CBS handed over USER DATA (including IP addresses) to the RIAA

Now, TechCrunch's journalism is pretty shitty but after Russ up there everyone seemed to comment on a communal 'fuck yeah, pwnt'
I don't see how a denial is pwning anyone... there's no real way to do that unless you force tech crunch to reveal their evidence for what it truly is in a court of law or something to that effect, since they didn't present any real evidence in the first place

Protip: Don't hand out anything to anyone in future.

norz said:
HairMetalAddict said:
During reloads watching the comments come in on that latest trash article, I noticed a peculiar thing.... 4-5 messages that were against what he wrote had disappeared almost as fast as they were added.

Responses there are getting deleted if they don't fit his agenda.

Seeing they were getting deleted, I manage to catch 1 as an example before I reloaded and, well, it was gone.

Just an example of the kind of responses that have been speed-deleted by that... someone.


Mike Shaw:

“Was there no data request by CBS in February? If there was one, was data transmitted to CBS? Did CBS pass it on to the RIAA or one or more music labels?”

- Their answer: transferring personally identifiable data (i.e. IP addresses) from the UK to the US is against data protection laws. We wouldn’t risk a lawsuit to pander to the RIAA’s requests.
(...)
I do hope they sue you. At the least, techcrunch is now the equivalent of the National Enquirer.

I'll note here that last.fm deleted noone's messages in this thread, no matter how irrational or over-the-top they were. Unlike this... someone (nice word for him, Russ, hehe).
I took the liberty to repost Mike's post here: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/23/another-blanket-denial-by-lastfm/#comment-2763573 I did the same here - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/23/another-blanket-denial-by-lastfm/#comment-2763532

and it would appear both have been removed! haha

... looks like once they don't like you, you can't post again. The number of comments keeps rising but the comments on view stay the same. :O

1:59am http://i41.tinypic.com/wu0wa0.png


2:17am http://i43.tinypic.com/2rqmvtl.png


i guess that's my answer!

Wow techcrunch really know how to undermine themselves further with all that comment deletion.

This is really looking like a bizarre vendetta and nothing more, kinda sad they keep having to waste last.fm staff time posting denials.

Also techcrunch keep asking for definite proof...how the heck do you prove you didn't do something in this case, since there would be no evidence if it never happened.

the only thing sadder than michael deleting comments is lastfm users deleting accounts.


Michael Arrington (@arrington) - May 23rd, 2009 at 6:23 pm PDT

last.fm has turned off all communication with us. That was their choice, not ours. all we have at this point are emails and conversations from last.fm employees, which collaborate our story. For some reason Last.fm won’t publicly attack CBS on this.

@metabrew then we have nothing more to say to each other.
about 2 hours ago from web in reply to metabrew

kinda sounds like your choice, mike.

I think we're writing it right now! LOL

This has been more interesting than expected.

Of course last.fm are not going to admit to this having happened. If they did, their site would be dead and they'd be out of jobs. It comes down to self-preservation now.

Btw, how do you know that libre.fm is to be trusted? What's to say that the entire site isn't a RIAA/MediaSentry honeypot operation?

And slashdot has now picked up this story.

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/23/2149255

This is turning bad fast. I have to wonder if Techcrunch really believes what they're saying, as it seems at this point it's all a bunch of paranoid crap with no strong evidence.

I added the events related to censoring the comments on Techcrunch's Wikipedia page:

"On an article called 'Another Blanket Denial By Last.fm'[9], existing comments critizing the article have been deleted, and new comments have been filtered, as noted in the related thread on the Last.fm forum[10]. In reaction to this censorship, some users made screen captures[11][12] to save the comments before they were deleted."

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=TechCrunch&diff=291935186&oldid=290461115

i'm interested to see how this all plays out. if any of it's true, i will no longer be using this service.

With Techcrunch censoring the comments, I lost any faith I could have in this website. If they deal with constructive criticism by deleting and filtering the comments, how can they be trusted?
With no evidence produced, this looks like a campaign of fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Since following this story, I haven't seen any signs of last.fm censoring the discussions on their site.
Plus I've known Last.fm and its team for a long time now, and have more trust in the them than in a blogger who censors comments on his blog.