Last.fm privacy

[Lowlander]

A nice article from Ars Technica about privacy and Last.fm related to the rumors that last.fm gave user data to the RIAA after the U2 album leak.

[olle]

Well, I don't know what to believe. Off course they say they didn't hand over any information, but who knows; they're still in the same boat on this, kind off. Another but is: what'd they (RIAA) with the information? It surely can't be off any legal proof except that someone has played an soundfile tagged as an U2 song... But then again, who knows what they think is legal proof...

[Mizery_Made]

Last.FM does fingerprinting of the files, which was used to better rope songs in under one "corrected" entry, so these finger prints could be used as the proof.

[Lowlander]

Last.FM does fingerprinting of the files

Does the MediaMonkey last.fm Scrobbler script do audio finger printing as well?

It does raise the question of what last.fm (CBS) does with this data and who they share (sell) it with.

[nohitter151]

A reassuring read: http://blog.last.fm/2009/02/23/techcrun ... ll-of-shit

[Lowlander]

Yeah that post from last.fm is pretty bad. Calling TechCrunch names is uncalled for as it's clearly indicated that it's a rumor and they also included the response from last.fm and claiming that their computer resources are to precious to use to create such report for the RIAA is a pretty weak defense.

[nohitter151]

Yeah that post from last.fm is pretty bad. Calling TechCrunch names is uncalled for as it's clearly indicated that it's a rumor and they also included the response from last.fm and claiming that their computer resources are to precious to use to create such report for the RIAA is a pretty weak defense.

I think Last.fm has a right to be angry, TechCrunch seemed rather reluctant to acknowledge the responses last.fm made as genuine, and the original article they wrote was rather inflammatory, IMO. It didn't seem like they considered it a rumor, but maybe that's just how I read it, I dono.

[Lowlander]

Unless they changed the first part of the article it clearly states it was based on a rumor.

And if you're in the industry of collecting customer data you will get some suspicion as to what your intentions are. And with last.fm being part of the media corporation CBS it's only logical, you see the same with uTorrent since it became part of BitTorrent only because BitTorrent made some tech deal with the media industry.

[Sebastian78]

We have no way of being sure this isn't done, even if Last.fm deny it, RIAA deny it and CBS deny it. It is something they would WANT to do, so they will work at being able to do it. If I was them, I would, therefor they are going to, they are in their twisted mind trying to protect they deem as their right....and we ours!

This could ruin Last.fm's right to exist and that's why they are panicking....we need more proof basically.

Well, now they are going to claim that U2's new album drop in sales is because of the early "release" and not because it's a crap album...djesus....