Welcome to Nowhere

All those songs you’ve been downloading off bearshare and the like? Yeah, you might not want to be sharing them with last.fm. Unfortunately, if you download any of their software with which to listen to that music, that’s exactly what you’re doing; telling last.fm and users what you’re listening to so they can, based on that, recommend other things you might be willing to listen to. Oh yeah, and you’re telling the RIAA. Apparently, last.fm’s started handing information over to the RIAA about tracks folks listen to on their local machines. The linked article only mentions a U2 album that was leaked over bittorrent, and a possibility the RIAA may be looking for information about other such unreleased tracks, but this is me we’re talking about. And I are realist. Anyone seen this article? You should. They drag enough people into court on little to no proof. And now, last.fm/CBS is giving them a hand with it. It’s hard enough, minus last.fm’s assistance, to prove the target of a lawsuit is even involved in file sharing (I have CD’s on my shelf, but their contents are on my external HD, for example). But, as that article indicates, the difficulty of proving such a thing hasn’t necessarily prevented the RIAA from saying they did. Thanks, last.fm, for doing us that huge favour. Really. Now you can do us another even larger favour and die in a grease fire.