[blk7]

O.K., calling ya'll a bunch of thieves may have been a bit harsh. :roll:

I was really pissed off when I saw that Lance had to close the "front door" to non-members because of all this leak talk. I am not a total square, I get your point, however if you looking for a victim of the theft their names are Johnny, Gord, Paul, Rob and Gordy. There was a time when the Hip fans worked together to suppress pre-release leaks, now it seems we promote them.

Personally I don't care if people rip it after it is officially released. This is different. The album has not even been released and hundreds if not thousand of people have already downloaded substandard copies. That's not cool.

I have been reading a lot of S.M. Sterling lately so I may be a bit pumped up on issues morality and technology right now. Ya'll are free to do as you will but your actions reflect poorly on all of us.

Well...I am now registered on the board because "The front door was closed". So it got the board at least one new member.

I downloaded the rip. I've also already pre-ordered from the Giftshop. It is an ethical question.

P2P can be bad for artists, but also very good. I'm in Australia. There is no way I'd have ever gotten into the Hip if their albums were not available on P2P networks. I downloaded their music, loved it, bought the CD's. All of them (Maple Music must love me).

In fact their is a whole slab of Canadian music on my CD rack all because I downloaded a track or album and liked it. Matt Good, Matt Mays, Sam Roberts, The Hip.

It's an obvious argument to ask "What about all those people that don't buy the albums?" It's also a good way to kill your business. The industry needs to worry more about the sales they do make and how to extend them, than worry about all the sales they haven't.

Went on a bit here. I'd love to know what the band themselves think about file sharing. Ambivalent, I guess.