Last.FM/CBS/RIAA

I don't understand how they (RIAA) would be able to take any action against people listening to songs.. How can they differentiate between pirated and purchased songs?

I think some people list their own music library on last.fm and that is who they would go after maybe. Although, it is proof of nothing anyway. I'm a member of last.fm and if they gave my IP Address to the RIAA they are going to be seeing a nasty email from me. I'm in Canada and they have broken Canadian privacy laws by doing this. But RIAA means nothing up here so maybe it only applies to U.S. users of last.fm.

I'm not sure what they can prove by submitting data to RIAA. Sure, a gross amount of people have thousands of songs in their playlist, but you can't really go after each and every one of them thinking they are pirating music; some people actually legitimately have that many songs. My roommate, for example, has over 3,000 songs invested in iTune, while I have something like 6,000 songs on my play list. Admittedly, a lot of them are simply downloaded (mostly C/J-Pop because of the prohibitive importing cost), but you can't just go down the list and say: Bob has over 9,000 songs; he's a likely candidate for being a pirate. Let's ring him up and try to bust his ass.

I can understand maybe pre-release songs (where the songs are definitely illegal), but not completely since last.fm scrobbles based on metadata tags (right?), and those tags are modifiable so they wouldn't really prove anything.

They still can't tell if songs are "legal or illegal" from last.fm data.

If I'm not mistaken last.fm also collects hash data off those files to group them together, it might be possible to see whose played the same pirated file if they know what the source is... but I'm almost positive something like that would be junked in court.

As far as I can tell it looks like it's a good way to flag people you think are likely to pirate and watch them (since IPs are included in the upload).

I guess I just don't get how someone can copyright a recording of organic movements.... and a combination of words that have been used before, and notes being struck in different sequences and turned into binary for one file type, and translated to another binary for another file type. I suppose I'm missing the picture, but the RIAA seems to be unethical and simply a terrible money-grubbing organization.

/rant

Yea. I can't quite figure it out either. Whoever would be crazy enough to spend months writing lyrics and songs and work on the promotions and mixing the music when portions of it has all been done before, and more importantly, when they can be had for free? Oh wait, except if they don't make them, then you can't download them for "free."

Don't get me wrong; I'm no fan of RIAA, but I do recognize the need to protect an artist's intellectual rights.

This is a real breach of trust. Last.fm say share your music library, which I never did, and then they turn your info over to the RIAA as a possible pirate for sharing your music library that they offered as a service. Sounds like entrapment to me.

The last.fm guys are screaming at the top of their lungs denying this. And they're very clearly not saying some kind of homogenized corporatized statement.

TechCrunch has also been caught deleting critical or negative comments on that story, which last.fm is pretty clearly not doing.

I'm believing last.fm on this one, at this point.

Last.fm privacy policy:

"Certain third parties may have access to your data (which may include personal information, but not your email contact information) via our API and webservices or arrangements with our business partners. These people may use this information for their own purposes, which may be either commercial or non-commercial in nature and may include targeted advertising or direct marketing. These third parties may be based in the U.K. or elsewhere in the world."

"Your pseudonymous listening habit data will be available to other Last.fm users for non-commercial use and to third parties via our API for their own commercial and/or non-commercial purposes. This statistical information is used to help third parties understand the likes and dislikes of music fans on Last.fm."

"We log certain information concerning the listening, skipping and music-sharing activities of users and other activities whilst they use the Website, and we may match such information with personally identifiable information concerning such users. For example, it is possible for us to know which records you listen to, which you skip, which you recommend to other users and which you add to your record collection. However, information related to your listening, skipping and music-sharing activities may be viewed by all other users (who may include other organisations or representatives of other organisations who have registered as Last.fm users) in conjunction with your Last.fm username and by third parties who have access to this information via Last.fm’s API and webservices, as further explained in this Policy.

Please note that we do log and use statistical information in the aggregate. For example, we know the number of users who skip a particular song. From this information we are able to compile statistics in the form of percentages of all users (i.e. 29% of our users skipped song XYZ). We can of course compare the skipping statistics of one song to those of another song. We are also able to perform more sophisticated statistical operations based on the information collected. For example, we can determine the raw number (and associated percentages) of users who listen to one particular song that also listen to other particular songs. From this information, we are able to determine which songs are “neighbours” in terms of overall listener taste and we can see which genres of music tend to be neighbours. As a service, we may supply certain aggregate statistical information to record labels and artists that allow us to stream their music on Last.fm in order to help them understand the likes and dislikes of music listeners."



Regarding your IP, it says they collect the information but it doesn't say if they share the information or not
"We collect data regarding the users of Last.fm, including: (i) The Internet Protocol (IP) address of the user’s computer. This may or may not be associated with a particular Internet Service Provider (ISP); (ii) The referring URL, if any; (iii) The browser software identification (i.e. the brand and version of your browser software)."





there's no proof thus far that Last.fm has released information that could link you to the data they collect.

What the ****, I just went back and reread the article, and it doesn't even make sense. Even if what they say on the article was true (which came from a source asking another source to confirm some sort of statement, yes, very reliable here), CBS is the one who went behind Last.FM and submitted the data to RIAA. Again, if this article is indeed reliable, how is the article title condescending Last.FM instead of CBS?

edit: Wow, I read a little bit further. So this has been ongoing since February? They are backing up an anonymous source with another anonymous source, only this time a tertiary source because his knowledge comes from yet another anonymous source?

I understand conspiracy theory, but wow this is pushing it. It's amazing what can be passed as news nowadays.