Do you feel guilty about downloading OwB?

[BeautifulBurnout]

Originally Posted by holden

To your earlier point that most of the people who post here and downloaded the leak are true fans and will buy the CD anyway...i totally agree with you. But note that there are also a lot of new members on here. Let's hope they will also go any buy it. The leak links have appeared on other boards i've seen, and i dunno if those are fans who will go and buy it. One can't tell, but it's just realistic to expect that for everyone who does buy it, there's quite a few less albums sold becuase someone was happy enough with the rip.

To the best of my knowledge, the person that leaked this was not a Dirt and certainly did not announce on here that he/she had leaked it. I doubt if they even read the boards. It was out there. Once something has been leaked, it is obviously a personal matter as to whether one wants to listen to it in advance or not, but there is nothing an individual can do to prevent its dissemination. Once the damn is burst, it is pointless trying to gather water in a bucket and take it back up to the other side of the river again.

If I was given a promo copy of something with a "not to be distributed" caveat on it, I most certainly would not leak it to all and sundry the way this was. But the fact is, it is out there for all and sundry, fan or not, potential buyer or not, to leech to their heart's content. I would rather it wasn't but that is a sad fact of life these days.

Yes, it is damaging to the band when stuff is leaked. Without a doubt. But do I think that fans from a fansite downloading this is damaging them any further, once that initial leak has happened? Absolutely not. The analogy to the extra pack of chips in the supermarket doesn't quite work somehow.