I had the same idea really. I did a paypal account with a few $ and figured that if it did disappear then I wouldn't have lost much and that they wouldn't have any credit card details anyway.

I've used it a few times and it seems to be okay for me. They don't usually have the latest stuff but all of the stuff that's been out a while is usually there. The ones I've bought haven't had any problems with ripping or encoding.

Some of the files on the site are ripped by the users. They insist that you rip at 320kbps and then upload the files. So you are getting reencoding but it shouldn't be that many artifacts. I've not idea what they're doing now as they've added more features to the reencoding so you can go above 320kbps.