There are few things louder than a Metallica album. But you'd expect their screaming outrage over online piracy to be one of them.

After all, Metallica -- spearheaded by tempestuous drummer Lars Ulrich -- were the first major band to rail against Internet file-sharing after discovering their music was being traded on Napster back in 2000. Their campaign helped drive the company into bankruptcy, but not before generating plenty of rancor among fans who viewed the band as spoiled millionaires.

Still, when their new album Death Magnetic leaked onto the Internet 10 days before its release, supposedly after being sold early in France, we were braced for an earful from the band.

It never came.

"I'm pretty disappointed," guitarist Kirk Hammett admitted. "But in this day and age, you come to expect it. It's one of those inevitable things. You just have to roll with it."

Surprisingly, even Ulrich appears to be taking it in stride. "If this thing leaks all over the world today or tomorrow, happy days," he told a Bay Area radio station last week. "It's 2008 and it's part of how it is these days, so it's fine. We're happy."

And despite the band's earlier stance, Hammett says he's not so sure file-sharing is inherently evil.

"No one really knows the overall effects. Because it's on such a wide global scale, it's hard to gauge what damage has been done. But it's also hard to gauge what good comes out of it, too.

"I think this isn't much different from the '70s, when someone got ahold of an album and started playing it on the radio and people started taping it. It's just that now it's much more instantaneous and global."