Geek Not Nerd

Last.fm – the Blog · “Techcrunch are full of shit”

On Friday night a technology blog called Techcrunch posted a vicious
and completely false rumour about us: that Last.fm handed data to the RIAA so they could track who’s been listening to the “leaked” U2 album.

I denied it vehemently on the Techcrunch article, as did several other Last.fm staffers. We denied it in the Last.fm forums, on twitter, via email – basically we denied it to anyone that would listen, and now we’re denying it on our blog.

According to Ars Technica, even the RIAA don’t know where the rumour came from.
The Ars Technica article is worth a read by the way, as it explains how
the album was leaked in the first place by U2’s record label.

MORE:

Did Last.fm Just Hand Over User Listening Data To the RIAA?

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. 

MORE:

Music, RIAA, Last.FM, TechCrunch, for:GNN