8 ms·

“Head of Strategy” of Muse Group (Muse Score, Audacity)Threaten Developer

128 points by malka 5y ago

Hyulet 5y ago
The guy edited his comment: > EDIT: On second thought, I will not and just leave it at that. It seems the internet is fed on outrage and must interpret every intent as malicious. Yes, I'm sure this is not malicious at all: > Upon further investigation, it became clear that Wenzheng Tang is a Chinese national, but not resident in China. As a guest in his current country, his residency status is predicated on a number of conditions, one of which is not violating the law. > If found in violation of laws, residency may be revoked and he may be deported to his home country. > This becomes even further complicated given another repo of his - Fuck 学习强国, which is highly critical of the Chinese government. Were he deported to China, who knows how he may be received.
- RandomBK 5y ago
  Also relevant is this line in the original DMCA email shown in the original issue: > Otherwise, I will have to transfer information about you to lawyers who will cooperate with github.com and Chinese government to physically find you and stop the illegal use of licensed content. The later comment I might have charitably excused as poor wording, but that line really highlights the threat being made. That this was in the original takedown letter just makes me even more worried about the business practices at Muse Group and its recent takeover of Audacity.
  - lilSebastian 5y ago
    Reading the content from this person/organisation I don't believe this is poor wording, rather fairly standard scare tactics and threats.
  - bambax 5y ago
    Agreed. The last comment that got everyone upset could be understood to be poorly worded, but that first one, which never was edited or deleted, is damning. This is a shame, because Muse Score is a great piece of software.
    - throwbigdata 5y ago
      Was
- aj3 5y ago
  This seems like a very uncharitable reading of that quote. Btw, what is organisation meant to do in this situation? Sue the person they believe is infringing on their rights without regard to humanity? Ignore the issue altogether?
  - michaelmrose 5y ago
    Presumably they are meant to add authentication to their API if they don't want a third party client accessing it. If they believe they have a leg to stand on they can try to get it removed from github. What you don't do is threaten to collaborate with the Chinese government to murder them.
outloudvi 5y ago
I believe a joke of "getting you deported" is inappropriate enough especially for some countries (or regions).
- tokai 5y ago
  It was a joke?
- squarefoot 5y ago
  It's inappropriate everywhere, since it's worded just like a mafia thug would do. They don't say "if you do X I will kill you", they say "what you're doing is dangerous, it would be a shame if some bad people would hurt you because of that".
  - hannasanarion 5y ago
    My mechanic told me that if I kept my windows tinted a cop might notice and I would get a big fine. Does that make my mechanic a mafioso?
    - antisol 5y ago
      depends on whether he's also selling legal windows at an inflated price and then called the cops when you didn't bite. But probably, yes.
- swiley 5y ago
  As someone who's dealt with the mass of incompetence that can barely be described as a human organization which we refer to as the USCIS: That's a pretty shitty joke.
Bancakes 5y ago
Good thing we have FOSS.
- deregulateMed 5y ago
  Seriously. I think about how Linux will be around forever, but Windows and MacOS could be gone/corrupt in as little as 5 years.
swiley 5y ago
What a terrible company. They're not forced to do this, DMCA/copyright doesn't cover other people's tools.
- gkya 5y ago
  > DMCA/copyright doesn't cover other people's tools That is probably exactly why they are doing this. They lack the legal grounds to slience, so they instead opt for the feral means.
  - hannasanarion 5y ago
    They absolutely have the legal grounds: the CFAA. Unauthorized use of a computer system is a crime.
    - antisol 5y ago
      what unauthorised use?
      - Ygg2 5y ago
        Any use that doesn't sit well with whoever wrote EULA.
        antisol 5y ago
        Aah. And how do they specify which access is authorised/unauthorised in their HTTP responses? How can we determine programmatically which use is unauthorised?
        antisol 5y ago
        Oh nevermind, I figured out the answer to my question: If the server responds with a 401 code, it's unauthorised. It's right there in the spec. Duh.
lilSebastian 5y ago
The strategy seems to be to douse the office in petrol, lock the doors and star lightning matches while inside.
tester34 5y ago
If we assume really good faith can we say that he probably saved his life from gulag by warning him?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
imwillofficial 5y ago
What am I missing here? From what I read the guy is trying to be chill with somebody who is infringing. Does somebody have a more informed take?
