We’ve long known that Big Brother was watching us. Big Brother, no matter what else you think of him, is no slacker. Therefore it should be no surprise that he’s listening to you too.
In a prior post we discussed last.fm, with its scrobbling ways. A gentle social butterfly of an outfit, yes? Promoting harmony, peace, and musical freedom world-wide, you say?
Maybe not. A look into the history of last.fm, recent and not so recent, shows us a bit of drama here and there. Of course you know, being of the music world cognoscenti, that last.fm was bought by US media monster CBS. There was a lot of flap about it at the time. The big question was, why? I mean they payed a reported $280 million. That’s a bunch, even in the olden golden days of 2007. Some said they wanted the young audience. Some said they wanted the Web-2.0-ness. But some said they wanted the scrobbler. Try to remember that. It’s important. We’ll come back to it. Here’s an anchor for your modern-day short attention span. Richard Jones, one of the last.fm founders, said on their blog, in reference to the buyout:
Do please, if you retain nothing else, hold on to that list line.
Then there was the protest in wich last.fm did not join. Many players in internet radio, including MTV and Pandora joined the Day of Silence protesting Internet royalty rates. Last.fm was criticized. TechCrunch was vocal, but not the only voice. Word was the deep pockets of CBS allowed them to give no hoots about cost, and that the prospect of competition dying off saddened them not at all. But the said they did it for their listeners. Yes, self-sacrificing, noble, and loyal to their public, they decided to bear the cost and soldier bravely on. There was a last.fm blog post about it, in which the boldest print said:
Right. Do you remember about the importance of the scrobbler? Good. It will be needed a bit later on. Also try to retain the thought that TechCrunch and last.fm are not big fans each of the other.
Now we get to the fun part, at last. On Friday the 20th of February, TechCrunch released a salvo titled: Did last.fm just hand over user listening data to the riaa? Why would they do that, you ask? It seems there was a leak of an unreleased U2 album called No Line on the Horizon. This was no fault of last.fm, and no one says so. But the rumor says CBS-owned last.fm released the user data to the RIAA because of the mystic powers of the scrobbler to record listening activity. This power would be of great use to Brother. If the listener listened to unlawful-to-own-at-this-time music, and if they had the scrobbler going, they would be caught in the act. And last.fm says, well, they say several things.
Which leads us to the best part, in which last.fm defender R. Jones, writing on the last.fm blog, states:
Yes! Let us savor the moment. It isn’t every day that something interesting happens in the social site world.
But are they? Full of shit, that is. TechCrunch, defending against the defense, says it never published the statement as anything but a rumor. (note supporting question mark in original TechCrunch post) But the reported responses from last.fm and others don’t quash the controversy. They say: (they is techcrunch)
It took time for all this to happen, of course. Friday night the flap began. Monday morning the famous “full of shit” response took place. TechCrunch initially reported no response from the RIAA. Arstechnica reported that “RIAA spokesperson Cara Duckworth told Ars on Saturday ‘It’s not true’”. Of course it isn’t. Is it?
Now it’s time for that memory dump I told you was on the way. That’s right. Just let it go. Actually, the concept that techcrunch and last.fm weren’t all that cordial was pretty well used up in the preceding exchange, so if you lost that it’s ok. But now we need to work with:
The last.fm privacy policy is plenty squishy. You should read it. For that matter, we all should read all those agreements that we digitally sign. And if you did read the last.fm one, you would find the following squishy parts:
There’s lots more. Basically, last.fm says “We’re great guys; we would never let you down.” But they also say the above squishy things re third parties and such. It makes one wonder. And then there’s the obvious question. Would they hand over the info, if a legal authority requested it? Of course they would.
Legally-Compelled Disclosures: We believe in privacy and therefore will take all reasonable measures to ensure that your personally identifiable information remains private. However, in the event that we are required to disclose personally identifiable information by a court, the police or other law enforcement bodies for their investigations, regulation or other governmental authority we will make such a disclosure without being in violation of this Policy.
Wouldn’t you? You can bet that I would narc you out in a second if that’s what it took to save my considerable assets.
The scrobbler, remember? It’s all about the scrobbler. It knows what you listen to on your computer. Always. Whether you are online or not. Consider that, when people began deleting their last.fm accounts in panic, last.fm kindly didn’t allow them to. Staffer Jonty Wareing reports that in an effort to prevent people from losing their scrobbling history, the “job” (chron job?) that would remove them forever was “stopped”. Well, of course it was. Last.fm cares about its users. They told us so, back up there near the top of the page, in bold. They would never give up their personal information. Except, of course, as lined out in that squishy privacy policy of theirs. But I leave it up to you. Trust them if you wish. I myself rejoice that I never downloaded the scrobbler, not that I have any illegal tracks on my drive. The thought of those digital fingers feeling around my private data bits just offends me.
Here are some quotes from users offended, confused, or possibly inspired by the F.O.S incident. Many people added their pitiful cries to the babble. Here are several outstanding blurbs. I don’t care, really, what they think, but I like the sound.
On Digg user cmder said: “God I hate TechCrunch”
Also on Digg user d3sapar3cid said: “Why not just think before you download a U2 album…none of them have ever been good. Why would they start to be now?”
And one more digger, user damm said: “every time you scrobble an unreleased track … god kills a kitten.” (Nice reference to Cliché Kitty)
Now what would you expect last.fm users to say? Right, not much worth mentioning. Yeh, dat rite, blah. But then there was KatsuMooMooo (I swear). He, she, or whatever said: (note: You don’t have to read the blurb, if you are intimidated by large areas of plain text without pictures or shiny things. Just look at it and I will explain the marvelous achievement.)
“thank you very much for the public clarifications. the paranoia started to sink in for many people, including myself, of what might happen were this article true, but it seemed to go against the way you run your company, and against the quality of the work you’ve been doing (great) — given how personal some people feel about their music data, i’d say continuing to be vocal about your transparency is a good idea, and i imagine you are going to need to continuously prove to people somehow that you are beyond the grip of record label control (despite your parent company, etc) and would not succumb to such pressure, in a similar way to how facebook must prove (hopefully) that it defends its user’s data and rights. good luck and keep up the excellent work!”
Wow. I’m impressed. No wasting of the shift key to achieve caps, and a mighty one-hundred-and-twenty-word wandering sentence. That’s last.fm right there.
To give TechCrunch users a fair spin, some of them said stuff too.
Never Again said:
There actually IS NO BIG DEAL !
Just never use
- LastFM
- Facebook
- Google’s properties
- Lala
and any other of these monopolist data-collecting Websites again
Then Ryan said “Please last.fm say it is not so!”, to which Veve N. replied “they HAVE to say,that it is like you said 
(“, which leads me to say “Oh, God, no more, please”!
Ok, only a little more.
Joseph Stevens said:
‘ ”We’d never personally identify our users to a third party”
In Last.Fm we trust. ‘
So there you go. We have spoken.
Perhaps you get the idea that no one is very sure what last.fm did or didn’t do. Perhaps you believe them when they squish out loud. I think I’ll pass on the scrobbler. You may have a higher tolerance for intrusion. In which case, happy scrobbling to you.
Joe Brooks
/MusicPlayer.me Contributor
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