Ruby Isle's Guns N' Roses cover album pulled from iTunes

• You can cover any song you want as long as you pay HFA (Harry Fox Agency) the mechanical royalties on your sales. Look it up

• Everyone's reporting this as "Axl Rose (or some big corporation) must've stopped the release," but does anyone know on what grounds? US copyright law says songwriters can't stop people from covering their songs, as long as they pay a small license fee - and I can't believe Mallman et al. would try to skip the license.

• If they can't be licensed as covers, just call the whole album a parody. Problem solved.

• Look, covering a whole album is the legal equivalent of licensing 12 cover songs. There is nothing stopping Ruby Isle from securing these licenses and there is nothing Axl Rose or his publishing company can do to block or stop them.

• You know, I didn't realize this was Mallman's project; admittedly, he's a dude of many ideas. However, I do still have to take issue with the idea of remaking a whole album. Yes, releasing cover songs is a time-honored tradition, but I still argue that releasing a song-for-song copy of a pre-existing album shows a lack of originality. I think that the idea would be better suited to a live-concert, where one doesn't have to secure copyright licensing in advance. As a matter of fact, I think that anyone who has experience in the music industry - such as Mallman - would have to KNOW that this album would never be allowed to be released (come on... who DOESN'T know that Axl Rose is a litigious control freak?) Given the fact that Mallman probably knew that the album wouldn't come out, I feel safe in assuming that the whole thing was contrived as a headline-grabbing move; Mallman is by no means a stranger to using performance gimmicks as a way to get attention. There's nothing wrong with that in showbiz, but let's not get fooled into thinking that the world is being deprived of some great masterpiece because this cover album won't legally see the light of day. It's doing its job RIGHT NOW simply by dint of the fact that we're talking about it.

• To hip for copyright law? Ort too stupiud to write your own songs...I'll vote for both.

• What is hipster about this in any way? People like you are the reason the word hipster doesn't mean anything any more. The only thing that is more hipster than calling something hipster is assuming you aren't one. Get off your high horse, dude.

• Believe me, Mallman is a man of many ideas. His music is inventive and interesting, and the live shows are incredible! Remaking another artist's music is a time-honored tradition - cover songs have been around as long as we've had popular music. There are plenty of ways to be creative while paying homage to another artist's music by covering it. I don't know what sort of legal hoops one would have to go through to sell an album like this, though. I assume that in addition to paying fees and royalties for the use of someone else's intellectual property, one would have to get permission from the original artist to sell a song-for-song remake of their album. I assume that Mallman would pay the royalties/licensing fees without a second thought, but if Axl Rose doesn't want his work covered like this I suppose he has the legal ability (and plenty of money) to make it go away. I'm glad I snagged the album when it was posted for download last week - it really is interesting to listen to!

• This cd release show is awesome. Leave it to Mallman. Total Babe opening along with New Century Masters. They probably have some crazy shit up their sleeves.

• Well... you can't just re-release an album by another artist! I mean come on, hipsters - copyright law is a very real thing. Yes, you're terrifically cool and ironic to re-make an album by a hard-rock band but do it in a different style, but why not come up with your OWN songs and ideas? Or don't you have any?

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