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Last.fm User Data Was Sent To RIAA By CBS
suraj.sun sends in an update from TechCrunch on a story that generated a lot of controversy a few months back, "Did Last.fm Just Hand Over User Listening Data To the RIAA?" "Now we've located another source for the story, someone who's very close to Last.fm. And it turns out Last.fm was telling the truth, sorta... Last.fm didn't hand user data over to the RIAA. According to our source, it was their parent company, CBS, that did it. Here's what we believe happened: CBS requested user data from Last.fm, including user name and IP address. CBS wanted the data to comply with a RIAA request but told Last.fm the data was going to be used for 'internal use only.' It was only after the data was sent to CBS that Last.fm discovered the real reason for the request. Last.fm staffers were outraged, say our sources, but the data had already been sent to the RIAA. We believe CBS lied to us when they denied sending the data to the RIAA, and that they subsequently asked us to attribute the quote to Last.fm to make the statement defensible. Last.fm's denials were strictly speaking correct, but they ignored the underlying truth of the situation, that their parent company supplied user data to the RIAA, and that the data could possibly be used in civil and criminal actions against those users."
Media companies lie! Film at 11.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/23/another-blanket-denial-by-lastfm/
I'm a dreamer, the world is my playpen. But hey, I'm a serious person, I can't dream all the time.
I promise I didn't tell on you!... my mom did.
I guess one could simple turn off scrobbling, but that is one of the main features of the service.
If last.fm sold out to CBS for 140 million pounds, why should anyone be outraged if CBS is using the last.fm user info like this? CBS is one of the major labels controlling the RIAA actions. Why wouldn't they do this? Or to put it another way, why would a user stick with last.fm after it sold out to a CBS?
So it is not "legal" to listen to music on last.fm? Can I get sued by the RIAA if I listen to songs on last.fm? If it is "illegal" to have music on last.fm, then why doesn't the RIAA send a cease and desist to CBS/last.fm? If it is legal, then why would CBS release that information? Is it so that the RIAA can have a list of IPs with names to go after if they think someone is pirating music?
Trust no one.
Captcha for this post is embezzle
Stop buying CDs and movies. It's the only way to stop RIAA and MPAA abusing our rights. Fund the artists, not these corrupt organisations.
Artists: Go direct to the public via the web.
RIAA/MPAA: Evolve or die. Stop attacking and threatening potential customers, or like me, they will stop buying your product.
AC
the data could possibly be used in civil and criminal actions against those users
Except that
(1) There is no way to tell whether music on last.fm is from legal or illegal copies.
(2) "Listening" to music you don't own is in no way illegal. Even if the RIAA can prove you are listening to music you didn't purchase, they have presented no evidence that a crime has occurred.
(3) The tag data sent to last.fm is self-reported and unverified. Basically, there is no more evidence that you actually listened to the music than if you said you listened to it on facebook. In fact, due to incorrect tags, I'm quite sure that I have reported listening to music not in my collection on a number of occasions.
So while the RIAA may have a bit of a tip-off in looking at high-volume listeners, I don't think they could even get a warrant for more information, since they distinctly lack evidence of any kind of crime.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Last.fm collects listening data from the ID tags of mp3-files and the likes, right? ID tags can be modified to say anything. It's even possible to send completely bogus information to Last.fm without listening to any music files at all. So what does the collected data actually prove?
There's a reason Craigslist, for example, has never gone public or sold a controlling stake to a major media company: because Craig Newmark knows exactly what would happen to the site if he did. He could get more money, sure, but he's very wealthy as it is, so he doesn't need more money. Not enough to sell out the site he spent so many years building, anyway.
