Deny This, Last.fm | Hacker News Reader

Deny This, Last.fm

techcrunch.com

312 pointsjasonlbaptiste68 comments

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.

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...

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.

Yeah I did the same thing with my really old account, and just last week made a new account…

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

> 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.)

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.]

[Sorry, my original reply was so incoherent that I wanted to delete it before it caused any trouble, I couldn't even find a salvageable edit.]

I'm not a lawyer either, but if I were in this guy's position, I would make sure I was as well informed as I could be and take advice wherever I could get it. If it was free, all the better. I would seek out a second opinion if it started to look like multi-year litigation or something scary.

To address your opinions on what constitutes help, I am not really sure how it bears on the matter.

You miss my point: if he takes Arrington's free lawyer, there's no guarantee that those conversations are privileged as you have a third party picking up the tab. I'm aware of no caselaw where the press has paid for a source's legal fees.

Look, I'm crazy-ass conservative when it comes to legal matters. It's a bias of mine. But I would not take a "free" lawyer knowing that there was a possibility that what I said to the lawyer might get out.

You certainly raise a valid point. I found info on how the Minnesota state bar views the matter here: http://www.courts.state.mn.us/lprb/05bbarts/bb0205.html

It's not that I miss the import of what you're saying, it's that I am suggesting that making a sound determination of the ethics of the situation is not an insurmountable obstacle. If it turns out that it's a bad idea, that's okay. Not every good act plays out as we intend.

I think it is worth reiterating your point that Arrington is a lawyer, and that said it seems fair to presume he's acting in good faith with knowledge of these issues.

[edited for clarity]

Surely you could structure it in a way to avoid this, if the third party picking up the tab wanted to. A contract for reimbursal, so the ex employee pays the lawyer and gets money back from TC? There would be no implicit or explicit relationship between TC and the lawyer, just two two-way relationships.

there's no guarantee that those conversations are privileged as you have a third party picking up the tab

It depends if the lawyer is representing you or not. If a lawyer isn't representing you but is simply engaging in a friendly conversation, sure, he can probably repeat whatever you tell him; but if he's representing you, privilege applies regardless of who is paying his fees. In other words, if someone else is responsible for paying your lawyer's fees, make sure you ask your lawyer the simple question "are you representing me?"

(There's also another legal principle involved here, which is, roughly speaking, that privilege attaches to the expectation of privilege -- so a reputable lawyer will avoid repeating anything which he thinks you might have expected would be privileged, whether you were legally correct or not.)

And of course, the above is not legal advice, I am not a lawyer, rules vary based on jurisdiction, etc.

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."

I agree, it isn't pure charity that motivates them, but nonetheless, it's a real gesture.

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.

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.

I thought upvoting should be that way: one upvotes submissions one deems interesting to the HN community as a whole - not to pick sites on an argument. Did I miss something?

Am I misreading something or is that exactly what swombat just said?

Yes, good point.

I voted it up and did side with last.fm (at the time), because I never dreamt they could issue a denial like that and actually be lying, in spirit if not in letter. God am I naive sometimes.

Last.fm response:

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

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...

Yes, I agree. Both TC and last.fm are speaking in non-commital terms that would allow them to easily back out of anything they said. It would be nice if last.fm just said "Neither last.fm nor CBS has ever transmitted any data to the RIAA which was not already publicly available" or something like that.

Scrobbing data is publicly available, so even that has holes.

I understand why my previous post would have seemed non-committal (especially when you pull out certain soundbites), so I've denied it again in stronger terms:

http://www.last.fm/forum/21717/_/535934/_/9525592

Great; I think that is exactly the kind of direct statement everyone was waiting to hear.

I now feel pretty much the same way about the issue as I did 3 months ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=489805 , although I suppose it's not just about Erick Schonfeld anymore.

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.

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.

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

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

Unless things have changed in the last couple of years that is only true if the US entity has not agreed to certain "safe harbor" provisions that essentially means they guarantees to treat the data in the same way as if they were subject to EU law.

