(antiMusic) TechCrunch.com issued a report late Friday based on a second hand allegation from a reported insider at Last.fm's parent company that accused the site of reporting user data to the RIAA. Here is part of the report, plus a link to the full article that includes the follow up denials from Last.fm: That leaked U2 album is causing all sorts of trouble. The unreleased album, which is due out on March 3, found its way onto BitTorrent and was downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. That, apparently, sent music industry lawyers over at the Recording Industry Association of America into a fit.
As a result, word is going around that the RIAA asked social music service Last.fm for data about its user's listening habits to find people with unreleased tracks on their computers. And Last.fm, which is owned by CBS, actually handed the data over to the RIAA. According to a tip we received: "I heard from an irate friend who works at CBS that last.fm recently provided the RIAA with a giant dump of user data to track down people who are scrobbling unreleased tracks." - more on this story
