3 ms·

> I think that its main problem is that no instance provides a “public” catalog of songs that can be streamed/downloaded by its users, but its “social aspect” i

> I think that its main problem is that no instance provides a “public” catalog of songs that can be streamed/downloaded by its users, but its “social aspect” is really cool. You can, e.g, connect with your friends and choose to share your private libraries with each other. So if you have a good mix of friends who kept/ripped their CD/Vynil collection or bought songs from their favorite indie musicians, you can end up with a pretty extensive library. This makes it a decent (and legal) alternative to sneaker-net piracy. This sounds like it shares a lot of the UX of piracy, so I'd be interested to know the bounds of it's legality. What happens when I join the largest instance and upload Universal Media Group's catalog?

Fremololni 3y ago
It's probably not legal. What would happen? Nothing until it becomes a thing than it gets sued into oblivion. They didn't find a magic loophole.
- rglullis 3y ago
  There is no magic loophole, but I don't see how this would get "sued into oblivion". There is no "central instance", so even if someone sets up a server which starts to make copyrighted material available publicly, only that server would receive nastygrams and/or be ejected by the hosting provider. And those that really want to circumvent the law could just set this up in a place which offers more protections. If someone sets up an instance on 1984.hosting and uses a domain from njal.la... how would anyone be able to take it down?
  - Fremololni 3y ago
    Same way they did it the last 20 years. They don't need to understand the fediverse to sue everyone and than everyone will disable the feature or adds some filter
    - rglullis 3y ago
      They can't "sue everyone". BitTorrent is a lot easier to track and prove illegal sharing, yet it still continues to work.
      - Fremololni 3y ago
        Yes but plenty of people got sued at least in Germany. People moved to Usenet providers but that traffic is much less than it was 5 or 10 years ago.
        rglullis 3y ago
        You've moved the goalposts. "Some people got sued" is a far weaker than "Funkwhale will be sued into oblivion".
        Fremololni 3y ago
        I don't think so. As soon as the industry gets wind about this practice people or servers or companies will get sued (there is after all nothing else these companies can do) and as soon as this happens some people in the line will try to protect them. Could be server hosting company, the server hosters, source code Providers etc etc. Btw that doesn't change the law: dependimg on your country there are already clear legal rules regarding lending digital copies to your friends. They might fake users and start collecting data through those etc. But only if it becomes a thing. I think the main reason I'm not seeing anythinguch about lawsuits today is due to streaming services and the amount of legal media traffic compared to things like torrent.
rglullis 3y ago
If you upload it and make it public, you will very quickly get kicked out of the instance as soon as someone reports your library as containing copyrighted material. If may try to be coy about it and abuse the "invite-only" mechanism to share with lots of people, but you are still risking getting reported. There are also moderation tools in place that can let the instance admin see beyond the "privacy sharing" settings, so a more zealous admin would be the first to want abusers out of their servers.

Fremololni 3y ago

It's probably not legal. What would happen? Nothing until it becomes a thing than it gets sued into oblivion. They didn't find a magic loophole.

rglullis 3y ago
There is no magic loophole, but I don't see how this would get "sued into oblivion". There is no "central instance", so even if someone sets up a server which starts to make copyrighted material available publicly, only that server would receive nastygrams and/or be ejected by the hosting provider. And those that really want to circumvent the law could just set this up in a place which offers more protections. If someone sets up an instance on 1984.hosting and uses a domain from njal.la... how would anyone be able to take it down?
- Fremololni 3y ago
  Same way they did it the last 20 years. They don't need to understand the fediverse to sue everyone and than everyone will disable the feature or adds some filter
  - rglullis 3y ago
    They can't "sue everyone". BitTorrent is a lot easier to track and prove illegal sharing, yet it still continues to work.
    - Fremololni 3y ago
      Yes but plenty of people got sued at least in Germany. People moved to Usenet providers but that traffic is much less than it was 5 or 10 years ago.
      - rglullis 3y ago
        You've moved the goalposts. "Some people got sued" is a far weaker than "Funkwhale will be sued into oblivion".
        Fremololni 3y ago
        I don't think so. As soon as the industry gets wind about this practice people or servers or companies will get sued (there is after all nothing else these companies can do) and as soon as this happens some people in the line will try to protect them. Could be server hosting company, the server hosters, source code Providers etc etc. Btw that doesn't change the law: dependimg on your country there are already clear legal rules regarding lending digital copies to your friends. They might fake users and start collecting data through those etc. But only if it becomes a thing. I think the main reason I'm not seeing anythinguch about lawsuits today is due to streaming services and the amount of legal media traffic compared to things like torrent.

rglullis 3y ago

If you upload it and make it public, you will very quickly get kicked out of the instance as soon as someone reports your library as containing copyrighted material. If may try to be coy about it and abuse the "invite-only" mechanism to share with lots of people, but you are still risking getting reported. There are also moderation tools in place that can let the instance admin see beyond the "privacy sharing" settings, so a more zealous admin would be the first to want abusers out of their servers.