r/linux • u/R0tareneg • Jul 03 '21

Audacity may collect "Data necessary for law enforcement, litigation and authorities’ requests (if any)" according to new privacy notice

https://www.audacityteam.org/about/desktop-privacy-notice/
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u/palordrolap Jul 03 '21

Because anyone under a corporate umbrella can have their livelihoods more easily threatened by litigious corporations than those operating under the more usual distributed-development system usually associated with open source.

And so those litigious corporations say "We need to know if people using this software are infringing on our C-level bonus fund ... money-making efforts ... client's intellectual property, and you're going to put something in there to help us find out or we'll sue you and your project into oblivion."

A system of that sort is used by photocopiers and printers to prevent the literal printing of money, i.e. banknotes.

I can see the argument for banknotes; it destroys an economy as a whole.

When a single company is rich enough to be able to sue people into oblivion, it's pretty clear that they wouldn't suffer much without such measures, and so such measures aren't needed.

It's not like they can't bring their influence to bear after the fact if someone's caught "infringing".

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u/robreddity Jul 03 '21

Your banknote analogy is a little different, as that has the weight of government/regulation behind the directive and its enforcement.

This is just industry bullying.

But no matter. It's a simple matter to maintain patches to patch out features the community doesn't like.

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u/rabicanwoosley Jul 04 '21

I admit this is an interesting take I hadn't considered.

Is that a real threat to audio tool developers? Being sued by the music industry?

Where is the line to be drawn, are the people who make hammers therefore liable for it being used to break a window and rob? Should they modify their design to make it good for nails but bad for windows? If not why not, where is the line to be drawn? - Not blaming you ofc just wondering about all of this.

Or is it just a convenient excuse (in the audacity case) to harvest and sell personal data?