4 ms·

Audacity’s new owner is in another fight with the open source community

39 points by sam345 5y ago

runnerup 5y ago
Could anyone explain how Daniel’s comments aren’t potentially illegal “blackmail”? To a layperson it really sounded like Muse Group’s leadership resorted to blackmail and then backpedalled after marcan called them out on it. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/873 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/873 https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/PEN/135.60 https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/PEN/135.60 California’s statute for this even specifically calls out bringing up someone’s immigration status. The relevant quote from Muse Group: >>> “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.”
- Tomte 5y ago
  "to engage in conduct which the latter has a legal right to abstain from engaging in, or to abstain from engaging in conduct in which he or she has a legal right to engage" pretty clearly rules that out. The Chinese developer does not, in fact, have the right to pirate stuff. Even if you claim that there is no piracy, you'd need to show that MuseGroup believes themselves that there is no piracy. But they obviously do.
  - emptyparadise 5y ago
    You could also interpret that as the developer having the right to not take down repositories until legally required to do so.
    - Tomte 5y ago
      That's wrong. A court decision doesn't create the obligation to take it down, it "merely" declares that the pre-existing obligation really exists and opens up a way to enforce it. Without a pre-existing obligation there is no court case. What would you sue for?
      - runnerup 5y ago
        Yeah you’re correct from what I know. Most extortion/blackmail laws are referencing a legal concept of consideration. An example from contract law, agreeing to “not do something illegal” doesn’t count as consideration because you were already obligated to not do something illegal. This would also apply for promising “to do something you are already legally required to do”. Reasonable people might be able to disagree on whether this GitHub repository is per se illegal. If it’s the IPFS files that are illegal instead of the GitHub repo, then demanding he take down the GitHub repo would be seeking consideration from him to do something he’s not inherently bound by law to do anyways. Certainly a place where reasonable minds might say “Huh. Sounds like there’s room for a court to make a decision on that.” rather than holding a dogmatic opinion before/without really diving deep into all the details.
      - emptyparadise 5y ago
        Thanks for the correction. Is there really nothing that would protect somebody in this situation from unjust punishment for a completely different matter?
        Tomte 5y ago
        I don't understand. Would you actually prefer MuseScore to be silent on their issue tracker and just sue and/or report him?
        emptyparadise 5y ago
        What I'm wondering about is whether, assuming the developer is sued and found guilty, the whole situation will play out exactly as described by MuseScore. Putting aside the legality and ethics of piracy, the premise of somebody getting sued by a company, losing, getting deported to a hostile country that's then tipped off by the company on an entirely different issue, seems very wrong - but perhaps only ethically and not legally. I'm not sure how else to interpret the quote in runnerup's comment together with this quote from the article: Chistyakov then threatens that, if the repositories in question are not closed, he will have to "transfer information about you to our lawyers who will cooperate with Github.com and Chinese government to physically find you and stop the illegal use of licensed content."
  - runnerup 5y ago
    I like your assessment, that makes sense to me and I’ll probably use it going forward. Some NB though: - Muse is asking Xmader to delete his GitHub repository. - The pirated materials do not exist in the GitHub repository, that is separately and independently stored on IPFS (his GitHub repository is the source code for essentially a qBittorrent app or a torrent tracker). - Xmader may be legally required to not share copyrighted materials on IPFS. But that’s not what Muse asked him. - It’s definitely not clear that he lacks the legal right to abstain from deleting the GitHub repository which does not contain copyrighted materials. - The NY law you cited doesn’t seem to have anything about “intent” so it’s not obvious that you’d have to show MuseGroup believed there was no piracy. It may be strict liability instead? At least as worded. I don’t know; I haven’t looked at any cases. Also, I think you may have some of the characters mixed up. Marcan is not the alleged violator, he is an uninvolved third party observer who, in an unrelated tangent, happened to have ported Linux to PS4 and is currently porting Linux to M1 MacBooks. More relevantly he did survive a lawsuit from Sony related to hacking the PS3 and was involved in lengthy proceedings accused of CFAA and DMCA violations so he likely has some first-hand knowledge of the nuances of relevant federal laws. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Héctor_Mart%C3%ADn_Cantero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Héctor_Mart%C3%ADn_Cantero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_America,_Inc._v._Hotz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_Am...
    - Tomte 5y ago
      > Also, I think you may have some of the characters mixed up. You're right. Fixed.
- emptyparadise 5y ago
  The developer could've actually robbed Muse Group offices for all I care, it doesn't justify threats like that. What the fuck?
Ericson2314 5y ago
Phenomenal reporting from Ars technica here. It's releving to see Muse get carefully exonerated here. I do feel sorry for them Oh and per the original isssue, perhaps Poettering needs to go be the sacrificial lamb and make a "telemetryd" so users can send crash reports to the devs they trust, and also possibly send them via intermediaries to filter out distro-sepcific stuff. Whatever you think of auto-updates or telemtry, doing them ad-hoc and app-specific is not the distro way, and surely worse. Also the hate mail over telemetryd will be hilarious.

