Sadly in a Discogs context it’s all academic now - Creel Pone sales have been blocked on Discogs.

To quote triethylene-glycol below - "Whether what he does is morally acceptable or not is really up to each artist in the series, and I'm sure there is a great array of opinions among them-- I would still bet more are glad for the exposure than are angry at being "robbed" of a few hundred dollars they would never have seen anyway."

Those who’ve seen an official release as a result of interest stimulated by Creel Pone may well be more than happy with Keith’s ‘audacity’ and ‘immorality’. Those who didn’t – well they’ve lost nothing, but at worst have gained some interest in their old material, and will have to wait a bit longer til their reissue (almost inevitably with archive excavation culture as it is) comes along and they get whatever belated credit they’re due. (Probably not financial as there will never be enough sales of this marginalia to make a difference. The oft repeated point about making money is an absurd red herring)

They don’t want their material reissued? Unlikely - it’s more likely they didn’t imagine anyone would be interested. But perhaps enthusiasts now are – after being alerted by Creel Pone. If they really don’t want unavailable material reissued (Desperate Bicycles conceptual-art-twaddle-position springs to mind) perhaps we should say ‘tough luck’. And the bootlegs (not counterfeits) will flow.

If someone really wants to milk their ego in such cases they can choose to sue. Ask the Messthetics guy about that scenario. He took the risk – benefitted numerous musicians, but was hammered by one aggrieved party who sued him for big cash and won. Some may hope Keith receives the same treatment. What would be the point? Apart that is from creaming a wedge of cash you’d never otherwise have received, and ‘teaching that guy a lesson’. Low indeed.

Much like the artists who were happy for Chuck Warner (or the Killed By Death punk series) to 'bootleg' their material only to see demand for official reissues emerge (and the resultant belated recognition), the same will surely apply to CP. Nobody who has had their material released by Creel Pone has lost out in ANY way - except perhaps infuriation at not having got round to reissuing it 1st – so get it together and do it ‘right’ through the subsequent official reissue.

Moral equivalence? There’s a difference between bootlegging (otherwise unavailable material) and counterfeiting (currently available material). Credit where credit’s due – let’s distinguish between clearly different matters. Even if you find both indefensible.

Bootlegs do not encourage official releases. (Vinyl reproduction these days is mostly a business model/marketing scam , with the music/art aspect often a distant, secondary consideration in many cases.) If someone wants an original of almost any of the above, they can (as in my situation) pay anywhere from a buck or two to a few hundred dollars. I have made purchases on many of the above at both price extremes, many times.. And still, I have purchased quite a few Creel Pone pirated CD-rs. They are visually quite well done. Sonics are fairly good to excellent sound, in most instances. The tiny repro packaging is very aesthetically pleasing, quite cute and cuddly. (Physical collecting is mostly about fetish anyway.) By creating a marketing niche (bootleg sales), this individual (KFW) is able to partially/mostly? subsidize his distro sales and thereby increase market share in the very competitive, yet dwindling "experimental music" distro business. Yes, his methods amount to just another "business model."

Everybody else who has rare and long out of print releases in their collection (at least when it comes to avant-garde music) and who is not interested in selling their copies seems to do one of two things:
(1) Keep the releases to themselves, which IMO is clearly the correct decision, or
(2) Upload FREE downloadable links, either at a torrent or their own website, usually via blogspot.

This is the way it has been for years. So what motivation, aside from financial gain, does this person have for putting these releases out in physical form? Clearly it’s not for altruistic reasons. And he gets away with it because it’s not cost-effective for any of the artists or labels to sue for copyright infringement, even though on the surface they would seem to have an open and shut case.

If the artist and/or the label can’t profit from their art, I don’t understand why someone with a fancy record collection and thousands of blank CDRs should either. The assertions at the CP website that these bootlegs are “more expensive to produce than they are sold for”, and that this isn’t done for money, are utterly laughable.

Let's do some math here. Even if you use the highest quality CDRs, say Taiyo Uden gold, you are still paying less than 50 cents per disc, probably a lot less when you buy large quantities at once. Inkjet covers are probably less that one dollar even using nice stock and expensive ink. Resealable plastic bags cost very little, around 5 cents each. Keith has been selling these discs for $10 each. Originally they were claimed to be editions of 50. Then editions of 100. Now no edition size is mentioned and early "sold out" titles have been reappearing on his site. So he is probably making more than 100 of some titles. If a title gets yanked because it gets an official release or a complaint from the artist, the discs are removed from the site, but still sold. I have seen a record store get re-stocked on several long deleted titles. The highest catalog number on the Mimaroglu site right now is CP 176. A handful of titles were double discs and one was triple. Say we round down to 150 titles for the sake of argument and that he really does only sell 50 copies of each. That is $75,000 retail. Even with a liberal cost of $2 per unit, that clears $60,000. If we think he sold 100 of each instead of 50, that brings it to around $120,000 profit. Of course copies are sold wholesale for around $6 to $7.50, but I haven't seen many other people offering these titles and I think I more than compensate that by figuring only 150 single disc titles instead of 176. (Even if you did count only 150 titles selling 50 copies at $6 each, that is still $45,000.) And again that is not taking into account there they may be more than 100 copies of some titles, which makes sense considering that he stopped stating an edition size. This is very far from operating at a loss or break even point. This is making an awful lot of money from screwing over obscure artists. Some of them are indeed hard to track down, but there are plenty that aren't. I don't buy into the idea that these bootlegs encourage official reissues, but believe that it probably harms them more as it means less of an official reissue will sell, and artists and label will think that there is no room for an official issue if someone is already selling a bootlegged version. Other than Keith's bank account, I don't think this label is to anyone's advantage.

I'm a CD-writer/writing audio engineer! So I know what is CD-writing is about technically. First of all: there's only a hadful of people who can burn quality CD-Rs. Then: Many of the CD-R material is very unreliable and will not stand the time and the pits/lands will simply corrodate and the music will get lost within a time. I've tested many CD-R materials and even I have hounderds of CD-rs which can't be read anymore after a few years. So please look out! The music will be lost, unless it's written onto some REAL and not fake high-end CD-Rs as Verbatim Metal AZO for example. Last don't least: the writing method counts a lot. A 4x speed written CD-r will bring you terrible sonic distortions while auditioning it in real-time!!!!

ALL micro labels operate at either a loss or just break even.