Remember, folks, free-market capitalism is about your right to control your own business, taking responsibility for it and running it as you see fit. If you sell out to some large, bureaucratic entity, greedy bastards with no vision will run your life's work right into the ground. Is the payout worth it? Maybe it is, but at least make sure you realize what you're doing: you cannot both sell out to CBS and retain your integrity. The freedom to choose not to sell something is as important as free access to markets is.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Boy howdy techcrunch are going to make a lot of ad $ from hits on this unsubstantiated story from scared last.fm users who have one or two dodgy mp3s though - of course - there's no chance that that consideration entered into their decision to publish it.
How could anyone be sued for last.fm data? The only data you supply to last.fm when using their 'scrobbling' client is the tags of the currently playing song. Tags can be anything. I can take any song by any artist, or even just random noise, and give it any tags I wish. That doesn't magically make that song the song that I've tagged it as. I seem to recall data about U2's then-unreleased album being spoken about when the last.fm data news story came about. The album wasn't released yet, so anybody listening to it obviously got it through unofficial channels. The problem with that line of thinking is, getting a hold of the track names before its release wouldn't exactly be rocket science. I'm sure a tracklist would have been made public long before its release. It's a trivial matter to take any random songs and give them tags that correspond to the upcoming release and then play them back in your media player. And since you're running the last.fm 'scrobbling' client those tag names would be uploaded to your last.fm account as what you're currently listening to. That doesn't mean that the tags your files have are actually what your tags claim them to be. They're just tags. Tags that can be set to any arbitrary value by anyone, anytime. How anyone could possibly think this could be used as evidence of being in possession of officially unreleased material ahead of the official release is beyond me. It makes absolutely no sense at all. And the people that think this data could be used for anything to do with the legal system is downright hilarious.
wow now the RIAA is coming after me because I don't like the mainstream music?. I have always wondered why the artists always hush when this crap happens. As I say every time this guys make another outrageous thing.. >Boycott the artist under that labels not the RIAA itself<. You can't hate the RIAA and still drool to the artists that are OK with that. Put your shit together.
Track listings of unreleased albums, along with accurate track length information (which the Audioscrobbler protocol provides), could be used as probable cause for a search warrant.
I cancelled my Last.fm account immediately after I read this article. Fu** them for this.
I shouldn't have done this from the start. I feel stupid. I should've seen something like this coming.
This news shows that TechCrunch was basically correct with its first article. I recall that many people were ready to believe the denials of last.fm and of CBS; I don't know why. Those who dumped all over TC last time owe it an apology. Last.fm is unsafe. Period.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
... If this has anything to do with the fact that Tech Crunch is sponsored by a competitor of Last.fm.
I see dead pixels!
I'm currently listening to a future Eminem track. I got it by running bittorrent through a time-machine. The evidence is plain for all to see (or my playedlist)
Good grief.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Take them through Criminal Courts rather than Civil courts...
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
If you read the Terms of Use when uploading, you basically give Last.fm the right to do ANYTHING:
"When you upload Your Upload Information via the Website, you irrevocably grant to Last.fm, its parent, subsidiaries, affiliates, and partners, without any credit or compensation to you, a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, unrestricted, irrevocable, royalty-free and fully transferable, assignable and sub-licensable right and licence to use, reuse, modify, adapt, alter, display, archive, publish, sub-license, perform, copy, reproduce, disclose, transmit, communicate to the public, post, sell, translate, create derivative works of, distribute, make and export Your Upload Information (in whole or in part), or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, software or technology of any kind now known or developed in the future, for any purposes whatsoever including, without limitation, for advertising, marketing, publicity and promotional purposes, such as developing, manufacturing and marketing products and targeted advertisements using such Uploaded Information. You hereby waive any moral rights (or any similar rights in any jurisdiction) you may have in and to any of Your Upload Information, even if such material is altered or changed in a manner not agreeable to you."
Interesting point....I wonder if it would be possible to arrange for mass groups of people to retag collections of music with RIAA abuse and start playing it through last.fm.
Corrupt the data and abuse the RIAA at the same time!
they give you a place to upload music files.
then they decide to prosecute you for uploading music files?
This has a fishy smell all over it.
They're using their grammar skills there.
