It is also a good idea to ask Yello about this, yes.
Two things, 1) How do you plan to "ask Yello"? A letter or e-mail to their record label is probably only going to get as far as a secretary, and it will be handed straight to the lawyers, not to Boris and Dieter. 2) Do you honestly expect anyone associated with Yello, or even Boris or Dieter, to say "Sure, put some of our copyright material on a web site, we don't mind!" *We* are able to look at things in shades of grey. We can make a decision that if we create a fan FTP site it will have limited access to true fans who have probably spent a large amount of money on Yello stuff already, and who would probably still shell out the bucks to buy a second hand single if it came their way, regardless of if they had already grabbed an MP3 copy, and that the FTP site will be limited to rare and out-of-print items. Don't expect any lawyers or other professional representatives of Yello to even think for a split second before saying "No" to the idea, because as far as they will be concerned they will just be opening the flood gates. I mean, if you *really* wanted to get permission from Yello you'd have to individually list every rare track that you planned to put on the site and probably what quality you were going to encode it at too, for them to really be able to make a decision. I'm a member of a number of other mailing lists that have struggled with the same issues. Yello is not the only group that does not have all their back-catalogue in print. (The situation is even worse on the KLF mailing list since the *entire* back-catalogue was many years ago, at least in the UK and Europe.) If you want to have a FTP site so you can share some rare MP3 files (and I do support such an idea, and can actually provide a few rare tracks myself) then just go ahead an do it. We'll be doing something illegal by the letter of the law, but so long as it is done in a way that is morally right (that is, it doesn't deprive Yello of any money, etc.) then I think we should all feel comfortable doing it. But trying to seek permission first is madness. Michael