"All this is way off thread. What we want to here here is not (yet more) dreary folk-righteous pontificating on the morality of bootlegging, but a celebratory list of freely available downloads of long out of print albums whose very existence might be considered legendary."

Ooh, I think it's pretty cheeky to claim it's "off-thread" to raise questions about money and copyright in a thread that's been crowing about the wonderfulness of magical "free" albums. And I think you know damn well it is.

That's a disingenuous "we" as well. Speak for yourself mate. I, for one, DON'T want a "celebratory list of freely available downloads of long out of print albums". What's "celebratory" about the fact that the people who made these long out-of-print albums aren't receiving any money from their shiny new digital "availability"?

I do hope you're going to contact the Peggs, and Martin Carthy and the other surviving musicians you mentioned to give them some money. It's ever so slightly more effort than clicking "DL", but it's really not much more so.