New 'Last.fm Gave Data To RIAA' Claims 'Still Nonsense'
This story was written by Robert Andrews.
Back in February, TechCrunch co-editor Erick Schonfeld's story that Last.fm handed member data to the litigous Recording Industry Association of America drew a fierce denial and this response from the social music site: "TechCrunch is full of shit". Now Michael Arrington himself, clearly stung, is having another go - and it's getting even uglier
Arrington says his site's original source, employed at Last.fm parent CBS (NYSE: CBS), has been sacked for the original leak, while a second source "very close to Last.fm" says it was CBS and not the music site that handed the data. The implication is that CBS misled Last.fm in to giving data for internal use that was then passed up to the record business association. "We believe CBS lied to us," Arrington writes.
Again, it's resulted in one or two accounts being deleted, but Last.fm architect Russ Garrett is reprising the "full of shit" line in a forum post: "That particular data is controlled tightly inside Last.fm ... any request for such data would have to be approved by myself first. The suggestion that CBS' ops team provided this data is just not possible - Last.fm operates as a separate entity and their operations staff do not have access to our system ... It really seems like someone is trying to slander us here." It hasn't stopped there, however - the whole, sordid episode is playing out in a playground Twitter argument between Arrington and co-founder Richard Jones, too; read it below...
By Robert Andrews