"That works for every other business except monopolies. "
Well except for the fact that four-letter organizations don't have a monopoly on content.
There are independents that create everything from music, to books, to games. One can't blame four-letter organizations for the public's lack of will to step outside the mainstream. Even if these organizations believed as you think they do, that doesn't in any way, shape, or form take away your right to enter into a reciprocal agreement with anyone you want to.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
A playlist is copyrighted information. Small and generally insignificant, but still copyrighted by the original creator.
If you select a number of unrelated tracks together into a playlist, then that data is copyrighted to yourself. Slap Last.fm, CBS & RIAA with copyright infringement notices if you were crazy enough to use Scrobbler.
You're not uploading music files unless you're a musician. Users are primarily 'uploading' the song play data that their media player generates. This is not entrapment.
http://transformativeworks.org/
I'd like to know why everyone is blindly accepting TechCrunch's story. They use unnamed sources and a screenshot of an email with all identifying information blacked out (geez, that could never be forged) as hard evidence that this happened. I'm not saying last.fm didn't release data, but in my book TechCrunch hasn't produced any credible evidence.
I'd also like to know why TechCrunch has been deleting all comments that attempt to discuss issues with their reporting on this story. Let the truth come out!
(1), (2) and (3) are irrelevant if the music is from a leaked album.
This goes back to the U2 album that popped up on torrent sites a couple of weeks before its official release.
If you scrobbled those tracks, you had them illegally. Period.
This ladies and gentlemen is why one always uses a fake id and a throw away email account when any Internet service requires login.
Who do you trust more... Michael Arrington, or Russ Garrett?
Russ' rebuttal is here. He's no PR flack... he's one of the founders and one of the original developers of Audioscrobbler.
It's very interesting that so many Slashdotters are taking the Techcrunch report at face value. Given Mr. Arrington's history with regard to responsible journalism, I'm with Russ on this one.
Arrington has last.fm in his sights for some reason. Somebody pointed out that TechCrunch takes advertising money from a last.fm competitor. I don't think it's as simple as that, but Arrington has an agenda here, and I don't think it's the noble pursuit of truth.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Why doesn't someone ask CBS and the RIAA if this happened?
They'll either say no, or no comment. Then we'll know.
Sorry, guy, but legal acquisition of U2's No Line on the Horizon WAS THE SOURCE OF THE LEAK.
Universal Australia flipped the buy switch two weeks early. A buyer leaked the MP3s. Universal Australia stopped buyers 2 hours later, but they couldn't revoke MP3s already sold.
However, since they were MP3s, there is no way to tell a legal customer from someone who pirated.
Does it really matter if it was CBS, the owner of last.fm, that did it, even though the people who run last.fm might not have done it if asked? They're still the same company, just a different level. If my boss decides to put some DRM in our new game that sniffs around on your machine and sends it back your data to our servers, do you really give a crap that the Jeff the leader coder thought it was a sucky idea?
This whole idea that they're not the same thing is a farce. It's just sleight of hand to get you to feel good about a company that you would never have given a chance if it was directly marketed by parent company Evil, Incorporated.
Moderators: Before moderating a comment Insightful/Informative, check to see if a child post has already refuted it.
Entrapment, as far as the legal definition is concerned, can only be committed by a government entity.
Guess what Last.fm ain't.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
last.fm is appropriately named - dead last.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My question is when will these Google-wannabe companies learn? Why do any of them need to connect names and IP addresses and store them in transmittable data? There is no technological advantage to storing IP address history.
I say Google-wannabe because Google is the most successful data farmer in the world. Information is power, and they realized it, and efficiently acted on it early.
If anybody is following the LEGAL issues about **AA lawsuits, you would notice they can only sue you for 'making [the music] available.' Hence, you were not in trouble until you posted a comment to Slashdot affirming that you uploaded the music at the same time that you downloaded it.
