It's a double edged sword.

On the one hand if you do that at least Nic will get a few quid.

On the other, he's not necessarily authorised illegal downloads of his music (though in other cases some bloggers have been given the nod to to upload OOP albums by the artists concerned on the QT).

There is also an argument that if you make an OOP album available for free, its less likely to be made available commercially in the future - because half the people who might buy it have already downloaded it. And for every decent cove like Phil who'll bung Nic his due, there's plenty of others who won't.

Having said that, if the owner of the rights to the album continues to refuse to give it an above board reissue (and no reissue of any sort for albums three and four), no wonder others choose to take the decision out of his hands.