Just listened to this for the first time, and just read through this thread for the first time. I don't have well-formed thoughts yet, but I feel I ought to clear this up, since I was the one who mentioned it in the other thread.
How do you spoil an album?
Yeah, I'm with you. I'm buying my copy tomorrow and have been reading this thread all week. I'm pretty sure I don't know what I'm going to hear based on comments here haha.
I would get it if it were a concept album with plot points... but how does hearing about an album spoil it?
That's what I was wondering too some pages ago. I had hoped that those who feared spoilers in the original thread would explain what there is to spoil.
Actually, I did explain why I thought there should be a new thread, in the original thread. I explained, and then had like a five-post long conversation with bosk as a result. It can't have been that easy to miss. Nevertheless, I'll explain again here.
My problem was that the album was leaked and that people were listening to a leaked copy. Regardless of your own feelings on the subject, listening to a leaked copy of an album is, in fact, illegal. And in the opinions of many, many people, including myself, morally wrong. What's more, the policy of this forum frowns upon the discussion of leaked material.
My objection was that over a week before the album was released to the world by the band and the label, who own the music and have the right to dictate how it is released, there was already discussion going on in the main Iron Maiden thread. The same thread where those of us who wanted to abide by the law and our own views on what is a morally right way to deal with intellectual property, and talk about other Iron Maiden material and build the excitement and count down until the album was legally released. Essentially, by having discussion of the leak in the new thread, the experience would be ruined for anyone who did not want to listen to the leak.
My own objection was never about having the album spoiled, it was about allowing discussion of illegally leaked material in the main thread (which, in order to even be in accordance with forum policy, you have to intentionally avoid the topic of how you managed to obtain it) and thus disrupting those who are not okay with listening to such material.