Blake
12-27-2007, 04:09 PM
I've gotten some "grey market" items in the past, but I'd say my examples are pretty tame.
First example: I love the soundtrack to the movie The Black Hole. Mediocre movie, great score by John Barry. Ironically, it's one of the first (the first?) digital recordings ever made, or so I've read, yet it has never been released in a digital format. I have the LP, but I never got a turntable hooked up to the computer to transfer it. Instead, I found it on the old Napster, back when it was a copyright-infringement free-for-all. (For the record, that was the only thing I ever downloaded and kept from Napster, and as I said, I did already own the LP.) I've since found a better copy on Usenet. Now if Disney would ever pull their collective heads out of their gigantic rear end, I would buy an officially released version.
Second example: The original versions of the Star Wars Trilogy. Before Lucas finally released them (in non-anamorphic widescreen as "bonus" discs), I had copies on DVD that were very good transfers of the 1993 (-ish) laserdisc releases, which I also own. When Lucas released the official versions on DVD, I bought them.
I guess I mainly track down items that I want in a modern format that have never been released in such a format. Otherwise, if it's available, I just buy it. I'm not out to cheat anybody. If I want it, I want it, and others have often done a better job with the transfer than I could have.
That brings up a last example: Genesis bootlegs, both audio and video. I'm a huge fan of the band, and I love good live recordings. It used to cost collectors a fortune to get recordings of questionable quality, but now, thanks to the Internet, you can get excellent audio and video for free. You can even discuss and trade such recordings at the official site. As long as money isn't changing hands, the band and their management generally don't care. (They even turned to the bootleg community to obtain copies of some bonus items for the DVDs included with the latest album releases.) As a result, I've amassed a pretty good collection.
I also try to keep people informed about how easy it is to get this stuff for free; there's some idiot on YouTube who posts old Genesis clips as advertisements for DVDs he sells. Yet everything he sells is available in much better quality than he offers, and all for free. It's just a matter of trading or downloading from an appropriate location.
Blake