Deny This, Last.fm

[palish]

A careful read of the post turns up very little actual information. There’s indignation over the story, indignation over us not giving them a heads up, and a statement that it’s impossible for data to be sent to CBS without Garrett’s knowledge. They also say “Any suggestion that we were complicit in transferring user data to any third party is incorrect.”

We need more than that.

Isn't it the accuser's job to prove that someone is guilty, rather than the defendant's job to prove his innocence? TechCrunch is still publishing this based on only a couple sources. I realize that it is hard to get even a couple sources, but what if even one of those sources is fake? Since we can't know anything about them, we have no way of validating what TechCrunch is saying.

[dantheman]

This is pretty serious; if true, they just lost a lot of credibility. A mistake people can understand, lying or intentionally misleading people is burning bridges you can't easily get back... I gave the benefit of the doubt, if it turns out this is what they did i'm deleting my account...

[smhinsey]

I actually deleted mine when I first heard this story, then heard their denials, wasn't sure, and spent a period of time thinking "well, that was kind of dumb, look before you leap next time" because my account dated back to the audioscrobbler days and had a lot of data. Now I feel somewhat vindicated but even more disappointed.

[j2d2]

People said the same thing about yelp when they were caught suppressing negative reviews and that didn't seem to slow them down...

[smhinsey]

> We’d like to provide you with legal counsel at our cost.

You know, I don't always see eye to eye with Michael Arrington, but that is a remarkable offer, and I applaud his honorable deed. (I hope I don't end up eating my words after some sort of scandal.)

[sachinag]

IANAL, but there are a number of issues here:

1) Whistleblower statutes generally only apply when exposing criminal contract, not a civil liability (as with a violation of a company's Privacy Policy). 2) I wouldn't want to figure out which state or states' laws apply - you'd probably want counsel in at least DE, NY, and CA (and maybe DC as well) 3) Third party payments may weaken attorney-client privilege 4) The interests of TechCrunch and the fired employee may not necessarily be aligned, although that's hard to predict through what would ostensibly be years of litigation. 5) If it takes years, TechCrunch's appetite to continue to pay counsel could weaken

Look, I appreciate the sentiment, but I wouldn't take that offer if I were the fired employee. If Arrington wanted to help the guy, he'd give him a job.

[EDIT: Arrington is a lawyer, although non-practicing, so I'm going to hope that he's thought through all this and that I'm wrong on some of the facts. He's, at the very least, smart enough not to represent TC himself. A fool for a client and all that.]

[thorax]

Well, someone tipped off the media and got fired.

It is absolutely in TechCrunch's best interest to protect their sources or fewer of them will contact TechCrunch with tips because they're afraid of retribution.

If TC offers to protect them somewhat, then it helps mitigate the concern future whistle-blowers will have telling TechCrunch.

I think the other points in this thread about the law not protecting civil cases is interesting-- but I suspect TC is really just doing this to make future leak providers less fearful. "We'll stand behind you against your company if you give us the dirt."

[pg]

I wonder if this will get as many upvotes as Last.fm's linkbait denial.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=491750

I'm happy to say that I personally see an uparrow next to that item.

[swombat]

Well, 401 of us don't... But just because we voted it up doesn't mean we sided with last.fm. Sometimes, I vote things up because I think they are of interest. That reply was clearly of great interest - as is this article.

[sounddust]

Last.fm response:

http://www.last.fm/forum/21717/_/535934/_/9521312

[radu_floricica]

It would help if somewhere in there they actually said they didn't do it.

edit (from the comments):

>They'd still have to ask for the data linking scrobblers to IP addresses, which they have not done. Asking for that data would raise red flags on my end...

[wallflower]

I remember reading this comment on TC under the Fotolia $50-100M funding story yesterday:

"Is this the same exceptionally good source that told you that Last.fm handed user data over to the RIAA?"

Reply by Michael Arrington (@arrington) - May 22nd, 2009 at 12:40 pm PDT

last fm story was right. continues to be right.

[staticshock]

oddly enough, if RIAA sues everyone who scrobbled pre-release stuff on last.fm, they don't gain anything. it won't stop file sharing, it'll just stop scrobbling, leading to a less representative statistical sample of people's listening habits. that'll hurt last.fm and RIAA more than anyone else.

[danw]

What's the legality of last.fm transferring any data from it's UK servers to CBS in the US, under EU data protection?

[alexfarran]

Well in his response Russ Garret says its against data protection laws to transfer personally identifiable data.

[geirfreysson]

A lot of companies/founders aspire to be acquired. This is the downside of that. I have a lot of sympathy for Last.fm in this scenario.

[ableal]

Companies with VC money have to be acquired - by another company or the public (via IPO). The VCs must have their exit - their funds are not for long term investment.

[Dilpil]

I'm surprised he shows a screenshot of the email. Is a screenshot at all better than a verbal account, given how easy to fake the screenshot in question would be?

[trickjarrett]

What other option does he have? He's going to face criticisms and calls that he's lying whether he does or doesn't show a screencap of the email.

[knightinblue]

Wierdly enough, the original last.fm story also broke late friday night.

Is there a reason for the timing? Other than coincidence of course.

[jkincaid]

Think it's just coincidence. Fridays/weekends tend to have less breaking news so we have more time to do more involved posts.

[alexfarran]

Obviously to give the victim less opportunity to respond promptly to the slanderous story.

[ciscoriordan]

This is Memorial Day weekend too.

[geuis]

I am kind of ashamed that the company I work at is part of CBS Interactive. I like the people that I work with. At least our group is in no way affiliated with what's going on here.

[llimllib]

Is there any way to punish a company that violates its privacy agreement? In the hypothetical sense, not talking about this case in particular.

[froo]

Firing it's founders out of a large cannon into the sun gets my vote, in a hypothetical sense.

[zimbabwe]

How is the RIAA using this to find people who pirate music? Doesn't it look the same as normal music?

[samlittlewood]

I think the accusation was that they were looking for people who had scrobbled the as yet unreleased U2 album.

[danw]

The implications from requesting ip addresses appears to be attempting to find the original leak source, ie the earliest scrobbles not accountable to journalists, execs. (This is a guess, not something I know)

[tsally]

Bah, Tech Crunch did something I'm actually proud of.

[tvon]

> Last.fm didn’t hand user data over to the RIAA. According to our source, it was their parent company, CBS, that did it.

So the original story was was admittedly wrong?

[philh]

Wrong on a technicality, but not wrong enough. last.fm may not have directly handed anything over, but they unintentionally collaborated in handing it over, and then (I consider this the key point) they attempted to deny that the handover happened.

[chairface]

I believe the phrase he used was "materially correct". Which it was. User data that originated at last.fm was given to the RIAA. It's hard to say the original story was flat wrong.

[rabidsnail]

I wonder how easy it would be to prove that one of the users whose data was leaked was a citizen of the EU or the state of California, which have pretty strong data privacy laws if I'm not mistaken. I smell a lawsuit.

[danw]

Is there any clarifications of what exact data TC accuses of being sent? ie usernames, ip addresses?

[vaksel]

even in this article, techcrunch mentions twitter.

[kleevr]

tl;dr: too drunk to even care; so be it HN, I think I'm almost done here;

feels like a fair mention, so I'll push the point and a-void your convention.