- lilSebastian 5y ago
  Try reading the whole thread?
- virgil_disgr4ce 5y ago
  Yeah... it sounds like a lot of people venting their unhappiness with copyright law (which, sure) at the wrong person.
- monkeycantype 5y ago
  Don't know why your getting downed, I'm reading this the same way as you. I don't know either party, don't know the history, without that, to me, it comes across as someone trying to avoid messing up someone's life, not someone dog whistling that that's what they are dangling. So to me you're asking a fair question to people who don't see it that way, what's the context that gives you a different read?
  - michaelmrose 5y ago
    The threat they lobbed was fanciful, unrealistic, horrible and borne of a dive into his personal life to identify a risk factor designed not as an identification of real risk but to create fear to motivate a change in behavior precisely because they had no real legal leg to stand on. This is not much different from noting someone is gay in a middle eastern country and pondering what would happen if they were outed while trying to coerce them to do what you would prefer. He created a client to consume a public API not much different than youtube-dl for sheet music which can be used to download both works under a free license or under a non free license. If the usage is infringing it is infringement by the user of the works of someone like Sony. Muse has zero call to start some shit directly with the developer because they aren't the injured party and he's not the responsible party which is why they had to stoop to nonsensical threats. This is also why the repo is still up now.
Traster 5y ago
To be slightly fair to the guy, it seems like he's probably in the right about the details- it sounds like Muse Score is under very strict constraints to be able to do what they're doing, and this repo is basically just allowing users to violate the constraints that Muse Score was forced to operate under in order to continue hosting copyrighted works. Which is pretty unsurprising in my view. There's quite a few people in the thread who are basically arguing "But we don't like your business model" - to which the correct answer is "Well fuck off then". He's gone way too far in trying to pursuade the commenters in that thread. But then there's 34 hidden comments (I don't seem to be able to open), a jump from October 2020 to yesterday and suddenly he's wading in to a debate on ethics in journalism and making what are at the very least poorly considered references to getting someone deported (I don't seriously believe that someone is going to get deported for copyright infringement unless they really really go out of their way to fight it).
- kstenerud 5y ago
  They've had a year and a half to fix their API such that it doesn't allow downloads unless you've authenticated and are paid up. Instead, he threatens to send the developer to a gulag.
  - anonymoushn 5y ago
    It seems like they have fixed it. The tool now downloads music from IPFS. The developer apparently used the public API a while ago to mirror all the music to IPFS.
exizt88 5y ago
The manager's response seems to be empathetic and human, though it would've been better to keep it private. The Russian developer's original email, however, is a travesty. Not only is it horrifically worded, but it actually does threaten the dev with the actions of the Chinese government. It's an awful thing to do and a PR nightmare for the company. That's a good lesson for the rest of us: don't let your devs do the work of lawyers.
- lupire 5y ago
  He didn't threaten the dev. He warned the dev what are the consequences (that would be ompoaed by others) of his actions in violating the law and getting Muse stuck in the middle. Being a political activist is not an excuse to violate unrelated laws and demand everyone around you abet you.
  - zenexer 5y ago
    It was definitely a threat. “It would be a shame if I were to report this unrelated repo to your government to demonstrate that you’re a political dissident. It would be a shame if your government were to punish you for it. Don’t get mad; I’m sure informing you of your personal risks.” That’s a threat, plain and simple.
    - hannasanarion 5y ago
      There's no mention of reporting any repos to the government. Only starting legal proceedings to stop their undeniably illegal activity, and that those proceedings might result in their deportation, and that for this person deportation is very dangerous because of the political climate in their home country. Its not a threat, it's a warning about the danger of the person's position, and hopefully an incentive to stop their illegal and possibly criminal activity before legal proceedings start.
      - antisol 5y ago
        You are very clearly either totally fucking delusional, or a muse employee.
deleted0account 5y ago
Shut the fuck up bootlicker
_imnothere 5y ago
This is beyond disgusting, nothing is gonna justify the behavior of threatening dev over all these things.
