CBS handed over USER DATA (including IP addresses) to the RIAA

Russ said:
Fewmanchu said:
Last.fm is in deep trouble and the best they can come up with is a weak post on their own forum? Sorry, but that's not good enough. The utter lack of communication skills has been a plague to this formerly great company...

A weak post? Ask me any question and I will answer it directly.

My point was that in this dangerous situation a post on a forum isn't gonna do much to stop this bad PR from spreading quickly around the globe. Sorry if I didn't make that clear.

as a former subscriber (i subscribed for 6 months while you were indie), i'm troubled about risdual subscriber information, ie: billing details, that remains on record which could be linked to my scrobbling account?

i have always worried about the correlation between information and industry supposed guilt. this is just a prime example of what happens. im sure no one would care that i use my PC as a jukebox at parties, linking ipods to it, scrobbling that data. if my dvd player broadcast every movie i borrowed, im sure i'd be screwed over by over zealous IP lawyers, trying to imply fictious restrictions, soon enough. (pitty, i'm looking for a training contract with IP firms :/ )

if i delete my account, what data do you retain about me, my account, and my former subscription? (as the only Qt app i use, i'd quite like get it out of memory)

the data protection act certainly wont allow you to pass data on to third parties, or possibly to unrelated divisions without express permission. i do not mind writing in person for answers under a s.7 request.

HodgeStar said:
Russ said:
* Last.fm has never given data linking IP addresses and scrobbles to CBS (who, by the way, we don't consider a third party, but who do have to uphold our privacy policy). Pardon me. According to §17 (formerly §15) of your privacy policy CBS must still be considered a third party in regard to user information hold by last.fm. there is nothing in the policy stating that this has changed. Count this as a direct question, please. thanks

As I understand it (and I am not a lawyer), that only requires notification if Last.fm was acquired, which we were two years ago.

Either way, in this case it doesn't matter because we never gave CBS the data :).

mawt said:
as a former subscriber (i subscribed for 6 months while you were indie), i'm troubled about risdual subscriber information, ie: billing details, that remains on record which could be linked to my scrobbling account?

We use PayPal (and we used HSBC in the past) as payment providers. In both cases, we do not retain any billing details.


if i delete my account, what data do you retain about me, my account, and my former subscription? (as the only Qt app i use, i'd quite like get it out of memory)

the data protection act certainly wont allow you to pass data on to third parties, or possibly to unrelated divisions without express permission. i do not mind writing in person for answers under a s.7 request.

If you delete your account, we remove all your user account data from the live DB (although it may remain in backups for a short while). Your anonymized scrobbling data remains (but not connected to an IP address).

A DPA section 7 request will result in us telling you that the only personally identifying information we store is the real name and date of birth, which are both visible in your settings page.

.. when Last FM was bought by their parent company, the Last FM heads were convinced it wasn't going to affect them at all.

I don't think Last FM's crime here is deception insomuch as it's gullibility. At any rate, I'm watching this one -- Last FM better really think about how they respond to this, and choose their words very carefully.

Although, to play devil's advocate for a second - I work in the health industry. If we had a parent company, and they asked us to provide a data set to be used for internal purposes, you would have to assume that they would be using the information for legal purposes (within the guidelines of what HIPAA regulations allow), unless you had a significant reason to suspect otherwise.

I consider this over now. The Burden of Proof has fallen to TechCrunch's side since they:
1. haven't provided evidence that can actually be validated, and instead have expected us to just trust them.
2. have lost all of the trust they once had by deleting any comments that don't support their view.
3. are making extraordinary claims.

I find it nice that Last.fm staff has chosen to talk directly to it's users instead of using PR companies to issue formal response. At least for me it adds more credibility to Last.fm on this.

Babs_05 said:
bunder2009 said:
I hate U2, but for all we know, (if this is true) anyone who downloaded a song before the release date is going to end up with a lawsuit. Could we then in-turn, sue lastfm/CBS for leaking our IP's?That's alarmist. Even if people were faced with lawsuits, it could never be proved. Remember, we can change tags to anything we want. Also, the album was on MySpace (USA) prior to release, and many of us use Universal Scrobbler. And also, it was on Spotify at the same time. It's all crock.

I agree that a lawsuit like that wouldn't hold up in court, but as the RIAA has shown in the past, it doesn't take a credible lawsuit to make your life hell.

(Now, on a sidenote, if I were U2, I would be happy for every play I get, considering how badly they've sucked for the last fifteen years or so.)

Ironically enough, albums leaking out in advance can create a ton of buzz for the upcoming release. (Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine is probably one of the most classic examples of this.)

Russ said:
Lunarsight said:
.. when Last FM was bought by their parent company, the Last FM heads were convinced it wasn't going to affect them at all.
And honestly, it really hadn't until people started making false accusations about us giving our data away.

I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here, but regardless - I wouldn't trust CBS any further than you can throw them.

Just because they have you on a longer leash now doesn't mean it's always going to be that way.

I'm happy with the reply I got.

Back to loving last.fm

[spam]

norz said:
With Techcrunch censoring the comments, I lost any faith I could have in this website. If they deal with constructive criticism by deleting and filtering the comments, how can they be trusted?
With no evidence produced, this looks like a campaign of fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Since following this story, I haven't seen any signs of last.fm censoring the discussions on their site.
Plus I've known Last.fm and its team for a long time now, and have more trust in the them than in a blogger who censors comments on his blog.

Exactly my sentiments