Hello, David. You always love to stir the pot, don't you?! An interesting point of view and interesting place to voice it. I know you're certainly not alone in feeling the way you do.
But thankfully, there are 20+ million US families (perhaps more by now--that's the last figure I remember reading) who do subscribe to one satellite company or another (not all DirecTV). That certainly doesn't compare yet to cable, but it's not bad and it's growing every year.
Personally, satellite technology has been in my family (both the large and the smaller dishes) for 20 + years now and we couldn't/wouldn't do without them. Especially now, with my folks living with us. The small dish provides everything they need including our local channels, so they don't have to pay extra for cable.
So, this wasn't such a bad deal for Meat, considering that the lead time for getting something on one of the regular cable channels like HBO or Showtime is probably considerably longer than it was for DirecTV and obviously, Meat wanted to get this out around the time the album was due to be released here. So, it's good publicity for him and for the CD--no matter what.
What bothers me the most, David, is that it feels as though your vision of the issue, as you've presented it here, is just a little narrow-sighted. This concert is NOT totally copyrighted by DirecTV, but at the end of the program, it very clearly states it is owned by Meat Loaf and Southern Star Management (I'm not familiar with them).
We do not know if Meat has other plans for this show. Perhaps, he intends to sell it to other venues around the world. Perhaps, he may even have plans to release a DVD of it in the future. None of us know what else Meat had in mind for this concert.
So, it makes me sad to hear that these trading trees you talk about are going beyond the rather limited scope of this thread into non-Meat Loaf groups. Because they may, indeed, above and beyond the DirecTV issue, be taking money out of Meat's pocket at some point in the future--something he doesn't deserve, just because he chose a distributor, who could get the product out when he needed it out.
These are just my quick thoughts after reading your post. I'm sure there are lots of sides to this question. But in my mind, it's probably not a good thing to be advertising, and probably not the best place to be discussing this, as I'm sure you'll agree, with Meat visiting here more regularly again.
None of us want to see him hurt or upset by any of this.
It was my understanding that this was meant to be a thread celebrating a long-awaited live concert having been filmed and shared with his fans!
Love,
MB