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.

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.

That's totally true. I guess the lesson is that it matters who acquires you. If you can't go for the public, cross your fingers and hope your parent company won't do anything evil.

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?

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.

Exactly, so why bother showing the email at all?

Well, for one thing, it lends more credibility to the story.

But to go on your initial point, why bother writing a follow up piece at all? Because that's what it takes to make a blog that people want to read.

As far as they know, the source has been reliable in the past. The source provided them with a good story, they published it and the companies in question danced a jig to make TC out to appear like a bunch of liars.

If the story is correct, last.fm providing the information to CBS who then turned it over to the RIAA is essentially the same thing as last.fm giving the information to the RIAA.

If its not correct, people will call Michael out on it, no big deal - it's what gets readers.

It's the same situation that makes abominations like Perez Hilton exist... people thrive on drama. Drama drives traffic, traffic creates revenue.

I have no problem with him writing the follow up story. Heck, I'm glad he wrote it, as I am not one of those who automatically hate Michael Arrington.

Me either, I just think the "bash arrington" meme seems to go too far at times, but to be fair - your points implied dislike for arrington (given the negative tone) even if you don't

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

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

This is Memorial Day weekend too.

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

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

What makes this story slanderous? Do you have proof that it is so?

If not, you're just trolling and you should know better.

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.

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

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

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

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

Ah! I guess I missed that.

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)

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

> 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?

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.

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.

I agree in a sane conversation, but it just seems like the sort of thing that TC would jump all over.

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.

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

even in this article, techcrunch mentions twitter.

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.

My bad, the Nausea hit the night before.

It's funny, I wasn't crazy about the fade-out feature (Though, I did find it witty as hell.), but after pulling a ctrl-a on the above... well I'm actually a huge fan of it these days! ;)

I'm sorry, does anybody at all think Arrington has any credibility left? If he broke the story that the sky is blue I'd be suspicious of it.

He actually has pretty good credibility. You may not like him. Many people don't, for various reasons, though I'm not among them...I think he's usually extremely nice to the folks he ought to be nice to: small, early stage, startups; and harder on the folks that are able to defend themselves, like well-funded startups and Google and Facebook. Sure, he's made a few douche moves over the years, like laying the blame for the financial crisis on a bunch of kids who went to Greece for vacation and made a music video, for example. But Arrington and TC aren't in the habit of just making stuff up.

I tend to view TC as the National Enquirer of tech, and possessing roughly the same credibility. It mainly reports overblown startup gossip and AFAICT tends to be about as accurate as you'd expect such information to be (e.g., the approximately 9.5x10^53 companies which have been reported by TC in "late stage talks" to acquire Twitter).

Also: having known a couple people involved in stories reported by TC, I believe quite honestly that they do just "make stuff up". There's no other way to get from the actual facts to the reported "story".

Well as the saying goes, there's three sides to every story. Yours, Mine and the truth

So just because you know someone involved in some stories, doesn't necessarily mean you're getting the whole truth either.

Arrington can grate me a lot of the time, some of his stories are overblown, a lot can be fairly interesting and he knows when to eat humble pie as required.

You may not like the man, but he writes what people want and he hits home runs more often than he strikes out.

"So just because you know someone involved in some stories, doesn't necessarily mean you're getting the whole truth either."

Honestly? No, the stuff I'm talking about does not consist of events where people could reasonably report different accounts. I have seen TC literally fabricate things out of thin air with absolutely no basis in reality whatsoever.

The only thing about it that's amusing at all is watching, say, the founder of a company find out from TC that he's allegedly been conducting acquisition talks. Because, you know, their "sources" (pixies and unicorns, I believe) are so much better at knowing that than the person who's allegedly doing it...

Sorry to go grammar police on the writer of the original email (see screenshot), but its "their" not "there" when talking about their "pov"

Also, glad to see Michael fix it in the quote, although then technically the quote is wrong :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com