But Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood is fairly understanding, especially considering the stolen property is his band's latest album, Hail To The Thief, which made its way onto the Internet several months before its official release next Tuesday.
Anyone who wanted to hear the leaked album - let's just say, a friend of a friend of this guy I know gave it to his cousin's sister's brother who played it for me without me even knowing what it was until too late - probably already has, with some radio stations, including one in B.C., broadcasting the entire thing.
"I have complicated feelings about it all, really," says Greenwood, from a Montreal hotel room. "It's something that you get used to happening anyway. But ours was a little different because it wasn't finished.
"We edited some songs... we remixed it all, so it's a bit frustrating for that reason mainly."
Greenwood says they still have no idea who put the unfinished album online, especially considering the versions were ones that were never even burned to disc by the band for consideration.
The finished Hail To The Thief came about after another two months of playing with the tracks, and the guitarist says what will be in stores June 10 is "pretty different when you consider we cut a whole minute out of one of the songs and we rejected a lot of the mixes you're hearing as not being right. So that's fairly different."
The initial recording session for the disc, the Oxford quintet's sixth, took place last September with producer Nigel Godrich and over what Greenwood describes as an "intense" two-week period in the very un-Radiohead-like setting of Los Angeles.
At one time they would have scoffed at the suggestion they could be themselves - i.e. moody, ambient, cerebral and progressive - in La La land, but the guitarist says since they never really leave the studio when they're working, the outside world rarely intrudes.
"We had such an inflated view of ourselves three or four years ago that we decided to record Kid A in Copenhagen in the middle of winter, thinking that's the kind of band we are... we belong in studios in dark, northern European countries.
"And it didn't work for whatever reason.
"We just realized you should go to a studio where you can work and it sounds good...
"I don't know, maybe it's not very Radiohead," he concedes. "But we all hired Minis and drove to work every day. So that was quite Radiohead in a way."
The new album - well, if the illicit one is even a partial indication - is also quite recognizably Radiohead.
That doesn't mean it's a repeat of their past two out-there, more electronic and exploratory outings, Kid A and Amnesiac, which Greenwood refers to as the "so-called difficult records." Nor is it a more basic pop rock record, like their first two efforts, Pablo Honey and The Bends.
And neither is it an attempt to recreate the album many cite as the band's masterpiece, 1997's OK Computer.
It's a mix of all while being something entirely its own, which is the only typical thing you can say about a Radiohead record.
"It's all one piece of work to me," says Greenwood.
"I don't really see that we changed directions that drastically. We've only ever worked in songs that are four or five minutes long and are repetitive and have melodies and, in a way, it's all one thing.
"It's not like we've made Metal Machine Music (Lou Reed's experimental noise epic)."
And while the past two records especially have shown that people are willing to follow the band no matter where they go with their music, the knowledge they can never tells them they should.
"I think it's important to not do it for its own sake," he says. "I suppose you release a record that you are really in to and think sounds right, and people follow you and some people don't.
"We get bored easy and we keep moving.
"It's like being a target. The slower you go, you don't survive. But we're bored, we're changing - what can we do?"