Stolen from P2P - Scene status

[Swisha99]

One version back said that WEB is assumed CDDA and best quality, which makes the most sense to me as i'm sure these shops are not ripping vinyls or CDs for that matter lol... they are getting a source at least equal to CDDA, and probably of higher quality that CDDA like master. Now how its encoded is where it can go south, but if 'Source' is determining factor, meh....

You are allowed to create a duplicate release from a release that has
a source of lower quality (a different source!).
Example: if vinyl is out then a CD-release is allowed.
If you do that then please add this info to NFO and dirname. For
online bought MP3s (-WEB-) we assume the best source quality (CDDA or
better).

[kassyopeia]

With comics, very occasionally pirate rips of digital re-releases of decades-old issues turn out to be re-encodes of pirate scans of the original print copies of those issues - not because the rippers didn't actually buy the digital version, but because that's what's actually being sold!

Seems implausible at first, but once one imagines, say, a situation in which some retailer wants a complete series, some original issue turns out not to be readily available any more, and some employee has previously dabbled in piracy...

My guess would be that, for various reasons, this is more unlikely to happen with music, but perhaps still not unlikely enough not to happen at all.