back to article Last.fm denies data handover to RIAA

Last.fm has hit out at an uncorroborated report that alleged the music streaming website passed user data over to the Recording Industry Ass. of America (RIAA). The CBS-owned outfit responded angrily to a report posted late Friday by TechCrunch that cited an unsourced rumour, which claimed Last.fm handed over a “giant dump of …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    Spotify

    According to the spotify blog the U2 album will be on there from Sunday, in advance of the release date. The app also allows scrobbling to Last.fm. As far as I can tell this is all entirely legal, so why are the RIAA so incensed?

  2. g e

    Incensed?

    ... because they can be. They feel 'entitled'.

    Would Last.fm know if some employee had dumped the DB and sold it out the back door to the MAFIAA ?

  3. Thomas Bottrill
    Stop

    RIAA

    "El Reg is also awaiting the official word from the RIAA"

    Ars Technica reported that the RIAA have said that they didn't even send this request: http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/02/riaa-denies-rumors-that-lastfm-turned-over-data.ars

  4. doctorflam
    Unhappy

    Idiots

    Whenever I hear about TechCrunch, I'm instantly reminded of Ted Dziuba's brilliant description of them as "the Special Olympics of tech media".

    Last.fm is a great service, and has worked hard to earn a name for itself since the Audioscrobbler days. It's a real shame to think users have abandoned it for no reason, all because some dickwad "journalist" (I mean, FAIList) would rather cash in a lunch ticket at someone else's expense, rather than be arsed to do his research. What a complete cod.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    flawed

    The scrobbling data isn't a valid proof that that is exactly what the user was listening, so even if the RIAA has the data they can't proof squat.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    TechCrunch "full of shit"?

    shurely shome mishtake?

  7. dervheid
    Joke

    Scrobbling?

    WTF kind of made-up non word is that?

    It does kind of create a mental image of someone rummaging around in the proverbial, up to their elbows in it, looking for "owt for nowt".

    Probably quite appropriate.

  8. Jared Earle
    Thumb Down

    @AC

    "why are the RIAA so incensed?"

    Um ... they're not. Someone made the whole thing up.

    That's the point.

  9. Paul Solecki

    Silly?

    Last.fm only records tracks that are scrobbled. Just because they appear on last.fm doesn't mean someone actually has them on their computer so it's rather silly anyways.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    New U2 Album

    Hey thanks for the headsup - downloading via Torrent as we speak.

  11. AC
    Thumb Down

    @dervheid

    It's the term last.fm use for keeping track of what songs you play ...

    It is indeed made up, all words at some point are made up ...

    Or would you rather "people send tag data to their user account for a song to last.fm" instead of "people scrobbled a song on last.fm"?

  12. The Avangelist
    Thumb Up

    I have been waiting

    two years for this to happen! It was going to eventually wasn't it! I was thinking this only yesterday.

    I get a lot of Promo's through the post for reviewing in magazines and blogs and it only occurred to me recently that I should probably disable lasty scrobbler when listening to these records over and over again to write a review.

    I guess a possible solution would be for A&R / Labels / PR to send out these CD's with additional meta data on the files.

    And when does it count as 'not officially released'? What about the millions of people worldwide who buy and sell imports? It is perfectly legal to own a Japanese Re-issue of album A or even a standard issue of album A which is not due for general release in country B for some time.

    Will be a tough cookie to crack me thinks but I am all ears to the options.

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