Be Excellent To Each Other

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 04000.html

Good lord.

I knew there was a reason I never used it.

Edit: What is the point of last.fm anyway? What does it do?

Well, that's thatthen. I'll give a couple of days for people to prove this wrong and if not I'll delete my account. Can't be arsed with this sort of bother.

Yep, that was also challenged in this new article. Claims that the parent company CBS were the ones who passed the data on.

Obviously they shouldn't have passed the data on at all but what can they do with the data though? Would they be able to tell the difference between an mp3 that had been ripped from a CD, downloaded or played direct from a disc?

This doesn't make much sense. It seems too big and controversial for TechCrunch to be making it up or not trust their source. On the other hand, this is a very series breach of UK and EU data privacy laws - and for what? It doesn't seem like the data would be particulalry useful at identifying copyright violations, and wouldn't be admissable on court either.

It all seems fishy to me.

Only reason I can think of would for market research, but you can see leaderboards for most played bands anyway without nicking personal data.

If it's them seeing what's been downloaded and what's not then I'd better delete my account then....

I don't see how they can tell. The last.fm client uploads the metadata, and if it does a file hash they could have a stab at guessing if it was downloaded or ripped yourself but not to any legal standard of proof. I suppose all ripping is technically illegal under UK law but we've never seen a conviction and we never will, particularly one founded on evidence that was itself illegally obtained.

It's baffling.

Last.fm exists for you to supply your usage data to it and that's all.

The purpose of the handing over of data was to see who had been listening to a particular track prior to its actual release, with the aim of tracking down whoever leaked it. 'Twas a U2 track, I believe.

Thing is, you can name a track anything you like and Last.fm will create a page for it.

I used it to get a friend's history showing he had been watching hardcore illegal porn:

Absolutely, it's a nonsense plan.