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I recommend you sit this one out, as recording people, even if only audio and sending the sound over the internet is very much against the law in germany
by kioleanu 2y ago
I recommend you sit this one out, as recording people, even if only audio and sending the sound over the internet is very much against the law in germany
- bravura 2y agoThinking this through more deeply, I agree and see your position. It is creepy to surveil audio and possibly send in full to Shazam. [edit: And post the original audio recordings online.] The ethical way to do this would be to use your own code to decimate the audio signal to extremely low dimensionality.
- devin 2y agoYou misunderstand how Shazam works. Nothing is “sent in full”.
- jetrink 2y agoThe music fingerprinting on my Android phone works in airplane mode, so it would be possible with modifications. Also, it's likely that Shazam is sending a "hash" of the audio rather than an audio stream in most cases.
- zorked 2y agoEuropean law tends not to like "clever" workarounds. IANAL but I belive you would still be practicing illegal surveillance.
- InDubioProRubio 2y agoIts not a hash though? Its a reverse - fourier transform system that matches the sound- similar to the filter that filters out the vuvuzelas? https://www.dechicchis.com/assets/Joseph-DeChicchis-Music-Identification.pdf https://www.dechicchis.com/assets/Joseph-DeChicchis-Music-Id... Like having a distinctive click impulse and get the cathedral from that.
- jetrink 2y agoCtrl-F in that document for 'hashing'. That step reduces the audio information to a sparse collection of key points, one for each of four frequency ranges per time segment. I would assume that everything up to that step is done on the phone and only the key points are sent to the server.
- InDubioProRubio 2y agoI stand corrected. Just sped-read over the abstract.
- infecto 2y agoRecording conversations are illegal but if you could prevent that from happening, there is enough wiggle room that it has the potential to be legal.
- IsopropylMalbec 2y agoWould that not mean that Shazaam is illegal Germany? From my limited searching it doesn't seem like it is.
- kioleanu 2y agoShazam is not illegal in Germany unless I missremember what the app does and instead of being to identify songs based on samples, it's being used to record people
- tanakere 2y agoWell it's you a person who is recording the music. So it's the user's responsibility to make sure you are not breaking any laws. So the app cannot be held at fault for this. No one cares if you do a Shazam in public so it all just works out. But if you set up an autonomous recording device, no matter what you say you are doing, you will have problems.
- barbazoo 2y agoWhat law is that that's broken here?
- systemtest 2y agoEspecially on a Sunday
- Tepix 2y agoWhich law are you thinking about in particular? I expectation is that the microphone above the rooftop will not pick up on normal conversations, only louder stuff.
- olalonde 2y agoInstalling stuff on public utility polls is probably illegal everywhere.
- jcgrillo 2y agoThe legality of it only matters if you get caught. So don't use hardware or software that's traceable back to you, and be sufficiently careful to remain undetected when you install it. People often weigh the likelihood of being caught much, much higher than it actually is, and therefore conclude "I mustn't do anything illegal", which is irrational.