Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch stirred up a hornet’s nest over the weekend with a post suggesting that Last.fm had handed over user listener data to the RIAA – an allegation that prompted Last.fm founder Richard Jones to come out with guns blazing in the story comments, saying:

“I’m rather pissed off this article was published, except to say that this is utter nonsense and totally untrue. As far as I can tell, the author of this article got a ‘tip’ from one person and decided to make a story out of it. TechCrunch is full of shit, film at 11.”

Robert Andrews at paidContent reports on the other refutations issued by a CBS spokesman and Last.fm staff, saying:

“If true, the instance would be a PR disaster for Last.fm and, despite the denials, the episode already appears to have hurt the site over the weekend. Another London developer,  Jonty Wareing posted on TechCrunch: “What annoys me is that people are deleting accounts and losing their entire scrobbling history based on shoddy journalism. This hurts those people who have spent years carefully collecting their data far more than last.fm as a whole. We have now stopped the job that removes users marked for deletion, so if you did delete your account in haste and want your scrobbles back, please contact our support team.” If true, staff would have revolted, too: Wareing posted on Last.fm’s forum: “You could also expect most of the Last.fm staff to walk out of the office door and never return.”“

Commenting on Last.fm’s response, Paul Carr voiced what no doubt many in the industry are thinking:

“I know they’re doing lots individually, but lack of a a firm public statement from CBS or anything on the Last blog is ridiculous“

Elsewhere on the web:

Jeremiah Owyang conducted a straw poll to see how many people have deleted their Facebook accounts after last week’s TOS issues. Read the comments and linked Facebook break-up stories to check the temperature of social network users actively concerned with digital rights.

Tameka Kee at paidContent muses on the potential backlash for Twitter now that Second Life’s hype has fizzled.

Abigail Corfan points to an interesting low-tech exercise in audience engagement which demonstrates that technology needn’t be the linchpin of social media in the arts.