Curse

Nightow · Feb 21, 2009, 05:29 AM // 05:29

Source: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/20...a-to-the-riaa/

Quote:

That leaked U2 album is causing all sorts of trouble. The unreleased album, which is due out on March 3, found its way onto BitTorrent and was downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. That, apparently, sent music industry lawyers over at the Recording Industry Association of America into a fit. As a result, word is going around that the RIAA asked social music service Last.fm for data about its user’s listening habits to find people with unreleased tracks on their computers. And Last.fm, which is owned by CBS, actually handed the data over to the RIAA. According to a tip we received:

I heard from an irate friend who works at CBS that last.fm recently provided the RIAA with a giant dump of user data to track down people who are scrobbling unreleased tracks. As word spread numerous employees at last.fm were up in arms because the data collected (a) can be used to identify individuals and (b) will likely be shared with 3rd parties that have relationships with the RIAA.

Supposedly, the operations team which handed over the data in the first place weren’t told the true purpose for the transfer or who was getting the data until after the fact, and only when they had to help with some corrupted data. It sounds like it was more of a corporate decision. I’ve contacted both CBS and the RIAA. Most of the Last.fm team is in London, where the weekend has already started. For now Last.fm says: “To our knowledge, no data has been made available to RIAA.” (The RIAA declined to comment).

Setting aside what actually happened to the data, and assuming this rumor is true, why would the RIAA target Last.fm? It wasn’t streaming the U2 album, and it is not an illegal download service. But Last.fm has millions of users who are heavy music consumers, and many of them download Last.fm’s Scrobbler software which keeps track of every single song you listen to on your computer, no matter which music player you use. In other words, it captures tracks played from illegal BitTorrent downloads just as easily as from iTunes.

Last.fm members knowingly share what they are listening to with the rest of the Last.fm community, and in return receive social recommendations of music they might like. That is the whole point of the service. And Last.fm’s privacy policy does clearly state:

. . . your record collection (including your skipping history) may be viewed by all other users of Last.fm (who may include other organisations or representatives of other organisations who have registered as Last.fm users) and that they may easily associate this information with your Last.fm username.

But most probably never even considered it a possibility that individually identifiable information about their listening habits (legal, illegal, or otherwise) could be handed over to an organization known for taking consumers to court for file-sharing. What makes this even more egregious is that it appears to be absent any legal precedent (such as a pending lawsuit) for which Last.fm could at least hide behind as an excuse.

Incidents like this highlight how the social Web can sometimes bite back if you are not careful. It also raises the issue of who owns all of this data about you and what they can do with it. (The same issue that caused Facebook to backtrack on recent changes to its data policy). Unfortunately, it’s come down to this: you really shouldn’t share any data on the Web you wouldn’t feel comfortable seeing in a court of law.

(Please contact us at tips [at] techcrunch if you have more information about this).

Update: Some more denials from Last.FMers, including one of the co-founders, Richard Jones, in comments, who says this story is “utter nonsense and totally untrue,” and another one from Russ Garrett, a systems architect.

And guess who leaked the album in the first place. None other than Universal Music Australia.

Akuma · Feb 21, 2009, 07:43 AM // 07:43

i'm pretty guilty

MMSDome · Feb 21, 2009, 08:35 AM // 08:35

O damn thats shitty

ZenRgy · Feb 21, 2009, 11:49 AM // 11:49

That's what happens when you listen to shit like U2.

Abedeus · Feb 21, 2009, 07:09 PM // 19:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZenRgy

That's what happens when you listen to shit like U2.

Because cool kids listen only to My Chemical Romance and Tokio Hotel.

Kerwyn Nasilan · Feb 21, 2009, 08:12 PM // 20:12

Thread Win
12 chars

fenix · Feb 21, 2009, 11:13 PM // 23:13

tl;dr, U2 are mega shit.

makosi · Feb 21, 2009, 11:30 PM // 23:30

The recording studios ought to take better precautions to protect their works because we all know how much and how fast stuff spreads on the internet.

What do they hope to gain from peoples' last.fm listening habits? "We see u haz u2 tunez n' u probably downloaded da album so we send u letta demandin all ur munnay, lolz xD."

You can't link such information to a legal case for so many reasons, it's way too flawed.

However it is just another excuse to send out demands for cash.

Greedy bitches.

Nightow · Feb 23, 2009, 11:37 PM // 23:37

Quote:

SOURCE:http://arstechnica.com/media/news/20...-over-data.ars
Last.fm did not turn over user data after U2's unreleased album leaked onto the Internet late last week, according to both the RIAA and the music site itself. According to a rumor circulating over the past couple of days, the record industry was up in arms after U2's No Line on the Horizon popped up on P2P and filesharing sites, resulting in the RIAA allegedly demanding—and getting—records from Last.fm to see which users were and scrobbling tracks from the album. The CBS-owned Last.fm was happy to fork it over, or so the story goes, but both Last.fm and the RIAA deny any such thing happened.

("Scrobbling," for those of you not in the know, is when you set up your media software to report to Last.fm what you're listening to. The data is shared with friends and the public should you so choose.)

Word got out last week that U2's upcoming album, which isn't slated for release until March 3, had been accidentally posted for sale by the UMG-operated getmusic.com.au. Before the label was able to pull the tracks off the site, they had spread like wildfire across the Internet—CD-quality and DRM-free. Considering U2's extreme paranoia about leaks—the band reportedly refuses to send out samples to industry people ahead of release and instead insists on secret, in-person listening parties—this particular series of events was almost amusing.

According to the unnamed source behind the rumor, when Last.fm was allegedly asked to hand over the user data, no one was told exactly what it was to be used for until later. Needless to say, the rumor sparked a bit of a panic among the Last.fm community, as such data would not only identify which users had downloaded the unreleased tracks, but could possibly be shared with the RIAA's partners. However, Last.fm staff member Russ Garrett posted in a discussion thread on Last.fm with "a full and categorical denial" of the report. "We've never had any request for such data by anyone, and if we did we wouldn't consent to it," said Garrett.

The RIAA has finally chimed in as well, categorically denying that any such request was ever made. "[We're] not sure where that rumor came from," RIAA spokesperson Cara Duckworth told Ars on Saturday. "It's not true."

So, everyone can calm down and go back to their regularly scheduled programming. The incident does show, however, that users are sensitive to their privacy being respected when it comes to usage data, even if they are choosing to share it themselves.

tl;dr: False alarm folks, go back home.