven too, from copies he had.) It doesn't mean you get to sell it. And that's where it comes down to in the end. Stuff was sold and leaked and it wasn't theirs to sell or distribute, and that's illegal.

[Padme]

24 minutes ago, Lio said:

You can throw Izzy in as well then. His JuJu Hounds stuff was auctioned off as well.

The storage locker story is only what we were told by someone who hasn't been 100% honest and reliable. We don't know if it existed. The GNR rep saying Zutaut 'found it appropriate to auction off' the stuff implies that it was not just some silly thing that happened unconsciously.

And TB wasn't involved in GNR management in 2000. You can hardly blame them for this. I'm not in the music industry, but seen as Zutaut had discs of GNR, but also of JuJu Hounds (and maybe more), it would seem normal practice to have people working with you have copies of the stuff you're working on. (I think there were some UYI or older material circulated by Alan Niven too, from copies he had.) It doesn't mean you get to sell it. And that's where it comes down to in the end. Stuff was sold and leaked and it wasn't theirs to sell or distribute, and that's illegal.

Izzy is not taking legal action against anyone so far. His music are not CD left over.

It is normal for other people working in the project to have copies. It is not normal when nobody knows what those people are doing with the copies. And if they knew they didn't care.

Of course it is wrong to leak or sell material. Bootlegs are nothing new. These days with all the technology it gets even worst. But in this case we're talking about a lot of tapes that have been missing for a long time. And when a fan made it public he had them. The people who should've protected the tapes go after him. Fine, but they also have to look at the mistakes they made. Axl, UMG and managers could've dome something before to avoid this situation. Or at least do something to minimize the damage.

[guitarpatch]

35 minutes ago, Lio said:

You can throw Izzy in as well then. His JuJu Hounds stuff was auctioned off as well.

The storage locker story is only what we were told by someone who hasn't been 100% honest and reliable. We don't know if it existed. The GNR rep saying Zutaut 'found it appropriate to auction off' the stuff implies that it was not just some silly thing that happened unconsciously.

And TB wasn't involved in GNR management in 2000. You can hardly blame them for this. I'm not in the music industry, but seen as Zutaut had discs of GNR, but also of JuJu Hounds (and maybe more), it would seem normal practice to have people working with you have copies of the stuff you're working on. (I think there were some UYI or older material circulated by Alan Niven too, from copies he had.) It doesn't mean you get to sell it. And that's where it comes down to in the end. Stuff was sold and leaked and it wasn't theirs to sell or distribute, and that's illegal.

It’s not unheard of and is normal practice to have copies floating amongst your team or a few people. Most likely nobody is asking for anything back to control things. There’s too much going on to track at that level 

Same thing goes for recording engineers, assistants, etc who may have made copies of sessions while working. If you ever want to continue working in that field, you don’t let it out. That’s usually enough of a deterrent. If you get caught selling it, then there’s legal action. Same goes for Tom. 
 

UMG/RIAA employ entire anti piracy teams. To prove their worth, they go after individuals such as this instance. Said it the moment Rick was bragging what he’d do. It’s going to lead back to him. 
 

Maybe they can’t prove directly he leaked the songs. However there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence they can build around him. He had the songs, he claimed that he’d make them available, he made a deal, etc.. A good attorney will make a case that you don’t need the weapon to convict. The RIAA/UMG will pursue fully to prove their divisions worth. It’s unfortunate and serious for everyone involved 

[username]

Edited January 3, 2020 by username

[rocknroll41]

Portuguese outlets are picking up on the story now too, which means it’s becoming worldwide news now!