The freeloaders (lit. and fig.) feel they are Special and deserve to have those things free that peons and those in ruts dutifully pay for, and they also feel that they are sticking it to The Man whenever they do something naughty like stealing.

Same mentality as those who help themselves to free TVs when natural disasters strike. And just as attractive.

You assume that all of those downloading from the torrents have not paid or will not pay. I have heard numerous reports of people who have paid, been sent a link and been unable to download from the official site due to congestion, and I'd bet a number of these will go to the torrents. Additionally, there are a number of people who refuse to pay before they are permitted to try a product.

I have paid for the $5 version of this (and will download it when I get home) but I refuse to buy new music at high street prices without hearing it first, so I download it. If I don't like it, I delete it from my machine. If I do like it, I go out and buy it. I don't see why people would behave any differently in this case. I chose to pay the $5 to get the music without hearing it in this case because I applaud the model and want to encourage it, but that will not be the case for everyone.

I'm sure there are some people who will download and listen to this music for free just because they can, but I'd be very surprised if they were the majority. The fact is, we can't tell - just because they are on the torrents does not mean everyone is automatically depriving NIN of sales.

Just because someone downloads something for free, it doesn't necessarily follow that they would have bought it.

I went to the NiN website to try Ghosts. There was no link on the website that I could see that pointed to any downloadable music. So off I went to TPB to try it. I selected 5 of the tracks to download from the full album as I didn't see the 9 track free version. I listened and to be honest it sounded like random noise. That might be because I'm not a music fan. I don't own any music CDs because I never listen to music (it distracts me).

I will still probably buy the $5 version of Ghosts because I support what they're trying to do. While I don't agree with buying tracks or albums (flat-rate digital media licenses are the future) this kind of thing is a good start and is definitely a step in the right direction. The RIAA/MPAA and their equivalents are a plague on society and need to be destroyed.

really it just takes the piss...

still I guess that no matter how cheap the music is some will always want for free...

no matter, I'm still off to buy it

I used the torrent to download the whole album after attempting all day to download from the provided link after spending $383 getting the Ultra Deluxe version sent to the UK. Due to the hammering the NIN site was getting downloading through the "official" channel was impossible.

However, the point that everyone seems to be glossing over is that the whole album is released under the Creative Commons "Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike" license, allowing it to be freely distributed for non-commercial use (taking the salient point from the license).

Certainly you could argue that for $5 you should support Trent's work and the big "up yours" to the recording industry, but there is no justifiable complaint about people sharing the album on torrent sites.