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Last.fm Strongly Denies Sharing Data With RIAA
bonch writes "Last.fm and CBS vehemently deny sharing any user data with the RIAA, contrary to previous reports. One anonymous party calls it 'irresponsible journalism,' and Last.fm goes so far as to suggest it is a target of slander. Carla Duckworth of the RIAA confirmed, 'We've made no such request for this information.'"
"Thanks for the good idea!"
This all leaves us in the same place we were in Februaryâ"with a slew of accusations, a handful of denials, and zero evidence.
That's what happens when you believe rumors.
I wasn't so sure before, but when the RIAA denies even making the request, well, now I'm paranoid. Methinks [they] doth protest too much.
Like the company is going to come right out and tell people.... "we fuckin sold you out to make a quick buck! hahahahaha!"
Is it logical that the RIAA would want that data? Yup. Would CBS really cooperate with them? Yup.
I have no problem believing they really did it. And have no problem believing that they would LIE about it. Both are really in their best intrests.
From TechCrunch? I refuse to believe that.
What's a Duckworth?
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do.
Even consider "sharing" info with the Recording Arse of America?
Stuff the RIArseA & others, I don't buy retail music anymore, haven't for about 6 years. I have an extensive vinyl, tape & CD library - some in triplicate, i.e. the same album on tape, vinyl & CD (yep, I'm an idiot) but I stopped buying new when the labels started taking legal action against their own customers.
I do still buy 2nd hand at flea markets & boot sales, but that's by the by.
Stuff 'em I say, tossers they are, to a man.
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
...Industrial Espionage?
Many users may not trust Last.fm after this, regardless of its validity. And we know that many more people have no trust for the RIAA. All things considered, this may have driven much traffic to other similar sites (even with the Streisand Effect) thus providing other sites a chance to increase revenue.
While this may not be the most likely cause, it is something to consider and contemplate, while making sure one doesn't go too far down the tinfoil hat road.
For further reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_espionage .
"Yeah, but by we know yo mama gives EVERYBODY root privilege..." -jpetts (208163)
Most of the Guards at Auschwitz said they treated prisoners with respect and care...
Godwin called, something about a "rule"...
What about the rule? He's in perfect accordance with it.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
The RIAA says that they didn't request the data, but note that there is no denial that they received it.
What rules? Geez, you slashdot Nazis are ruining everything.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
I'm an ex-Slashdot employee, ex-astronaut, and ex-president of the Hair Club for Men, and two weeks ago CmdrTaco gave Microsoft the posting history along with IPs, email addresses, favorite colors, your FICO score, and if you like pouring hot grits down your pants for the Bing search engine.
I'm anonymous, on the Internet, and have no actually proof, so it has to be 100% true! Now is the time to over-react and proclaim you are quitting Slashdot.
The reason this story is so hurtful to them is because the ONLY thing keeping your privacy safe is them deciding whether or not to violate it.
They do not deny having all of this information, or being owned by someone you dont want to have this information. Whether or not they've yet to breach that tiny little divide is irrelevant as long as the potential is there.
... I can't help but to wonder if the RIAA is scraping the data and Last.fm is letting it slide.
With the RIAA backing them up? No way they would lie, I know because they promised me a pony.
The love of good Whiskey,Woman,Weed is all i need.
"Share"! As if Last.fm would give such valuable data away for free.
May the Maths Be with you!
Whether you know it or not, you have just invoked Godwin's Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law). Showing you this rule is the only reason I'm posting: Read and figure out why,
A wise man once said, "Where is my other quotation mark?
So, who do I trust more:
1. The RIAA PR person, the CBS PR person, and the Last.fm PR person.
-- or --
2. A completely unverifiable source who may have an axe to grind or other nefarious motive for completely fabricating the story.
Frankly, it's a tough call.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
But at least the trolls are running on time.
What type of user data were they supposedly passing onto the RIAA?
You know who else liked making rules....Hitler!!
The windshield he tried to fly through cost me $300 to replace, though......
Comment removed based on user account deletion
... They claim that they can't distinguish between streamed music and music from your collection. That would make sense unless they planned to rat out users with illegal collections. It seems a lot of trouble to go through and makes little sense to me...
Can the RIAA ever be said to have "confirmed" anything when we pretty much assume that everything they say is a lie?
