"Jim Causley's album (has) long since been taken down from THTM."

But it's been re-posted by a contributor/member, and left to stand by the site owners for the past year and a half. You can download it right now (or you could a couple of days ago, when I last checked).

More to the point is that I don't understand how Time Has Told Me justifies posting such albums in the first place. It is a clear and obvious breach of copyright to upload recent releases. It can't be a mistake, or an oversight, to upload an album within the first year of its release (and in the period when free availability on-line is most likely to undermine actual CD sales). The reports suggest that THTM does this regularly, so on some level the owner of the site finds this acceptable.

So what is the motivation behind such uploads? What does the owner of THTM think he is achieving? Moreover, why does he think he has the right to do it? I also find the whole "catch me if you can" attitude distasteful - if you find something he shouldn't have posted, he'll remove it. But why not contact the artist/record company and ask them BEFORE uploading the CD? It's a very disingenuous game he is playing.

One of the artists involved told me that he feels his CD sales have definitely been undermined by pirated downloads. I believe him. I think Ian Anderson is right when he says that these people hide behind the cloak of being "enthusiasts", as if that somehow makes it okay to steal.

I think that THTM's dubious attitude re uploading recent releases and work that is still commercially available undermines the credibility of the site as a whole. While I recognise that the issues around "lost" artists/albums that are no longer available is a separate but related issue, I would not want to support or condone the work of a site which is undermining the livelihoods of artists that I respect, just because it allowed me to get my hands on some hard-to-get old albums that I really fancy. Matt is right - dress it up however you like, but it's just selfishness at the end of the day.