Prove me wrong. If The Usher will please just honestly list the contents of the 80 GB hard drive, we can put this to bed. Or if that's too much too ask, then please list a few of the Sonic Youth shows in the interests of resolving this. How many of
these are on the hard drive? I downloaded probably two-thirds of them from dime and most of the other third come from snail-mail trades. I have a keen memory as to which is which. I am also familiar with the lists that other SY collectors have, and at this point, there are very few out there that I do not have. I am wondering though who has the 80 GB hard drive. Perhaps it's sonicl that has it and not The Usher. Neither of you were clear about which one you purchased. I suppose it doesn't matter since both of you probably have many of the same shows on the drives that rappard downloaded from dime.
The Usher, sonicl, and others have expressed that they are grateful for the transactions they've had with rappard. I have a feeling that most of the people who he deals with, even the ones he more amply charges, approve of the experience. He's careful about the methods and language he uses when making offers. All signs point that he displays a lot of experience picking the right target and curating good karma with others. I suspect he makes a meager profit and doesn't get too greedy, after all, that would only cause him to be singled-out after a short time. But shows are still being sold, and that's the concern; for all we know, he gets contacted later after he makes a topic post by people eagerly offering to pay whatever to get the same concert recordings. If you read his posts closely, you can even detect the catch-me-if-you-can arrogance just oozing through his words and it's also evident in his actions by altering posts in this thread.
And of course he would be straight-up with Tokolosh who is a countryman that would be rather familiar with the postage rates in The Netherlands.
At first, rappard claimed that all 80 GB of the second drive were uncirculated shows. He did this because he wanted to cover his ass in case a discerning reader happened across his post who might object to him offering shows he downloaded off dime as a bonus incentive for purchasing a hard drive.
I quoted that
post and made it known that I didn't believe him that the shows were all uncirculated. He later went back and edited that same post to read "lots of uncirculated" because he knows that I know that it is highly unprobable that he could have acquired, in just the last few months, some 120+ never-before-seeded SY & related shows that virtually no one else has.
So tell me, if I'm so off-base, then why did he lie that they were all uncirculated? And why did he later alter his post to convey a different meaning? It's because he knew a post just like this one from me was coming now that the owner of the 80 GB hard drive has posted in this thread. He did it to try and avoid getting caught in a boldface lie that would serve to underscore his deceitful character.
rappard is a taper and prolific seeder at dime and I've enjoyed the fruits of his efforts myself.
Making all these accusations is not without its pangs for me. I would like to believe I'm wrong, but good sense proves otherwise. With the
changing of his wording, he's now basically (perhaps unwittingly) admitted with his edit that a lot of the shows on the hard drive come from dime. And it was a relief for me to read that he had edited in an attempt at subterfuge (a botched attempt, but one nonetheless), because now I am certain that I am right.
By way of some explanation, I've remained ambivalent towards his other questionable dealings for years, but when I saw that he had sold a second hard drive in this thread and made the dubious claim that they are all uncirculated shows, I considered if I should do anything for a good little while. Eventually I felt I had to react accordingly.