Giving any company a window into your day-to-day activities is very dangerous. The possibility of this kind of thing happening must run through the mind of any vaguely security-conscious person who considers their business model. Honestly, it's one of the reasons I never signed up.
That being said, however, there are a couple things to remember, though.
1) You give much more information to Google. If you have done ANYTHING illegal in the last couple years, Google could be used to help convict you.
Think about it. All of your searches, page views, chats and emails can be tied to a single account. You could probably establish where I've been every day with hour resolution just by examining the IP addresses I access email and search from, to say nothing of actually reading the contents.
2) Last.fm's innocence or guilt has no bearing on this issue
The problem is that this accusation plays perfectly to the fears a user might have about sending such detailed information to Last.fm. Whereas there are endless accusations about Google being in bed with the FBI and so forth, I'd imagine nearly every user of Last.fm considers the RIAA a credible threat. It's plausible that the RIAA would ask for the data, and it's plausible that a big company like CBS would be willing to side with the cartels on this one. They're being tried in the court of public opinion, and as far as I can see, they are losing.
Bottom line, if I had a bone to pick with Last.fm, this would be the perfect way to take them down.
3) This is only going to get worse
As the number of online services we use on a daily basis increases, our exposures are only going to multiply. Until we demand *true* anonymous use of internet resources (as distinguished from services that offer the illusion of privacy but are still subject to subpoenas, backroom deals, compromised network admins, etc), the misuse of our private information will only worsen.
http://www.last.fm/forum/21717/_/535934/_/9521312
Russ, a founder of last.fm and much more reliable than that National Enquirer-wannabe TechCrunch, has denied everything.
Showing nothing to hide, you'll see in that thread noone ever had a post deleted there, no matter how irate or against last.fm it was.
http://www.last.fm/forum/21717/_/535934/_/9522388
Starting there, and continuing reading a couple pages, you'll see the truth about TechCrunch. Every message at TC in response that was against Michael Arrington's (shoddy) reporting has been summarily deleted. Several screenshots were even posted of people's responses that were deleted.
Now, who is more trustworthy again, a site that allows open discussion, or one that whittles down the discussion to make it look like everyone agrees with them?
Anyone believing this drivel... I got some 419 e-mails for you.
Holy crap, guys, you mean that constantly archiving every minute detail of my life activities/social networks/purchase decisions on services that have no obligation to protect any semblance of my privacy and, in fact, end up owning the data that I am perpetually shoveling into them might be a bad idea???
More seriously, people need to start considering the ramifications of all the data they give away for free. It's not necessarily always a bad thing to do, but the corporations aren't going to be the ones to put user privacy above profit/obligation.
Well, i just deleted my Last.fm account. Anyone else?
You think the RIAA is going to let a silly little thing like possibly mistagged music stop it? Hasn't stopped them before, won't stop them next time.
And it is not about winning from the RIAA in a court case, it is about being able to afford to win. US legal system means you got to have the money to pay the lawyer up front and I am fairly sure the RIAA got more money then you.
Last.fm commited a major error in judgement and CBS showed its colors. Anyone who is smart is going to stop the service. No wait, anyone who is smart NEVER used the service. Giving your music data to a media company in bed with the RIAA? Exactly what part of that sounds like a good idea?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Last.fm also provides music for free. I only use last.fm in this capacity (like pandora). I only like last.fm better because it has a nice ad free client. So, to everyone who is saying "don't sign up for last.fm because they give away information". Not everyone uses last.fm in that way.
Also, trusting your information to the "cloud" will eventually doom our privacy.
So no computer can be used as evidence eh. Gosh, Enron would have loved that. No more goverment e-mails having to be kept for years and years.
You are silly.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Last.fm has the right to alter your user data to make it -look- like you were doing illegal things, then give that information to RIAA who use it to sue the pants off of each and every last.fm user. Brilliant! And you waive any rights you may have to any of your information.
Ahh -> drop down menu to the right. Settings-> data tab -> delete account.
Last.fm you have just been deleted.....
