"Agreed" Recordings of Live Performances = Bootleg or Official

So, doing some work today adding some independent stuff into the database, Plum Crazy are an American band who have a few live performances recorded and published on The Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/PlumCrazy?tab=about

The about tab details:

On August 17, 2005, Plum Crazy gave permission for shows to be hosted at the Archive:

Subject: [etree] band permission
From: Josh Yenne

Plum Crazy would love to be part of the archive.org family and
wholeheartedly give our permission to have our live shows hosted there.

So would any releases that are published here be Official, or would they still be considered bootleg?

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I guess technically it’s not a bootleg in MB:

An unofficial/underground release that was not sanctioned by the artist and/or the record company. This includes unofficial live recordings and pirated releases.

But I would expect these to still follow the bootleg guidelines and so forth.

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My assumption would’ve been that a live release is “official” if it was recorded at the behest of the artist and released by the artist, while a “bootleg” is anything else.

The documentation seems less clear, though. https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Release#Status says:

official
Any release officially sanctioned by the artist and/or their record company. Most releases will fit into this category.

bootleg
An unofficial/underground release that was not sanctioned by the artist and/or the record company. This includes unofficial live recordings and pirated releases.

Google says that “sanction” means “give official permission or approval for (an action)”, so one could make the argument that fan tapings of Plum Crazy shows are sanctioned by virtue of the band openly permitting them.

When I look at fan tapings of live shows by other artists that also openly permit the practice, I see lots of “bootleg” releases in MB:

So I’d probably still mark these as “bootleg” if they were recorded and released by fans rather than by the band.

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This ^^^

Many bands are happy for bootleggers to record their gigs. It is still a bootleg as it was recorded without permission. And then released unofficially.

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it might be good to note an artist’s endorsement of such bootlegs in the annotation as well

Artist’s endorsement is a wide thing. Grateful Dead are famous for being happy with the trading. So are many bands as it is the fans promoting to the fans.

Pink Floyd used to also be happy about it. There has always been a huge Floyd trading scene. But in the past couple of years things have got a little “odd” as the record label is now stealing classic concert bootlegs and selling them on Spotify. Therefore making an “Official” release out of an old historic bootleg. They are making a right mess of it though as they are doing such a cheap job that they even get dates wrong.

All very weird. Especially as a bunch they released last year then all disappeared a few months later.

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