It seems that Last.fm parent company CBS did indeed hand over it’s users’ listening information to the RIAA. That means all your data on what you listened to and when was given to a corporation whose sole purpose (it seems) is to sure everyone out of existence in a vain attempt to keep an antiquated business model alive.
This leak of information is a breach of the company’s privacy policies. I recommend you as users raise hell to make sure this kind of mess does not happen again.
And yes, this is one more reason why everyone should fear putting personal information on the internet and assuming it’s safe (it never is. NEVER).
Sorry to reblog this late, but I didn’t come across more information about it until now. Techcrunch has no evidence for their claim, except yet more quoting of anonymous sources. They censor comments on their posts that contradict their claims. In this case, Last.fm explicitly denied the claim, and they’ve denied it again. Given that the general consensus among the people that I respect is that Michael Arrington is a jerk and that Techcrunch’s quality of reporting is mediocre at best, I’m going to believe Last.fm. I don’t read Techcrunch. Neither should you. And taking the claims that they make at face value, and spreading them without examining them critically, does a disservice to companies like Last.fm, who are being smeared by Techcrunch solely for the purpose of driving more traffic to Techcrunch’s site.
(And yes, we need to be careful with our data online. But we shouldn’t succumb to confirmation bias either.)
I agree Arrington can be a big jerk (everyone has that capacity, by the way). I don’t agree that I’m spreading these claims without examining them critically. It’s entirely possible that CBS (not Last.fm, but it’s parent company) could be handing over customer’s personal information to appease a consortium who controls media (which CBS is a purveyor of). While there is no definitive proof for the release of data, there is none against it either. It’s always better to err on the side of caution and skeptisim in these free services we use than to trust them blindly. Last.fm was just one name that came up recently.
Really, the point I was driving home was not so much about Last.fm, but that we divulge far too much of our personal information to free services provided by companies whose sole purpose is to make their executives (and possibly employees, depending on how nice the company is) rich.
And, to show I’m not just picking on Last.fm, here are a bunch of other services to which I fear of:
- Gmail (Yes, I’m guilty for putting way too much personal info here)
- Tumblr (Again, way too guilty here)
The cloud scares the crap out of me.
