Gordon in the morning: Keep quiet, friends of Tulisa

Gordon reports that Tulisa has learned the hard way:

Tulisa gags her new friends

I think this is meant to be a blowjob joke. It doesn't work, does it?

We're asked to believe that Tulisa is going to make any new friend sign a legal document to stop them sharing:

She has decided to gag any newcomers to her inner circle – friends and colleagues as well as boyfriends – to stop anything like the sex tape leaking out again.

This sounds somewhere between unlikely and unworkable - at what point would you judge someone has moved from acquaintance to intimate? If she gets on with the man who comes to fix her boiler, would the lawyer get a call at the point where she decides to break out the good biscuits?

Or would the signing happen before a social arrangement - a lunch or a quick drink? A pre-sup rather than a prenup?

Gordon doesn't seem to realise, if the story is true, it merely reinforces how he and his trade have so undermined people's privacy that a young woman no longer feels able to trust anyone, not even her own judgement.

And how does he know of this supposed attempt to block leaks coming from camp Contostavlos?

A source said...

Unclear if the source had signed a document forbidding them from revealing details of Tulisa's life.

Spotify claim to be "concerned" by their own tracking service

Turns out Spotify (along with Hulu and others) have been using an especially nasty piece of tracking software to keep tabs on their customers. Wired reported:

Researchers at U.C. Berkeley have discovered that some of the net’s most popular sites are using a tracking service that can’t be evaded — even when users block cookies, turn off storage in Flash, or use browsers’ “incognito” functions.

The service, called KISSmetrics, is used by sites to track the number of visitors, what the visitors do on the site, and where they come to the site from — and the company says it does a more comprehensive job than its competitors such as Google Analytics.

Yes, more comprehensive because it stuck an undeletable file on your computer, rendering your ability to opt out of tracking invalid.

Spotify issued this in response to the original story:

Spotify, another KISSmetrics customer named in the report, said that it was concerned by the story:

“We take the privacy of our users incredibly seriously and are concerned by this report,” a spokeswoman said by e-mail. “As a result, we have taken immediate action in suspending our use of KISSmetrics whilst the situation is investigated."

The question, surely, is why Spotify didn't investigate how KISSMetrics worked before baking it into its product and distributing it across all its customers. The Spotify response is a bit like a baker muttering "we're surprised to discover adding Acme Arsenic to our cakes and cookies is killing people, we'll stop doing that for the time being to look into it."

Madonna's unruly bush crew upset neighbours

Madonna has been trying to protect her privacy by surrounding one of her many houses with bushes. That, in itself, seems odd - it's like the sun deciding it's shy, or the moon electing to pop up a Chinese screen to give it some 'me time'.

Still, the attempt to create an enchanted forest behind which she can be 'private' has got her in the papers - almost as if the very act of having hundreds of trees driven to your house screams "look at me! Look! Look at me being private!"

Her neighbours are not amused, says the Times Of India, which read it in the Daily Express, who heard it from Star magazine:

They are reportedly being loud, strewing and relieving themselves on other people’s property.

Strewing? They're strewing themselves about? I'm not even sure that I can picture what that would be like.

You have to wonder, though, with grounds large enough for 500 trees, why the gardeners couldn't find part of Madonna's own place to piss in. Or to have a strew.

Napster start to get all sharing with their data

Following on from Best Buy's purchase of Napster last year, the music-sharing service has decided that it'll shovel all its subscriber's personal data to Best Buy. The only way to avoid this is by canceling your account before February 17th. Turning a dodgy move into a squalid one, Napster are simply going to assume you're happy with a consumer electronics store knowing everything about if you remain one of their customers.

Music industry crashes the wedding

You really have to tip your hat to the music royalty business - the companies which exist to collect cash really don't have any boundaries at all. The Spanish General Society of Authors and Editors have just been caught sneaking a private detective into a wedding to film the party because they believed that the venue owners might have owed a few quid.

The video was used in a prosecution of the Salón de Bodas, with SGAE actually lying and claiming it had been shot by a guest, rather than a grubby gumshoe who had violated the party. It's not clear if the copyright industry body had come up with an elaborate explanation as to how the video would have come into their hands - perhaps a rogue uncle might have sent it in, angered at the unlicensed fun.

The result has been a large fine for privacy breaches to the SGAE. So, lesson learned, right?

