Except the story says Ubisoft specifically says that isn't the    case. Arsa13 I guess is actually a fairly well known demonoid pirate.

I don't actually think that's what it's saying is it?   I mean, what the article says to me it's on their servers it;s just that they are using someone elses digitial encoding... IE Ripping.

So for example like Ke$ha comes out with a new song, and releases the CD... some fans then rip the CD and put it online, she decides to give that cd away for free in digital form for those who buy her new video DVD.

Now, instead of ripping the cd from the disc.  She torrents her own CD and releases it.

Problem being, when you rip a CD, it usually says who ripped it.

As for why you would do this... my only guess would be, nobody had the CD at the time they weanted to rip it and some guy was like "It's probably pirateable online... and i mean it's OUR product, so it's not like we'd be pirating."

Either that or the encoding was exceptionally well done and ubisoft didn't have the right tools to pull it off.  Studio level encoding programs are probably expensive as hell.

Ah yeah, this article has more information SSJ

According to "plginger," the included tracks were originally torrented FLAC files that Ubisoft seemingly downloaded and converted down into MP3s for the bundle. As seen in this screenshot, the FLAC files were encoded from the original AC3 files found on a console bonus DVD. The deed was performed by well-known internet pirate arsa13, a member of the semi-private BitTorrent tracker Demonoid (screenshot). The FLAC files were reportedly thrown in the BitTorrent pipeline more than four months ago.

While it's possible that Reddit user "plginger" could be pulling a fast one on the community, TorrentFreak believes the claim might be legit, explaining that arsa13's original FLAC torrent somehow left out the "Apple Chamber" track (#20). The screenshot provided by plginger shows that every track distributed by Ubisoft stems from the pirated tracks encoded by arsa13 except for one-- "Apple Chamber." The author's description is left blank.

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Assassin-s-Creed-FLAC-BitTorrent-Soundtrack-arsa13,news-10485.html

So they literally downloaded the torrent AND ripped the one song it was missing.  Making the motivation for doing this even more fucking confusing... since if they had the Master... why didn't they just rip it from the master rather then download the torrented files?!

I mean, i guess either someone was

A) Being veeeeery lazy, then was bummed when he found out a track was missing.

B) Already downloaded it on those servers... and figured "Hey, i've already got most the songs done!".

Nope, suicide by mind-induced madness:

God: My son, why have you called upon Me?

Me: God, could you create a ball of rock so heavy that not even Yourselft could lift?

God: AAAAAAAAAAAAahhh! The madness!? Who am I? AAAAAAAaaaah

The end.

arf.... well at least we know some Ubisoft employees are not afraid of Hadopi (french anti piracy law.... if they are even based in france, which i don't think is the case for the AC team)

Ok, cool. Who cares? 

Just some silly Canadians being lazy :P

I will not stand for such claims against Canadians. We are not Silly or Lazy, that is reserved for Southern United States of Americans! Namely those from NC! :P

(Now watch this turn into a war, even if we both are joking). :P

I've never seen Insomniac do something like this! 

They could have before, just were smart enough to remove certain information from a file.

Yeap, with the pc version of Rainbow Six Vegas 2. The digitial versions of the game still checked for a cd in the drive so Ubisoft had to release a patch to fix, and that patch inlcuded a no-cd-crack from a warex group called Reloaded