While it might have been several days ago that the blogosphere was being given a taste of yet another uproar by TechCrunch and Last.fm; I find the underlying issue of what happens between them disturbingly abandoned by the much-heated discussion that takes place afterwards. That’s why I decided to write this post.

It all began when TechCrunch published an article by Erick Schonfeld where they make public the rumor that Last.fm just handed over their users’ music listening data to the RIAA. Basically, they stated that Last.fm did basically just that, – albeit unknowingly, to help RIAA target some million users who have downloaded and played illegal music in their computer.

Now for those of you who are not familiar with Last.fm, they are a social network owned by none other than CBS that makes a good use of their music recommendation engine. When a user listens to a song ( and install Last.fm software in his/her computer ), the software will “scrobble” the song and send the data to the website, – telling it that such and such user played this song. This will in turn lead to a powerful music recommendation service because “you shift the song’s importance on the site. It’ll be recommended to different people, because you’ve listened to it. It’ll move up our music charts and maybe more people will hear it because you thought it was good.”

It’s important to pause here for a moment and not get ourselves get drowned in the details. To get into the background of what actually happened, – you can read the TechCrunch post here, Last.fm’s response here -, and a good neutral, third party post about it from Ars Technica here. As you would be able to see, a lot of the follow-ups / comments in the said posts tend to revolve around two big defensive fronts. Most of them were busy trying to define who is right and who is wrong, with some sporadic comments about other issues altogether, – like the legality of downloaded songs and its implications to worldwide music sales, and so on. This in itself is not wrong as it helps million of people learn about issues they otherwise might have not learned, but I feel that it masks the biggest, underlying issue of these all : responsible journalism and what it should have said.

It is worrying that TechCrunch based their news story on an uncorroborated rumor. Yes, the writer of the post tried to contact Last.fm and received an unsatisfying response which was not a categorical denial. But when it couldn’t be proven that Last.fm didn’t do it, – surely they can’t state as a fact that Last.fm did it ? For me, it’s a classic case of “my word against your word”, which is a silly thing to publish because it’s not a factual truth yet.

Granted, TechCrunch has maintained an understandable stance that they presented the story for what it is : a rumor. Schonfeld mentioned in his update of the post that “Despite my attempts to corroborate it and the subsequent detail I’ve been able to gather, I still don’t have enough information to determine whether it is absolutely true. But I still don’t have enough information to determine that it is absolutely false either. What I do have are a lot of unanswered questions about how exactly Last.fm shares user data with the record industry.”

Fair enough. But still it seems to me that one can’t just publish every rumor he finds and call it journalism. It has to have a certain standard and, yes, ethical codes if you will ; where journalism can thrive and serve the general public responsibly. It is really saddening when many that take part in the uproar caused by the post fail to see this basic premise. Instead of petty bickering about who’s wrong or right, – don’t you think that we need to have a better standard of journalism ? I rest my case.

As I write this post, one of my colleagues told me that DRM is not popular anymore. In a lot of ways, he’s right. Which is precisely why it bothered me to no end when I read a piece in Slashdot where someone found that DRM technology is still embedded in Windows 7. Further research on this topic lead me to a more worrying finding. Vista, with its wider user base, also contains a DRM system called the Protected Media Path. It will try to stop DRM-restricted content from playing while unsigned software is running in order to prevent the unsigned software from accessing the content, – sometimes even causing the computer to crash under some certain scenarios.

Like a lot of other things in life, DRM technology was created for a good cause. Basically, it is there to protect any kind of intellectual properties from being pirated for someone else’s gain. Taken from Wikipedia, it refers to any technology that attempt to control use of digital media by preventing access, copying or conversion to other formats by end users. It ranges from something as simple as a watermark on an image file to a protected audio file in a certain format like AAC or WMA.

In the recent times, it has been proven again and again that the implementation of DRM technologies more often than not resulted in unwanted consequences. In 2005, Sony BMG introduced new DRM technology which installed DRM software on users’ computers without clearly notifying the user or requiring confirmation. The plan backfired in the form of outraged customers and even class actions against Sony when it was later found that the installed software included a rootkit, which created a severe security vulnerability others could exploit. More recently, last year Spore became the most pirated game in 2008 just because it used a DRM technology called Securom.

Nowadays, ( correct me if I’m wrong on this ) the practice on using DRM technologies is frowned upon by most of everyday computer users. Steve Jobs himself has called on the music industry to eliminate DRM in an open letter titled Thoughts on Music. Since then, iTunes has started to sell DRM-free 256 kbit/s (up from 128 kbit/s) AAC encoded music from EMI.

This brings us to the big issue : Why did Microsoft still chose to include DRM in its Windows 7 ? There are two possible answers here : first, that they have some certain agreements with other software publishers to protect their Windows-based software from being tinkered on; or second, that it was an honest mistake by the Slashdot writer, – that his problem was somehow started by some other issue other than DRM ( as suggested by some of the post’s comments ). For their own benefits, I do hope that it’s the second answer.

If you are someone who use computer extensively like me to work, let’s hope that this will end soon.  But if you are someone who is planning to publish your work with DRM, I urge you to think carefully before you proceed.  Do the research, and decide whether it will be good for your business or not.