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"Techcrunch posted a story on Friday claiming Last.fm 'may' have given the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America)\u00A0a stack of user data. &amp;quot;So?&amp;quot; you say. Well, the RIAA could technically detect which specific users had listened to unreleased tracks, with particular reference to the U2 upcoming album which has recently been leaked.\r\n\r\nIn response, a Last.fm spokesperson told Techcrunch that to their knowledge no data had been made available to the RIAA.\r\n\r\nRichard Jones , a co-founder, then\u00A0commented on the blog post saying:\r\nI\u2019m rather pissed off this article was published, except to say that this is utter nonsense and totally untrue. As far as I can tell, the author of this article got a \u2018tip\u2019 from one person and decided to make a story out of it. TechCrunch is full of shit, film at 11.\r\nRuss Garrett, a Last.fm systems architect also categorically denied the rumor in a Last.fm forum:\r\n\u201CI\u2019d like to issue a full and categorical denial of this.\u00A0We\u2019ve never had any request for such data by anyone, and if we did we wouldn\u2019t consent to it. Of course we work with the major labels and provide them with broad statistics, as we would with any other label, but we\u2019d never personally identify our users to a third party - that goes against everything we stand for. As far as I\u2019m concerned Techcrunch have made this whole story up.\u201D\r\nNow, Richard Jones has written an official blog post titled &amp;quot;Techcrunch are full of shit&amp;quot;. The post links to an Ars Technica article which claims even the\u00A0RIAA are unsure where the rumour stemmed from.\r\n\r\nIn the post, Jones goes on to explain:\r\nWhen you signup to Last.fm and scrobble what you listen to, you are trusting us with your listening data.\u00A0We take this very seriously. The old-timers on Last.fm who\u2019ve been with us since the early days can attest to this \u2013 we\u2019ve always been very open and transparent about how your data is used. This hasn\u2019t changed. We never share personally identifiable data such as email and IP addresses. The only type of data we make available to labels and artists, other than what you see on the site, is aggregate data of listeners and number of plays.\r\nThe metrics gathered by Last.fm could quite easily give the RIAA the data required to pinpoint specific users - however in this case, the Techcrunch story and Last.fm's denials are all we have to go on. Even if the data were to have been handed over, the RIAA themselves have already made clear they would not sue individuals but instead focus on seeking help from the ISP's themselves - therefore we (as individuals) are never likely to know about it anyway.\u00A0\r\n\r\nThe degree of anger from the Last.fm camp is understandable and for their sakes, I hope: a) they are telling the truth and b) if they aren't, that we never ever know about it as it would likely to lead to one beautiful startup, lost."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/2009/02/23/lastfm-officially-respond-techcrunch-calls-full-shit/>