Since we're trying to build local community, and we've run up against a sticky wicket, I thought I'd steal a page from one of the masters of building local online communities: When Craigslist runs into a dilemma about how to handle a business decision, they seek advice from the community.

So here's ours: One of the cooler features of our site is the live performances (both audio and video). Cindy and Alex, in particular, log countless hours and miles to deliver audio and video of local bands -- many of whom have no other live material available online.

This is, of course, always done with the permission of the band. However, we're increasingly running into a situation where the band comes back after the fact and asks us to remove the material because THEY are unhappy with their performance.

I can see two sides to this. On the one hand, it costs us time (and therefore money) to record a show. And yeah, if we make the Rolling Stones sound like Britney Spears through some audio flub-up, I get it. But we can't afford to go record a band multiple times until they hit their height of performance. This is the costliest content we produce -- and we can't take a throw-away lightly. Bands don't get do-overs on live TV shows and radio performances, so why here?

On the other hand, we respect an artist's right to have say over how their music is used. And we've had cases where artists told us we could use studio mp3s and changed their minds -- and we took 'em down without thinking twice. We're about helping get more people out to more shows, so we don't want "bad" material either. (The problem is that bad is in the ear of the beholder.)

Where I think I come down on this is that as long as the recording can reasonably be considered good and useful to our users, than it should stay.

But, we don't know it all, by a long stretch. And according to our user registrations, more than 1/3 of you are in bands. So what do you think?

One final note-- I'm not picking on any one band here. This has cropped up several times.