What would be more believable? A company pissing away their only source of revenue, or jews spreading lies to drive traffic to their filthy blog?
Not sure. But you know what would be unbelievable? Any Slashdot article that wasn't filled with pitifully ignorant bigotry.
"But this one goes to 11!"
You failed your Perception check for humor. May have been a critical miss, in fact.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
GGP is actually commenting on a different story on the front page, yet his comment made this thread. Seems to be happening often, lately. His post would be on-topic in here
Pandora's main competition for mindshare is Last.FM. There's also a bit of a US/EU rivalry, with Pandora so strongly identified with the US and, with the Valley in particular, while Last.FM came out of a Euro milieu. I think I've noticed a very pro-Pandora coverage pattern at TechCrunch. Lots of the "Web 2 - Me Too" AdSense spam sites, sorry, gadget/tech blogs, take cues from TechCrunch, and among the iPhone-toting, US-centric crowd, Pandora is a darling.
Before I'd believe anything TechCrunch said about Last.FM, I'd want to know more about the personal and financial connections between the people running TechCrunch and the people running Pandora.
Personally, I've tried Pandora every years and it fails, epically, to even know about many of the artists I am interested in hearing. Plus, Pandora's Flash interface is just aggravating, user-hostile, and screams hipster-designer-marketroid-douchbags-in-control.
Da Blog
last.fm is an English company, with its servers located in London. Complying to such a request for user data would be illegal under UK data protection laws, as best as I can tell.
Not saying that proves much either way, but for what it's worth I've always found last.fm fairly open and engaged with its users. I rather doubt they would knowingly give away user's data, especially given its illegality.
Which is why the RIAA would ask the CBS for the info. If such a situation were true.
I have a bad taste in my mouth after finding out that lastfm (corporate whore) was owned or someways affiliated with cbs. I'll stick with soma.fm spank you very much.
Um, WHAT? Even for an AC, this has to be the most bizarre post I've seen. (I'm sure others have seen worse :)
I guess you haven't noticed the influx of spam? That message isn't a real message, is some computer generated spam, probably some sort of megahal like bot that combs slashdot and tries to post comments to see what kind of score it can get. Having played with megahal quite a bit, I'd say that it actually probably isn't megahal itself as megahal would have done a better job of forming sentences, but someone elses attempt to do the same thing. Probably some PhD student or something using other peoples resources to do his research, lazy bastage. He'll make a perfect professor though, since about the only reason they are 'professors' is so they can get paid to do research they want rather than thier jobs, and get cheap ass labor from the students, which you and I pay for in taxes.
Every story posted will have multiple messages like this if you notice them before they drop below your viewing threshold.
Frankly I'm surprised you are the first person I've seen mention it.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Skinny basement virgins and retarded inbred morons count too so you are covered either way feces for brains.
Thanks for pointing that out; this is the first time I've personally noticed it, but I guess that's because I tend to keep my threshold pretty high as you mentioned.... And I'm usually late to start reading stories (using google reader now).. I do share your surprise that none of the slashdotters who are more active than myself haven't mentioned it before though!
Fuck CBS
Fuck Last.fm
... and (quoting Frank Zappa): FUCK WARNER BROS!
Maybe incipient twittery could enable a person to be easily swayed by a "source" that has twice failed to produce anything beyond stern denials. I'd love to see this story go somewhere else because, if true, it would be juicy. But so far *nobody* else has managed to verify anything of what TechCrunch has claimed. Given the leakage quotient in SV, the lack of confirmation weighs heavily against the veracity of the story. It's making me file this TechCrunch "exclusive" in the same slushpile that I use for anything Apple-related from Jim Goldman and reflects poorly on their other "exclusives".
Da Blog
'I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinski.' You can say you didn't until you're blue in the face but if we believe you did it.... Look at it this way, remember when you said we were guilty of illegal file sharing and we said we didn't do it? Maybe you see my point, now?
they aren't really even similar services at all
I know they use different approaches to personalisation. Last uses collaborative filtering, a "bottom-up" approach, whereas Pandora uses parametrised affinity allocations, a "top-down" approach. But for their users, both services promote personalised music selection, adaptive and iterative improvement of personalisation, streaming, and social networking between affinity groups.
How are they *not* similar?
Da Blog