Other wedding videos have been taken surreptitiously by SGAE investigators to pursue venues for not paying copyright fees. Pedro Farre, the director of the SGAE, said: “Using private detectives to investigate fraud is common. We will carry on doing it.”

Remember, these are guys who are quick to insist the law must be upheld. Although not, it seems, when it doesn't fit with their own interests.

Leave me alone, wails James Blunt

Poor James Blunt: he doesn't like people thinking about him:

"I've never read tabloid magazines, but I think it's a pretty unhealthy practice," he told inthenews.co.uk.

"You and I are not dogs sniffing each other, I'm not interested in your private life, nor should I be, and nor should you be in mine.

"We're hopefully intelligent human beings, who can talk about, discuss and maybe even achieve much greater things than learning about who you're shagging.

"So, for me, I've always stepped away from that and now that I'm in the public eye a bit more, I've just tried to ignore it."

Poor James. If he did read the magazines, he'd know that people are interested in who Petra Nemcova is shagging; not who he's shagging.

What is curious, though, is why - if James thinks his sex life should be of no interest to anyone, why did he write a song about getting a semi on the tube and not being able to find the woman who stimulated him so ever again?

Viacom deny they want anything personal

Viacom are trying to salvage their reputation in the YouTube information hand-over by denying they want to infringe your privacy:

Viacom said it “has not asked for and will not be obtaining any personally identifiable information of any user”.

Oh, really?

They want user names and IP addresses, and the videos which people have watched. This, of course, is information which could be completely anonymous, but - as we saw with the release of supposedly anonymous data from AOL - there is anonymous data, and data which can be pieced together with other information to not be anonymous any more.

On a broader philosophical note, why is someone's Google ID not an identity which should be treated with the same respect as your name in the real world? Many people use the same screen-name in many places; if you've done nothing illegal, and haven't been accused of anything illegal, shouldn't that identity be spared from being violated by a corporation in the same way as your passport-and-social-security identity?

Leona Lewis and Amy's public disgrace

Leona Lewis loves Amy Winehouse, she does, but, oooh, that woman is a a worry with her image and all:

“A performer’s privacy is taken away. The media are always there. You can’t make your mistakes in private,” Lewis said.

“I have the advantage of a great support structure. I get honest opinions from my family and friends.

“They aren’t always telling me what I want to hear, but the truth helps keep my head straight.”

It's not as if Amy didn't have people telling her truths, either - there are very few addicts who don't have someone they've chosen to ignore as they embrace their habit.

And is Lewis really saying - as she appears to - that the problem is less that Winehouse has got substance abuse problems, than the papers write about them? "If only she could have got on smoking crack in private..."?

It's easy to blame the press for everything, but this seems a little odd. And even if somehow a crack habit is only a problem when it's in the papers (does a crack pipe smoked in the woods matter if nobody films it on a cameraphone?) then isn't Winehouse a little to blame for not exactly having tried to protect her privacy, what with the parading down streets in Camden smoking drugs, posting videos to YouTube of her doing stuff to mice, her husband beating up people in pubs and so on. The papers might have been unflinching in their stare, but she did cry "look at me" rather a lot, didn't she?

Leave Amy alone, says "family member" again

If Sue - who called up Five Live and asked that the media leave Amy Winehouse alone - claims to be a family member, then we should take her at her word.

But if you want the press to stop talking about Winehouse, wouldn't it make more sense to have a word with Mitch Winehouse - who appears in the tabloids talking about her on a regular basis - rather than the Five Live audience? Or, perhaps, suggesting to Amy that she at least tries to stop wandering down public streets apparently smoking weed?

Spears snoops sacked, says Simpson

While Britney Spears was in the UCLA Medical Center having her problems enumerated if not exactly solved, some of the staff took the chance to take a sneak peak at her medical records.

Hospital Human Resource head Jeri Simpson has found out, and canned the employees.

While it's heartening to see the hospital move so swiftly and decisively, we're not entirely sure it's done the right thing. Because before there were curious employees who knew some secrets about Britney Spears, but couldn't share them, because it would cost their jobs, and nobody knew they knew things they shouldn't know.

Now, there are unemployed people who have no jobs to lose, and a press statement revealing their existence. Hasn't the sackings and Simpson's announcements made a bad situation potentially a lot worse?

Especially as this is the second time it's happened - same patient, same hospital, same head of HR, same transgression, same result. You might wonder if the problem is not with the individuals, but perhaps further up in the hiring and training chain.