Feel bad for them? Not even the slightest bit. These people get paid millions of bucks to make music, for heaven's sake.
IF IT'S AN ACCIDENT: In the modern age, U2 is well aware of the risks they take in arranging private media hearings of their album and in marketing the album generally. There would be no possibility of leaks if U2 kept the album to themselves until its release - i.e. if they weren't trying to engineer a massive, carefully choreographed publicity blitz designed to make tens of millions of dollars. They will still make an incredible amount of money on this and will live it up bigtime. No one will starve.
IF IT'S ON PURPOSE: And in any case the entire episode is probably engineered to begin with. Who benefits from this? Apple, who gets yet another massive publicity blitz from the fact that I-tunes can "pre-empt" the pirates. And in case you doubt that the net financial benefit of doing this would far exceed the money lost by the "premature" release, the London Times reported a few days ago that Apple's stock increased in value by $2 billion within the first week after the U2-Apple announcement. The possibilities of I-tunes are what drive stock prices higher, which is where the real money is, and this episode highlights those possibilities.
I love the band as much as anyone here, but let's get serious. They are better businessmen than they are musicians, and they're awesome musicians. Nothing is accidental. And in any case, even if it was truly a "leak", there's nothing to feel sorry for.
OK, fire away!