lupire 5y ago
Pro tips: 1. Don't send non-lawyers to handle legal disputes. 2. Don't send non-fluent English language learners to handle legal or PR disputes. 3. Don't make up editorialized titles for submitted links.
- zenexer 5y ago
  If the original title is blatantly inaccurate or doesn’t properly describe the subject at hand, it makes sense to modify the title. In this case, “threatens developer” is a bit of an understatement, if anything. The original comments—which have since been edited—specifically threaten to abuse the fact that the repo owner is a political dissident. “We will make sure your government goes after you for more than just copyright infringement” is a rather despicable threat.
duped 5y ago
Muse Score is turning into a case study of how not to build a brand.
forkerenok 5y ago
Found another one from the same author of the original takedown request (Max Chistyakov, at the top of the submitted github issue): > So, I decide to reach you before lawyers and publishers start working and physically found you. I recommend you to delete public repo and npm package. May be formatting your disk will be nice for you too. from: https://github.com/alewin/CliChords https://github.com/alewin/CliChords Just wow.
- stuaxo 5y ago
  The nastygram is full of spelling errors too, just to top it off.
RicoElectrico 5y ago
So they have shown their true colors, if anyone had doubt and called "knee-jerk" over community reaction to Audacity takeover. Now it's safe to say with such "leadership" Audacity will not have its "Blender moment". (just as I commented this on another earlier submission which didn't make it to the frontpage, because reasons)
runnerup 5y ago
IANAL but to a layperson it might look like Daniel Ray of Muse Group violated https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/873 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/873 , punishable by up to one year imprisonment. It does seem that the developer is probably violating copyrights - you usually can’t just post Disney’s IP for others to freely use. There does seem to be some gray area. Recent cases have been relaxing the grip of CFAA as it pertains to accessing publicly available APIs. 10-15 years ago it likely would have been a violation. Today I genuinely doubt it, especially if it received a knowledgeable judge like Alsup. But I bet a court would look at the copyright issues separately from the API access. While the API access is (probably?) not against the law, the copyright violations would probably stick without some amazing lawyer work. Perhaps you could make the argument that Muse made these public via their API rather than the developer who scraped them but I don’t feel like that would succeed because it’s really two independent faults. Muse failed to secure the IP and the developer didn’t just access, they republished on IPFS. I had been very critical of the extreme nonsense of Tenacity / Sneedacity. I also felt the general outrage over un-materialized concerns of nebulous “telemetry” was unconvincing. I certainly never expected Muse Group to somehow lower the already low bar down to the Marianas Trench, and yet, here we are. Here’s what Daniel wrote to the developer, in public: >> Upon further investigation, it became clear that <developer> is a Chinese national, but not resident in China. As a guest in his current country, his residency status is predicated on a number of conditions, one of which is not violating the law. >> If found in violation of laws, residency may be revoked and he may be deported to his home country. >> This becomes even further complicated given another repo of his - Fuck XXQG which is highly critical of the Chinese government. Were he deported to China, who knows how he may be received. As marcan said, that does appear to be blackmail. I have trouble finding a view of that in which it is not blackmail. Blackmail is a crime at state and federal levels for good reason. I’m not a lawyer so I’d be interested to learn ways that this isn’t a violation of California penal code PC 519, very specifically PC 523, and more generally PC 518. If anyone could educate me and help me see how it is not blackmail/extortion, I would genuinely appreciate that. Penal Code 518 defines the California crime of extortion. The law says that a person commits extortion by: obtaining property or other consideration from another person without that person’s consent, …and doing so by means of force or fear. Penal Code 519 says that, for purposes of extortion charges, fear is an emotion generated by certain specific threats. These include the threat to: …accuse a person, or that person’s relative or family member, of a crime, …report a person’s immigration status or suspected immigration status. New York’s law is quite similar, https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/PEN/135.60 https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/PEN/135.60 but merely a class A misdemeanor.

