An interesting privacy policy

CDBaby is an excellent source of independently-produced music. They only sell artist-produced CDs, not things from even small distributors. The prices are quite reasonable, the customer service is great, they make finding new music easy (including an 3-CDs-for-$15 sale for less popular music), and they just feel good. It's Web 1.5 at its best.

On the other hand, one thing they do is a bit surprising. I was emailing with one of the artists last week, and he said "thanks for buying my CDs at CDBaby". Um, I hadn't told him that I had bought his CDs anywhere. "They told me you bought them, and gave me your address".

From their privacy policy:

• We NEVER give or sell your personal info to any other company - EVER! (No not even your email address!)
• Only the musician whose CD you buy will know who you are.
• If you don't even want the musician to know about you, just say so at the bottom of your order form.

The "we give your name and address to the musician" policy would be an unpleasant surprise to almost anyone who normally orders stuff on the Web. Worse, the third bullet seems to be untrue: on an order I just turned it, there is no way I saw to leave any sort of note on the order form, much less something that calls out the "we are making you findable by the artist".

On the positive side, no artist whose CDs I have bought have put me on spam lists. It is also kinda cool to think that the artist gets to have a feeling for what kind of people are buying their CDs, and when. But, on the whole, I would prefer that the order form had an unchecked-by-default button that says "let the artists know you bought these CDs".