DISQUS

Luis,

There's a huge difference between government-stored personal info and the info stored by private organizations. Much of the information the government has on you is given out on either a mandatory basis or something close (to live and work in this country, anyway). Information collected by a business, though, is given up voluntarily. We don't have a choice not to give out info to a government agency that demands it, meaning that any irresponsibility on their part won't cost them--there's no possibility of a market backlash when mandates are involved. That means that the government, if you think it needs to have personal data on file at all, has a unique responsibility to safeguard that information (and, I'd argue, to absolutely minimize the scope of the information it does collect and store).

Actually, the labels recently sued two MP3 bloggers for posting tracks from a not-yet-released album (Ryan Adams, I think, but I could be wrong and couldn't find a link to a story in the 30 second search I did).