128 points by malka 5y ago

The guy edited his comment: > EDIT: On second thought, I will not and just leave it at that. It seems the internet is fed on outrage and must interpret every intent as malicious. Yes, I'm sure this is not malicious at all: > Upon further investigation, it became clear that Wenzheng Tang is a Chinese national, but not resident in China. As a guest in his current country, his residency status is predicated on a number of conditions, one of which is not violating the law. > If found in violation of laws, residency may be revoked and he may be deported to his home country. > This becomes even further complicated given another repo of his - Fuck 学习强国, which is highly critical of the Chinese government. Were he deported to China, who knows how he may be received.

RandomBK 5y ago
Also relevant is this line in the original DMCA email shown in the original issue: > Otherwise, I will have to transfer information about you to lawyers who will cooperate with github.com and Chinese government to physically find you and stop the illegal use of licensed content. The later comment I might have charitably excused as poor wording, but that line really highlights the threat being made. That this was in the original takedown letter just makes me even more worried about the business practices at Muse Group and its recent takeover of Audacity.
- lilSebastian 5y ago
  Reading the content from this person/organisation I don't believe this is poor wording, rather fairly standard scare tactics and threats.
- bambax 5y ago
  Agreed. The last comment that got everyone upset could be understood to be poorly worded, but that first one, which never was edited or deleted, is damning. This is a shame, because Muse Score is a great piece of software.
  - throwbigdata 5y ago
    Was
aj3 5y ago
This seems like a very uncharitable reading of that quote. Btw, what is organisation meant to do in this situation? Sue the person they believe is infringing on their rights without regard to humanity? Ignore the issue altogether?
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  Presumably they are meant to add authentication to their API if they don't want a third party client accessing it. If they believe they have a leg to stand on they can try to get it removed from github. What you don't do is threaten to collaborate with the Chinese government to murder them.

outloudvi 5y ago

I believe a joke of "getting you deported" is inappropriate enough especially for some countries (or regions).

tokai 5y ago
It was a joke?
squarefoot 5y ago
It's inappropriate everywhere, since it's worded just like a mafia thug would do. They don't say "if you do X I will kill you", they say "what you're doing is dangerous, it would be a shame if some bad people would hurt you because of that".
- hannasanarion 5y ago
  My mechanic told me that if I kept my windows tinted a cop might notice and I would get a big fine. Does that make my mechanic a mafioso?
  - antisol 5y ago
    depends on whether he's also selling legal windows at an inflated price and then called the cops when you didn't bite. But probably, yes.
swiley 5y ago
As someone who's dealt with the mass of incompetence that can barely be described as a human organization which we refer to as the USCIS: That's a pretty shitty joke.

Bancakes 5y ago

Good thing we have FOSS.

deregulateMed 5y ago
Seriously. I think about how Linux will be around forever, but Windows and MacOS could be gone/corrupt in as little as 5 years.

swiley 5y ago

What a terrible company. They're not forced to do this, DMCA/copyright doesn't cover other people's tools.

gkya 5y ago
> DMCA/copyright doesn't cover other people's tools That is probably exactly why they are doing this. They lack the legal grounds to slience, so they instead opt for the feral means.
- hannasanarion 5y ago
  They absolutely have the legal grounds: the CFAA. Unauthorized use of a computer system is a crime.
  - antisol 5y ago
    what unauthorised use?
    - Ygg2 5y ago
      Any use that doesn't sit well with whoever wrote EULA.
      - antisol 5y ago
        Aah. And how do they specify which access is authorised/unauthorised in their HTTP responses? How can we determine programmatically which use is unauthorised?
        antisol 5y ago
        Oh nevermind, I figured out the answer to my question: If the server responds with a 401 code, it's unauthorised. It's right there in the spec. Duh.

lilSebastian 5y ago

The strategy seems to be to douse the office in petrol, lock the doors and star lightning matches while inside.

