Unsourced rumors that Last.fm handed over user data to the RIAA have resurfaced thanks to renewed and revised accusations against Last.fm's parent company, CBS. We reached out to the targets of the rumor to see if they had official comment. The RIAA, Last.fm, and CBS vehemently deny the claims, in broad terms, with one related party speaking on the condition of anonymity going so far as to call the story an instance of "irresponsible journalism."

It all started in February when TechCrunch published information from an unnamed "source" claiming that Last.fm had handed over individual user data to the RIAA after U2's then-unreleased album leaked onto the Internet. It was argued that this showed the RIAA how many users (and their IP addresses) had downloaded copies of the music and listened to it. The accusations sparked some panic among the Last.fm community. Last.fm quickly issued a "full and categorical denial" of the accusations, and the RIAA told Ars that it hadn't requested the data, and didn't even know where the rumor came from in the first place.

Some months later, Tech Crunch returned to the topic with a new rumor based on yet another unnamed source who is said to be "very close to Last.fm."

The claims now have morphed from Last.fm secreting the data to the RIAA, to CBS doing so. Or, maybe, CBS didn't send it to the RIAA, maybe they sent it to a record label. Or, perhaps, CBS was intending to send it, but never actually did.

As a result, Last.fm's Russ Garrett has issued a strongly worded denial on Last.fm's forums. "That particular data is controlled tightly inside Last.fm and is only stored for a short period of time. Any request for such data would have to be approved by myself first. The suggestion that CBS's 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," Garrett said. "It really seems like someone is trying to slander us here." In another post, Garrett clarified that Last.fm has never given data linking IPs to scrobbles to any third party or to CBS, for that matter.

CBS is obviously frustrated by the airtime this story has gotten and has issued its own statement on the matter to Ars Technica. "[A]bsolutely no individual user or listener information was supplied to the RIAA by Last.fm or any division of CBS Corporation in the past, nor do we plan to do so in the future," CBS told Ars. When we asked if perhaps CBS had transferred the data to a music label or other third party, CBS said, "We never handed over user info to the music labels or anyone else."

And, once again, the RIAA confirmed that it played no part in this drama: "We've made no such request for this information," RIAA spokesperson Cara Duckworth told us.

This all leaves us in the same place we were in February—with a slew of accusations, a handful of denials, and zero evidence.

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