Towel wrote:

---

So instead I'll say thank you very much to Stephen for even sharing this with everybody, it's very generous.

From what I've seen of various communities in the past when it comes to a collection like this, it's usually a closed shop of a select few sitting on rare material and refusing to share it despite happily bragging about it. I'll concede some collectors have paid good money for it but the ones who come across it free and close the doors behind them are the ones I've come across sadly. 

The kudos of being the one with that rare item can outweigh whether or not the fan base as a whole will enjoy it so it's really great that you've decided to just get this out there! Thanks to Ian too for what must be a pretty big task .

---

As one of those who operates a 'closed shop' for several I will happily give you my reasons.

Real fans would always be welcome to download personally I don't care whether they contribute anything back (it's nice if they do) or actually even if they say thanks or not. My problems are those who download to burn cds and sell on ebay, those who download and re-up to filehosts like rapidgator or turbobit which they can make money off (go to guitars101 and it looks like overwhelming generosity until you check out the filehosts used by most) and those who simply copy and paste links to other sites as if they were their own (maccafan076/rael076 who you might see on various internet sites is a prime example). Links that get copied and pasted tend to get hammered and no free provision file host will stand for large percentages of their bandwidth being used by a free user's downloads meaning the links will likely get shut down. I do realise that 99% of fans just want to download and wouldn't do any of that but blame the 1% of those who do. As you say uploading substantial amounts is a big undertaking done out of generosity and generally gratefulness for what you've got but having personally been the victim three times of huge filehost wipeouts (20gb, 50gb, 40gb) because of particularly copying and pasting links the choice at that point is to pack it in or go behind closed doors. I chose the latter.   There is another reason for sitting on (ultra) rare material and that is so you have something to trade should you need it to get something else out of sticky hands. Personally I'm trying to get the last six existing recordings of one band out of those who have them's hands and it's hard work. Waving stuff they don't have in front of their faces is the only way to do it but if you suddenly decide to upload it anyway they have lost their incentive to deal with you.