tester34 5y ago

If we assume really good faith can we say that he probably saved his life from gulag by warning him?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

imwillofficial 5y ago

What am I missing here? From what I read the guy is trying to be chill with somebody who is infringing. Does somebody have a more informed take?

lilSebastian 5y ago
Try reading the whole thread?
virgil_disgr4ce 5y ago
Yeah... it sounds like a lot of people venting their unhappiness with copyright law (which, sure) at the wrong person.
monkeycantype 5y ago
Don't know why your getting downed, I'm reading this the same way as you. I don't know either party, don't know the history, without that, to me, it comes across as someone trying to avoid messing up someone's life, not someone dog whistling that that's what they are dangling. So to me you're asking a fair question to people who don't see it that way, what's the context that gives you a different read?
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  The threat they lobbed was fanciful, unrealistic, horrible and borne of a dive into his personal life to identify a risk factor designed not as an identification of real risk but to create fear to motivate a change in behavior precisely because they had no real legal leg to stand on. This is not much different from noting someone is gay in a middle eastern country and pondering what would happen if they were outed while trying to coerce them to do what you would prefer. He created a client to consume a public API not much different than youtube-dl for sheet music which can be used to download both works under a free license or under a non free license. If the usage is infringing it is infringement by the user of the works of someone like Sony. Muse has zero call to start some shit directly with the developer because they aren't the injured party and he's not the responsible party which is why they had to stoop to nonsensical threats. This is also why the repo is still up now.

Traster 5y ago

To be slightly fair to the guy, it seems like he's probably in the right about the details- it sounds like Muse Score is under very strict constraints to be able to do what they're doing, and this repo is basically just allowing users to violate the constraints that Muse Score was forced to operate under in order to continue hosting copyrighted works. Which is pretty unsurprising in my view. There's quite a few people in the thread who are basically arguing "But we don't like your business model" - to which the correct answer is "Well fuck off then". He's gone way too far in trying to pursuade the commenters in that thread. But then there's 34 hidden comments (I don't seem to be able to open), a jump from October 2020 to yesterday and suddenly he's wading in to a debate on ethics in journalism and making what are at the very least poorly considered references to getting someone deported (I don't seriously believe that someone is going to get deported for copyright infringement unless they really really go out of their way to fight it).

kstenerud 5y ago
They've had a year and a half to fix their API such that it doesn't allow downloads unless you've authenticated and are paid up. Instead, he threatens to send the developer to a gulag.
- anonymoushn 5y ago
  It seems like they have fixed it. The tool now downloads music from IPFS. The developer apparently used the public API a while ago to mirror all the music to IPFS.

exizt88 5y ago

The manager's response seems to be empathetic and human, though it would've been better to keep it private. The Russian developer's original email, however, is a travesty. Not only is it horrifically worded, but it actually does threaten the dev with the actions of the Chinese government. It's an awful thing to do and a PR nightmare for the company. That's a good lesson for the rest of us: don't let your devs do the work of lawyers.

lupire 5y ago
He didn't threaten the dev. He warned the dev what are the consequences (that would be ompoaed by others) of his actions in violating the law and getting Muse stuck in the middle. Being a political activist is not an excuse to violate unrelated laws and demand everyone around you abet you.
- zenexer 5y ago
  It was definitely a threat. “It would be a shame if I were to report this unrelated repo to your government to demonstrate that you’re a political dissident. It would be a shame if your government were to punish you for it. Don’t get mad; I’m sure informing you of your personal risks.” That’s a threat, plain and simple.
  - hannasanarion 5y ago
    There's no mention of reporting any repos to the government. Only starting legal proceedings to stop their undeniably illegal activity, and that those proceedings might result in their deportation, and that for this person deportation is very dangerous because of the political climate in their home country. Its not a threat, it's a warning about the danger of the person's position, and hopefully an incentive to stop their illegal and possibly criminal activity before legal proceedings start.
    - antisol 5y ago
      You are very clearly either totally fucking delusional, or a muse employee.