39 points by sam345 5y ago

Could anyone explain how Daniel’s comments aren’t potentially illegal “blackmail”? To a layperson it really sounded like Muse Group’s leadership resorted to blackmail and then backpedalled after marcan called them out on it. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/873 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/873 https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/PEN/135.60 https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/PEN/135.60 California’s statute for this even specifically calls out bringing up someone’s immigration status. The relevant quote from Muse Group: >>> “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.”

Tomte 5y ago
"to engage in conduct which the latter has a legal right to abstain from engaging in, or to abstain from engaging in conduct in which he or she has a legal right to engage" pretty clearly rules that out. The Chinese developer does not, in fact, have the right to pirate stuff. Even if you claim that there is no piracy, you'd need to show that MuseGroup believes themselves that there is no piracy. But they obviously do.
- emptyparadise 5y ago
  You could also interpret that as the developer having the right to not take down repositories until legally required to do so.
  - Tomte 5y ago
    That's wrong. A court decision doesn't create the obligation to take it down, it "merely" declares that the pre-existing obligation really exists and opens up a way to enforce it. Without a pre-existing obligation there is no court case. What would you sue for?
    - runnerup 5y ago
      Yeah you’re correct from what I know. Most extortion/blackmail laws are referencing a legal concept of consideration. An example from contract law, agreeing to “not do something illegal” doesn’t count as consideration because you were already obligated to not do something illegal. This would also apply for promising “to do something you are already legally required to do”. Reasonable people might be able to disagree on whether this GitHub repository is per se illegal. If it’s the IPFS files that are illegal instead of the GitHub repo, then demanding he take down the GitHub repo would be seeking consideration from him to do something he’s not inherently bound by law to do anyways. Certainly a place where reasonable minds might say “Huh. Sounds like there’s room for a court to make a decision on that.” rather than holding a dogmatic opinion before/without really diving deep into all the details.
    - emptyparadise 5y ago
      Thanks for the correction. Is there really nothing that would protect somebody in this situation from unjust punishment for a completely different matter?
      - Tomte 5y ago
        I don't understand. Would you actually prefer MuseScore to be silent on their issue tracker and just sue and/or report him?
        emptyparadise 5y ago
        What I'm wondering about is whether, assuming the developer is sued and found guilty, the whole situation will play out exactly as described by MuseScore. Putting aside the legality and ethics of piracy, the premise of somebody getting sued by a company, losing, getting deported to a hostile country that's then tipped off by the company on an entirely different issue, seems very wrong - but perhaps only ethically and not legally. I'm not sure how else to interpret the quote in runnerup's comment together with this quote from the article: Chistyakov then threatens that, if the repositories in question are not closed, he will have to "transfer information about you to our lawyers who will cooperate with Github.com and Chinese government to physically find you and stop the illegal use of licensed content."
- runnerup 5y ago
  I like your assessment, that makes sense to me and I’ll probably use it going forward. Some NB though: - Muse is asking Xmader to delete his GitHub repository. - The pirated materials do not exist in the GitHub repository, that is separately and independently stored on IPFS (his GitHub repository is the source code for essentially a qBittorrent app or a torrent tracker). - Xmader may be legally required to not share copyrighted materials on IPFS. But that’s not what Muse asked him. - It’s definitely not clear that he lacks the legal right to abstain from deleting the GitHub repository which does not contain copyrighted materials. - The NY law you cited doesn’t seem to have anything about “intent” so it’s not obvious that you’d have to show MuseGroup believed there was no piracy. It may be strict liability instead? At least as worded. I don’t know; I haven’t looked at any cases. Also, I think you may have some of the characters mixed up. Marcan is not the alleged violator, he is an uninvolved third party observer who, in an unrelated tangent, happened to have ported Linux to PS4 and is currently porting Linux to M1 MacBooks. More relevantly he did survive a lawsuit from Sony related to hacking the PS3 and was involved in lengthy proceedings accused of CFAA and DMCA violations so he likely has some first-hand knowledge of the nuances of relevant federal laws. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Héctor_Mart%C3%ADn_Cantero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Héctor_Mart%C3%ADn_Cantero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_America,_Inc._v._Hotz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_Am...
  - Tomte 5y ago
    > Also, I think you may have some of the characters mixed up. You're right. Fixed.
emptyparadise 5y ago
The developer could've actually robbed Muse Group offices for all I care, it doesn't justify threats like that. What the fuck?

Ericson2314 5y ago

Phenomenal reporting from Ars technica here. It's releving to see Muse get carefully exonerated here. I do feel sorry for them Oh and per the original isssue, perhaps Poettering needs to go be the sacrificial lamb and make a "telemetryd" so users can send crash reports to the devs they trust, and also possibly send them via intermediaries to filter out distro-sepcific stuff. Whatever you think of auto-updates or telemtry, doing them ad-hoc and app-specific is not the distro way, and surely worse. Also the hate mail over telemetryd will be hilarious.