That's an interesting perspective. Providing a full quality song is illegal, but providing a poor quality song is legal -- or half-legal, anyway.
Sharing the LBT songs was Petrie's doing. If you have further questions, I suggest you ask him.
From what I understand, the theory is that the LBT songs aren't exactly in high-demand and nobody will care if we share them. I'm sure we could get away with sharing full-quality copies, but that would have a negative impact on the sales of LBT merchandise.
If we give away low-quality versions, there is something to gain for buying the CD (full quality). If we gave away CD-quality recordings, why would you buy the CD? What gain would there be? You'd have the CD in your collection, that's it.
The idea of us distributing low-quality versions of the LBT songs isn't so much from a legal perspective, but a perspective targetted at preserving the LBT market and the integrity of our community. I support LBT and condone against LBT piracy. I suppose sharing among the community but I would honestly hate to know that our community is hurting LBT sales because we're giving everything to each other through a single copy.
Also, I bought my copy for Me, not for the entire LBT community.

It's less than $4 on amazon. It won't kill you to buy the CD.

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Admittedly, Universal probably isn't making much money (if any) from sales of LBT CDs anymore but it's the pricinciple that counts. I would like to see our community as a positive influence on LBT, not a negative one.