I've heard TechCrunch are full of shit.
You mean you're not already doing that?
... and cancelled your last.fm account the moment this story first surfaced a couple of months ago.
CBS can't be trusted; they own last.fm; so last.fm cannot be trusted. How hard is that to understand? Not their fault, but last.fm was "people" and now it's a "corporation" and as such it gets to break the laws of common human decency whenever it wants...
hello libre.fm just submitted my first gobbles :]
This seems to discredit the story:
http://www.last.fm/forum/21717/_/535934/5
IMO scrobbling an album on last.fm before it's been released is intrinsically risky. Anti-piracy agencies don't need any data to be handed to them - it's publicly visible on your profile. If they had reason to believe you had a bootleg copy of the new U2 album, they could doubtless subpoena last.fm for the IP address and other details corresponding to your profile.
I honestly thought Last.FM was legal. I thought they had worked out a deal with the big 5.
My god is there anything these media whores can't claim as their own.
Just keep not buying music and they'll eventually die off. Kind of like a public strike against record companies and all musicians who support them.
I think they should change the first line of their privacy policy: "We have a pretty simple privacy policy. We are reasonably sure this won't annoy anyone."
Jason-Palmer.com
This is the old "corporations are evil, duh" age-old mantra. It's like saying "tigers kill children, duh"; except it's not: corporations are human constructs and can be made to be better. If we accet things as they are, we're really accepting someone else's will -- and why? Why a song must be an asset? Why can't we celebrate a happy birthday without someone knocking to collect? What does "for a song" means nowadays?
PS and somewhat OT: Good thing I didn't subscribe to last.fm when music.download.com suddenly redirected there. I guess music.download.com was better... 8-/
After one year of use of this nice service, I feel forced to deactivate my account
That was easy. Oh, and BTW, piss on you, CBS.
TechCrunch sucks at Pandora's teat
Pandora is often the official "DJ" at TechCrunch clusterfucks
Da Blog
"TechCrunch are full of shit"
/.
http://blog.last.fm/2009/02/23/techcrunch-are-full-of-shit
Posted February 23rd. Get with the times,
However, since they were MP3s, there is no way to tell a legal customer from someone who pirated.
Except from checking to see if the pirate is one of the customers who managed to "buy" it early ?.
Maybe I am missing something.
I wasn't aware CBS owned last.fm . I don't trust corporations in general, but I like the way last.fm organizes stats on my listening via an amarok plugin. Are there any other sites that do something similar and have amarok plugins? If not, there should be. Perhaps amarok should consider doing something like that.
Loose lips lose spit.
If you put it on the internet, it is no longer private. You can wrap it in as much "security" as you want, circle it in good intentions, sprinkle it with best wishes, but as soon as you take YOUR info and throw it in the web-cesspool you should envision it on a display in a court room before pressing submit.
And if you clicked on any of the links, the RIAA now knows that you're a nerd and RIAA hater, hence probably a "pirate" (Arrr).
thegodmovie.com - watch it
> Maybe I am missing something.
It is possible that in Australia something analogous to the first-sale doctrine would enable the people who legally bought the MP3 files to resell or give them to other people? It's even likely that Universal Australia sold some of those MP3 files to Americans, who certainly have that right.
This still doesn't rule out blanket lawsuits using the claim that the number of legally sold MP3 files was extremely small (if this is even true).
i'm slightly disturbed (but not entirely). a fair portion of my fave tracks i've bought on old, crufty Physical Media but haven't bothered to rerip an already "pretty good" scene encode (i'm an -m s fan that refuses to break the habit). thankfully most aren't RIAA artists.
.. yet)
maybe someone wants to analyze the data that Last.FM outputs? (i didn't RTFM
If this actually works, the RIAA will, no doubt, try it again. I suggest a little pollution of this data set, to a) waste their time and b) discredit it as a whole, and c) for epic lulz.
