i literally just bought an og copy of the pearl jam give way cd a few months ago. it has been a white whale for a looong time.
i worked at best buy in the music/movies/software department at the time, and we got the give way cds in the store a couple weeks before the promotion, which was giving a free copy of the give way cd to anyone that bought a vhs copy of single video theory. i did a lot of the sorting in the back room and could listen to music back there. i knew i was going to be buying the video, so i opened a copy that i would just then take home on the release date. so give way was in the player pretty much every day i was in the back- this was a couple years before pearl jam started releasing live shows, and yield was only six months old or so at this point so this was the first release that had any of those songs played live. a day or two before the release, my supervisor comes up to me and tells me i need to give the cd back, that the entire stock was going to be collected and destroyed and if we were short any copies the store was going to get fined a LOT. so i did, and i never saw a copy again until i finally threw down a good chunk of money to acquire one a few months back.
apparently best buy didn't have permission from sony to do this promotion, which never made any sense to me at all- there's just no way best buy goes through all of this without one of the biggest band's and/or biggest label's knowledge and approval. plus the cd was professionally produced and is still the best sounding version of this show. i've always suspected that the decision for pearl jam to do live on two legs came after any agreement with best buy was made - single video theory was released in august 98 and pearl jam was smack in the middle of the yield tour and were recording these shows - and the band/sony decided there was more money to be made rather than giving away a free live show because someone bought a $15 video, and so best buy took the fall. because the give way cd had already been advertised and promised, best buy ended up having to give away any single cd of the customer's choosing if they bought single video theory.