Reply To: Does this creative commons, free distribution thing mean “Buy the box set and set up a torrent”
I'll weigh in here – as I understand it, setting up a torrent is legal under the CC license. Though whether or not it's "cool" or "nice' may be a different story, that really depends on the spirit of it and how it's handled. For instance, if the guy has links back to my site and encourages people to donate, that's nice. He doesn't have to legally, but it sure would be nice. If he's all "Ha ha! I hate Jonathan Coulton and this is how I punish him!" then that's not so nice.
Honestly I'm still on the fence about leaving file sharing totally open (as my CC license does). As to whether the exposure gained outweighs the revenue lost, I haven't seen any definitive numbers either way, and I'm not sure it's something that can be figured out for sure. A legal torrent for the new U2 record would probably hurt U2 more than it would help, but I think the numbers work out differently for me.