What if 10 million people all listened to Cheech and Chong - Up In Smoke at 4:20 PM every day? Or say, Madonna songs that don't exist? Or '; DROP TABLE defendants;-- ?
All I have to do to get a new public IP address is power cycle my DSL modem (Qwest). I do this daily, sometimes several times a day. Doing P2P on a static IP is just plain stupid...
Ask Me About... The 80's!
Then anyone can make a lawsuit, and the minute they look like theyve lost, pull out and thus no loss.
Having a no loss, 100% win court is pure fascist crap.
Skewed systems never last, show me one that has > 300 yrs.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
with your logic one can go as far to say 'life is unsafe'. and everyone should be accepting of the fact that anyone they encounter in life can give out their information to anyone for any purpose etc.
but as you very well know, this is bullshit. there are social contracts in life. you expect your contractor not to tell all the entry and exit venues and possibilities to your house to local burglars. you expect your car mechanic not to tell local car thieves on how to best break into your car and steal your stereo. but more importantly, you expect these to withhold information from 3rd parties who are neither burglars or thieves, but may sell the information to anyone. not that riaa are not thieves or burglars though.
therefore your approach is bullshit. it may be internet, but there are social contracts and conventions. we dont register in sites to have our information peddled to anyone that may see fit to use them as they pleased. definitely, not the legalese exploiters and blackmailers, the riaa.
Read radical news here
what is made illegal by the laws can not be legalized or made binding by contracts in between two parties, even if two parties agree on the terms.
ie, in a remote example, you cant put a slavery clause to a contract, and when someone, knowingly or knowingly signs this contract, expect it to be binding or legal.
actually if you havent dropped a line in the contract saying 'if any of the terms in this contract is found to be unlawful, that will not invalidate any other legitimate term in the contract', then your ENTIRE contract goes pooof.
well, at least it is how it is in turkey anyway.
but i dont think it should be any different in u.s.. legal teams put ANYthing into contracts, not because they think they will hold - actually they know most terms will not hold in a court - but to SCARE off less legally apt people from suing them or pursuing their rights.
actually those people preparing such contracts should be sued, and penalized. there should be a penalty for trying to pass illegitimate clauses into a deal by writing them into contract. if you gotta prepare a contract, you gotta prepare it by the law.
Read radical news here
Let's get the headline's word order right:
CBS sent Last.fm user data to RIAA.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
1) CBS has denied this yesterday:
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/05/26/lastfm-denies-data-sharing-accusations-again/
âoeBoth CBS and the RIAA have already stated quite clearly, for the record, that absolutely no individual user or listener information was supplied to the RIAA by Last.fm or any division of CBS Corporation in the past, nor do we plan to do so in the future. The story posted by the Web site was based on an unnamed tipster. No inquiry was made to CBS or Last.fm about the veracity of the anonymous source. Those who consult such blogs should be aware of the standard by which such postings are sourced and published.â
2) The RIAA denied it back when it was originally a story:
http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/02/riaa-denies-rumors-that-lastfm-turned-over-data.ars
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."
3) Last.fm has denied this:
"Nobody at Last.fm knows anything about such a leak. We didn't when they last wrote an article, and we don't now. Any suggestion that we were complicit in transferring user data to any third party is incorrect."
"...transferring personally identifiable data from the UK to the US is against data protection laws. We wouldn't risk a lawsuit to pander to the RIAA's requests."
http://www.last.fm/forum/21717/_/535934/8#f9525592
"Last.fm has never given data linking IP addresses and scrobbles to any third party."
---------------
And 4) TechCrunch posts an article with anonymous sources claiming everything they say to be fact.
Every single party involved has denied it, all we have is the babblings of someone who has in the past been proven wrong on his attacks, and for some reason has a personal vendetta against last.fm.
To the people who were stupid enough to believe him, and deleted your accounts, good. You don't belong on the internet much less last.fm for believing everything you read as truth.
i dont want to lay on this site
better go to http://music.ellamey.com/