So to clarify...

This is not a request for tagging functionality to e.g. set %date% to %originaldate% and %year% to %originalyear% - these can easily be done in a script.

Instead my interpretation of this request is for additional functionality (presumably with setting(s) on the Options / Metadata / Preferred Releases page) to influence the matching of releases to music files so that (in the event of equal matching releases??) the earliest matching release (or latest matching release) is chosen rather than a random album.

I guess an option to prefer always the earliest release in a list of matches would make sense. But it should not go to the earliest release at all costs, just weight it in in the normal comparison. E.g. for cluster lookups the number of files should take precedence.

Like with this release group,
http://musicbrainz.org/release-group/0667a7aa-a6cd-31c5-9cc3-d68d8358a980
I want Picard to pick the one from 1994 instead of 2000 when using lookup.

Or one with many releases,
http://musicbrainz.org/release-group/cea5d18a-1924-3cda-bebc-38933834b25d
I want it to pick the best matching one from a group of ones that have the original year. In this case, it would isolate the first 7 and pick the one that matches best. I'm not too concerned with the exact date being right (month and day) as long as the year and tracklisting is right.

Edit:
oh I didn't even think of that. Thanks, I'll try it when I get home.

Doesn't a tagger script like

[code]
$set(date,%originaldate%)
[/code]

solve your issue?

What do you mean with "opt for the earliest release"?