deleted0account 5y ago

Shut the fuck up bootlicker

_imnothere 5y ago

This is beyond disgusting, nothing is gonna justify the behavior of threatening dev over all these things.

lupire 5y ago

Pro tips: 1. Don't send non-lawyers to handle legal disputes. 2. Don't send non-fluent English language learners to handle legal or PR disputes. 3. Don't make up editorialized titles for submitted links.

zenexer 5y ago
If the original title is blatantly inaccurate or doesn’t properly describe the subject at hand, it makes sense to modify the title. In this case, “threatens developer” is a bit of an understatement, if anything. The original comments—which have since been edited—specifically threaten to abuse the fact that the repo owner is a political dissident. “We will make sure your government goes after you for more than just copyright infringement” is a rather despicable threat.

duped 5y ago

Muse Score is turning into a case study of how not to build a brand.

forkerenok 5y ago

Found another one from the same author of the original takedown request (Max Chistyakov, at the top of the submitted github issue): > So, I decide to reach you before lawyers and publishers start working and physically found you. I recommend you to delete public repo and npm package. May be formatting your disk will be nice for you too. from: https://github.com/alewin/CliChords https://github.com/alewin/CliChords Just wow.

stuaxo 5y ago
The nastygram is full of spelling errors too, just to top it off.

RicoElectrico 5y ago

So they have shown their true colors, if anyone had doubt and called "knee-jerk" over community reaction to Audacity takeover. Now it's safe to say with such "leadership" Audacity will not have its "Blender moment". (just as I commented this on another earlier submission which didn't make it to the frontpage, because reasons)

runnerup 5y ago

IANAL but to a layperson it might look like Daniel Ray of Muse Group violated https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/873 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/873 , punishable by up to one year imprisonment. It does seem that the developer is probably violating copyrights - you usually can’t just post Disney’s IP for others to freely use. There does seem to be some gray area. Recent cases have been relaxing the grip of CFAA as it pertains to accessing publicly available APIs. 10-15 years ago it likely would have been a violation. Today I genuinely doubt it, especially if it received a knowledgeable judge like Alsup. But I bet a court would look at the copyright issues separately from the API access. While the API access is (probably?) not against the law, the copyright violations would probably stick without some amazing lawyer work. Perhaps you could make the argument that Muse made these public via their API rather than the developer who scraped them but I don’t feel like that would succeed because it’s really two independent faults. Muse failed to secure the IP and the developer didn’t just access, they republished on IPFS. I had been very critical of the extreme nonsense of Tenacity / Sneedacity. I also felt the general outrage over un-materialized concerns of nebulous “telemetry” was unconvincing. I certainly never expected Muse Group to somehow lower the already low bar down to the Marianas Trench, and yet, here we are. Here’s what Daniel wrote to the developer, in public: >> Upon further investigation, it became clear that <developer> is a Chinese national, but not resident in China. As a guest in his current country, his residency status is predicated on a number of conditions, one of which is not violating the law. >> If found in violation of laws, residency may be revoked and he may be deported to his home country. >> This becomes even further complicated given another repo of his - Fuck XXQG which is highly critical of the Chinese government. Were he deported to China, who knows how he may be received. As marcan said, that does appear to be blackmail. I have trouble finding a view of that in which it is not blackmail. Blackmail is a crime at state and federal levels for good reason. I’m not a lawyer so I’d be interested to learn ways that this isn’t a violation of California penal code PC 519, very specifically PC 523, and more generally PC 518. If anyone could educate me and help me see how it is not blackmail/extortion, I would genuinely appreciate that. Penal Code 518 defines the California crime of extortion. The law says that a person commits extortion by: obtaining property or other consideration from another person without that person’s consent, …and doing so by means of force or fear. Penal Code 519 says that, for purposes of extortion charges, fear is an emotion generated by certain specific threats. These include the threat to: …accuse a person, or that person’s relative or family member, of a crime, …report a person’s immigration status or suspected immigration status. New York’s law is quite similar, https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/PEN/135.60 https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/PEN/135.60 but merely a class A misdemeanor.