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When you have a scoop, you publish it. You don't think: "oh well, it's getting late on Friday, let's wait until Monday when every other news media outlet has a

When you have a scoop, you publish it. You don't think: "oh well, it's getting late on Friday, let's wait until Monday when every other news media outlet has a chance to cover this as well". So the "Friday allegation", to me, is completely misguided. The denials have been pretty suspicious actually, at least the way TechCrunch and the Guardian report them. Over the years, I got used to reading between the lines. When a famous athlete says "the allegations about my doping in magazine XYZ are completely false", it's not a denial. It's a carefully crafted statement to avoid any legal problems. If the athlete says "I never took drug XYZ", then that's a much stronger statement. In geek terms, the first statement is a "nop". The second one is either true or false (0 or 1).

jhancock 17y ago
If you want to be considered legit, when you have a scoop, you investigate before considering publication.
- cdibona 17y ago
  TC seems to post a fair number of stories that are "too good to check"
froo 17y ago
Well the thing that got me was there was an assertion in the email that the last.fm employee was concerned about how not handing over the data would affect their rates - which sounded like the data could possibly be have handed directly to one of the record companies in question, which then found its way into the hands of the RIAA. So, in that respect, CBS's simple denial stating that they never handed data over to the RIAA is accurate - because they worded it that way, that doesn't mean that they didn't know that that the data ended up in the hands of the RIAA. So to visualise it, it would look like. last.fm > cbs > record label > riaa That way, all of the denials by last.fm and CBS would be "true" and yet, the TC story would still be fundamentally "accurate". (EDIT - This is just speculation on my part from all of the information I've read. I'd have to side with TC because I doubt TC would publish several stories on the matter, months apart, if there wasn't even a hint of truth to the matter. I'd definitely trust the credibility of Arrington anyday over that of your average PR representative.)
kyro 17y ago
Sure, you publish a scoop when it's about 'OMG, COULD THIS BE A SNEAK PEEK OF GOOGLE NUCLEAR?!' You don't publish a scoop that could potentially cause quite a bit of damage to a company's image, resulting in a potential loss of business. That's not to say TC/last.fm are right or wrong, but you've got to, for at least a second, think about the implications of what you're going to publish, regardless of wanting to be the first to cover a story.
daleharvey 17y ago
russ's denial was pretty categorical * Last.fm has never given data linking IP addresses and scrobbles to any third party. * Last.fm has never given data linking IP addresses and scrobbles to CBS (who, by the way, we don't consider a third party, but who do have to uphold our privacy policy). considering he hadnt been asked to respond before the article was published, and posted that within a few hours of the article going live, i mean, what more can you ask for?

jhancock 17y ago

If you want to be considered legit, when you have a scoop, you investigate before considering publication.

cdibona 17y ago
TC seems to post a fair number of stories that are "too good to check"

froo 17y ago

Well the thing that got me was there was an assertion in the email that the last.fm employee was concerned about how not handing over the data would affect their rates - which sounded like the data could possibly be have handed directly to one of the record companies in question, which then found its way into the hands of the RIAA. So, in that respect, CBS's simple denial stating that they never handed data over to the RIAA is accurate - because they worded it that way, that doesn't mean that they didn't know that that the data ended up in the hands of the RIAA. So to visualise it, it would look like. last.fm > cbs > record label > riaa That way, all of the denials by last.fm and CBS would be "true" and yet, the TC story would still be fundamentally "accurate". (EDIT - This is just speculation on my part from all of the information I've read. I'd have to side with TC because I doubt TC would publish several stories on the matter, months apart, if there wasn't even a hint of truth to the matter. I'd definitely trust the credibility of Arrington anyday over that of your average PR representative.)

kyro 17y ago

Sure, you publish a scoop when it's about 'OMG, COULD THIS BE A SNEAK PEEK OF GOOGLE NUCLEAR?!' You don't publish a scoop that could potentially cause quite a bit of damage to a company's image, resulting in a potential loss of business. That's not to say TC/last.fm are right or wrong, but you've got to, for at least a second, think about the implications of what you're going to publish, regardless of wanting to be the first to cover a story.

daleharvey 17y ago

russ's denial was pretty categorical * Last.fm has never given data linking IP addresses and scrobbles to any third party. * Last.fm has never given data linking IP addresses and scrobbles to CBS (who, by the way, we don't consider a third party, but who do have to uphold our privacy policy). considering he hadnt been asked to respond before the article was published, and posted that within a few hours of the article going live, i mean, what more can you ask for?