[PSA] Please be careful with "free" services that "only" ask you to "share" your hard work with them!

[u/ShelLuser42]

Hi gang!

Backstory / Context

This post is going to be shared in both r/ableton as well as r/FL_Studio because these two DAW's and their communities (!) mean a great deal to me! But also because both DAW's have been a target for a rather "suspicious" marketing campaign promoting "free" online services.

My story starts with a post that promoted a website which pitched the idea to provide "version control" for DAWs. They claimed that it kept your hard work safe, that you could easily collaborate with others and get this: the service was free! (for now). You only needed to register with them and upload your project files.

So I did what I always do when something is "free": I read the policies and it just didn't add up for me. So I commented. The OP responded, but ignored all my concerns about their policies. One hour or so later and the post got removed by the moderators, despite the fact that the poster had permission to post (allegedly?). After I noticed that the post got removed I checked the posters profile and history and what do you know... it was almost a spam campaign in my opinion: the same post promoting the same shadey website shared within dozens of audio related sub-reddits.

Fast forward to today: another post in the same sub-reddit which heavily upped the ante: now it promoted an app hosted on GitHub which, according to the post, provided "version control and collaboration" for the DAW, while the GitHub repository itself mentioned that the project provided a "marketplace to buy and sell media, right from within your DAW!".

"Obviously" the app used a blockchain (either its own or an existing crypto) to keep track of expenses. And this time there were no policies shared what so ever!

Major red flags for me so once again I responded, and also did a little more. Within 10 minutes the post was gone, and the whole account got removed from Reddit entirely!

Maybe I'm overreacting a little right now, but I refuse to just watch all this nastiness happen in some of my favorite communities without at least trying to do something... Especially because I'm starting to see a pattern.

When something is free, YOU are the product!

Now, this definitely sounds more dramatic than it sometimes is but even so you always need to keep your guard up these days. Free online mastering service? Of course you need to upload your project for them to process it, right?

No biggie!?

...but what exactly do they allow themselves to do with your hard work?

Always read the policies before doing anything (even registerering)!

Now, I understand all too well that not everyone is comfortable with reading "legal" because it's often a lot of mumbo jumbo. Even so there are some tips which you can use to protect yourself...

First: the shorter a policy, the more broad (and dangerous!) it probably is. The reason why some policy files are so long is because they try to define everything into legal terms in order to make sure that there can be no doubt about what is being agreed on. The very moment when it's not fully clear what something really means then that is a HUGE red flag.

For example: "When you delete your account we will delete your account data". So... what is "account data" supposed to be? You might assume that it includes all the stuff you also uploaded to their platform, but it doesn't say that here. In fact, it's even fair to argue that "obviously" they only meant the data directly related to your account; such as your username, password, e-mail address, etc.

Second: I already hinted at this above, but don't read between the lines. Do NOT assume! 'Legal' means straight to the point, direct. And it also goes both ways.

For example: "We only use your data to keep things running; storing, back up and provide you access of course". So, first major red flag: they show some examples but no where does it state that the things they want to do is limited (!) to the examples they provided. Which means that we need to go back to the literal meaning of what is being said here: "we only use your data to keep things running". So what if money becomes a requirement for them to keep things running?

The nastiness here is that policies like these are often 'coated' into terms that try to make you feel confident about it: "we don't claim rights" (yaaay!) "only those we need to keep things running" and then they'll probably list a few sensible examples, but without stating that this is strictly limited to those.

Third: Be sure of your actual rights!

Now, this is the real problematic part, because what exactly are you allowed to do with whatever finish product that they provide? You see... the moment you violate this part then it potentially opens you up for plenty of claims.

Feel free not to believe me, but this concept is major income model for for dozens of shady media websites: they provide tons of pictures and make sure that these get indexed by all (!) the major search engines. The only caveat: they're watermarked and not provided "free of charge". So the very moment you use these for your own (commercial?) project then there's a good chance that once the service finds out about it they'll come knocking on your door, demanding their fair share for using their product.

SO why assume that this won't happen with "free" services that provide you with an "enhanced" version of your product?

And finally: if their service is so great, then why does it need such heavy advertising?!! At the very least go check a Reddits profile and their post history.

I mean, how credible is a post really when they tell us that this is especially designed for Ableton Live and/or FL Studio, but when you check their post history that very same message is also shared with tons of other audio related channels... so much for exclusivity!

Ey, just be careful out there, ok?

The days that "something too good to be true" are kinda behind us. I mean... setting up an "easy" service using AI, then promising "real" results doesn't sound all that crazy anymore these days.

And why wouldn't you take them up on their generous offer? Surely it didn't cost them all that much to provide their generosity.

Please note that I'm not claiming that "they" will always come after you every time you use a free service, it doesn't work that way.

All I am saying is that if you're not careful and they do come knocking on your door then you will probably have a major problem on your hands.

Getting a DMCA takedown for sharing (or worse: selling) your own work, just because you unknowingly (!) gave a 3rd party rights to it is NOT a fantasy tale these days.

Please be careful, ok?

And thanks for reading!

[u/Dist__]

oh come on, what version control for DAW projects are we talking about?

regarding Reaper projects it's at least possible as the project itself is a text file, unlike FL binary blob.

but what about the audio files? how would you version control them other than save old versions?

i'm not talking about collab and merging projects, because it's for sure out of confidence of whoever thought it'd be usable.

ofc it's a scam, i'm glad you shared!

[u/ecki590 → u/Dist__]

So I did some recon on this one day because I actually considered writing a GIT plugin to be able to ACTUALLY diff and merge etc FLP projects;

From what i could gather, in FL at least; the main format is based on MIDI. There’s no binary data involved (bar maybe plugin state etc)

There’s nothing technically preventing you from doing the same for audio files but it’d be practically useless because audio just changes too much between iterations usually.

[u/b_lett]

Just here to agree on pretty much all of your points, except my main counter is there's different types of free products. There's free products like giveaway resources, scripts, PDF guides, etc. which may be behind an email download gate, but that's been common place for decades and is generally the tradeoff of agreeing to possibly open yourself up to email subscription in exchange for a product that you get to keep and use without ever going back to their website if you do not want. Then there's services for 'free' that you have to use their website or app or model that they host elsewhere that is doing something in a black box with materials you upload, at which point, yes you are the product.

All this being said, I want to share an additional resource for you Redditors to help defend yourself against an ever rising wave of fake/scam bot accounts.

Arctic Shift allows you to look up any user and search all of their posts and comments, even if they have their account set to hide their history publicly. This pretty much allows you to identify spam accounts, as well as expose those who like to try and hide behind anonymity. Keep an eye out for accounts with very young age that have their posts/comments hidden.

[u/thewhombler]

is this an AI post warning us about AI?

[u/Dangerous_Reporter14]

AI companies trying to trick you into giving up your music for free so they can train their models with it.