New privacy policy is completely unacceptable! #1213
Comments
|
There's no way Debian package maintainers are letting this pass, their policies regarding privacy are pretty strict. |
why is audacity rated higher than pg-13. I'm pretty sure this directly contradicts the license.
so, anyone you call a friend |
I'm pretty sure this is because the GDPR does not allow for children to give consent, although the age depends upon the member state, for example it's 18 in the UK, it's pretty clear whoever wrote it doesn't understand the GDPR. |
|
As @floopfloopfloopfloopfloop points out, this is incompatible with the GPL. Privacy policy:
GPLv2:
GPLv3:
|
|
Fork this or stop using it. There is no need for big brother in a mostly offline audio program. |
|
It looks like a shorter version of Musescore's Privacy Policy. As of recently, they're owned by the same group. |
|
Use firejail --net=none or opensnitch to deny network access. |
|
the audacity to do this.... |
|
The telemetry pull request and now this... They are digging their own grave. |
|
Fork. Fork. Fork. Fork. Fork. |
|
|
Essentially, if it's restricted to people under 13, that just means that data collection cannot be opted out of. |
|
When you can't use the knife, use the fork |
|
Is this will become another The Great Suspender fiasco? |
|
I think its official, Musegroup are intending to kill Audacity. Someone hit me up with a link to the main fork? |
|
At this point Audacity product can't be trusted even if they revert this change. |
|
Keep me in the loop on a fork as well. This update to the privacy policy has lead me to lose what little trust I had left in the owners of this application caring about user privacy. |
|
Fork. Just fork. Or even better, take them to court for the GPL violation. |
|
Yep, the GPL violations is downright disgusting IMO, it's in direct violation to the code that hundreds of people have put in. Seems the best result here is that a fork of audacity comes out that doesn't have all this frankly nonsense in it. That doesn't seem to exist as of yet, most of them are just backup repos of right before the purchase though |
|
Could you guys not try to sneak in stuff to rip our data FOR 5 MINUTES! |
|
The age restriction now in the privacy policy is completely going against the licensing of the software, someone should get a lawyer to represent every Audacity users under 13 years old who used to be able to use it under GPL license but are suddenly prohibited by the privacy policy, and take the issue to court. GPL requires that you allow EVERYONE, including those under 13 years old, to use the software freely. |
|
This completely undermines any remnants of trust I might have had for the current Audacity owner, and I'm not going to continue using this software in the current form. Here's hoping for a well maintained fork instead. |
|
You don't need to represent any user. It's sufficient to grab a past contributor to the codebase. This version with this privacy policy is copyright infringement against all contributors who contributed code under the GPL. Muse (and everyone else) is only permitted to use their copyrighted work according to the GPL.
|
Can the age clause even apply? |
Problem is muse is not bound by the GPL because the last debaucle regarding the CLA. Muse basically got all the main developers to sign that CLA, and in that thread said they were just rewriting smaller contributions to avoid getting them to sign it. At this point a fork is the reasonable option, if muse going to be like this. |
I don't think that all code is yet under the CLA making this a GPL violation if enforced |
I have not looked closely at the commit history, but they said in the CLA topic they were rewriting all the code from small contributions to avoid having to try and get those people sign the CLA. |
they can say that all they like, rewriting the other contributions does not remove the fact that this work is a derivative work of theirs. GPL remains with the codebase - its a feature, not a bug, and it's designed to prevent exactly this scenario. |
Yeah but I don't think that, at this current time, is completed yet |
|
Unfortunate, as Audacity is a big name amongst hobbyist software for being some of the best in it's class. I suppose it's not the first time major projects have undergone a "rebranding" when the parent tries to pull some corporate crap, but it's always unfortunate whenever it's needed. |
Well, the new Audacity owners seem nice! /sarcasm |
|
What's the source for that image? I want to look more into this incident. |
Xmader/musescore-downloader#5 (comment), |
|
This issue is also relevant Xmader/musescore-downloader#130 MuseGroup seems to confirm that threats are company policy and not some rogue, over-eager employees. |
Damn. I've been using MuseScore all this time and just discovered that stuff like this was going on in the background. People should really be made more aware on how MuseGroup behaves. |
Wait, that is ONE YEAR OLD??? What?! |
The article is pretty new, but the github thread here: Xmader/musescore-downloader#5 was opened on February 8, 2020. The fellow who threatened him, workedintheory, is the same guy who wrote this: #1225. The original threat post has since been removed but has been archived on waybackmachine https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://github.com/Xmader/musescore-downloader/issues/5. Like Audacity, MuseScore is also currently having discussions on having forks - Just that the fork should have occurred ages ago given how MuseGroup actually behaves behind the scenes. Who knows, there may be even more incidents, just that they weren't publicized enough. If anything, I think that this proves that MuseGroup is not an organization that should be trusted and we should've started forking the moment they announced their acquisition of Audacity. |
Yep the thread I am talking about. |
|
Marginally off-topic, but MustGroup is evil, and perhaps should consider not threatening people who they think may violated their license with death threats. The good news is that at least the name "Audacity" has another layer of meaning to it |
|
The final revised Privacy Policy was release with 3.0.3 |
Please clarify. Why would I need to opt out if no personal information is gathered? |
|
On first launch of 3.0.3 (or later) you will get this dialog If you get database errors you may see a message like this: Both are commonplace across most apps, websites and operating systems. |
I'd never guess that. Not very intuitive. How about opt-in or a large button that says "opt-out" that is at least easy to spot? |
|
It's not the most intuitive interface, but at least the dialog, when read, is clear. Thanks for that, @AudacityTeam |
The dialog is clear, but you still don't know that you have to open the settings before clicking "OK" if you don't want to send data. |
Yeah, that's pretty sneaky. |
|
The way disabling the update check is implemented in the app update dialog is a clear anti-pattern: Just offe the user the option to "check for updates", "never check for updates" (disables data transmission) and "ask me later" (postpones the decision, does not send any data). |
|
Based on 14 years of user feedback, I expect that the majority of Audacity users will want update checking enabled. For those users that do NOT want update checking, there's a pop up message on first run that tells you how to disable it. |
I have a package manager for a reason, don't want all my software to complain. I run dialy updates anyway. |
"Works for me." No, really. It's not obvious that you can open the dialog BEFORE clicking "OK", just put two buttons there. No need for dark patterns in this software. |
Oh for goodness sake. When did plain English become a "dark pattern"? |
How's it a dark pattern? |
It tricks users into accepting something they don't want. |
This is a disingenuous statement. Small "unsubscribe" links at the bottom of emails, styled so as not to appear as a hyperlink, follows the letter of the law, but is obviously a dark pattern. Despite "unsubscribe" being right there as "plain English". It's clear from looking at the screenshot that Audacity Team doesn't want users to turn off automatic updates, and it resorts to using a dark pattern to achieve this. Why not tell users in plain English: "Update checking is really important to Audacity. We'd prefer if you didn't turn it off", followed by 3 buttons: "check for updates", "never check for updates", "ask me later" . |
|
Does Audacity accept pull requests? Perhaps someone might add those buttons in themselves and fix this problem for everybody. |
Sure, as if people didn't have other things to do too, instead of fixing the fallout from people who obviously ignore every user feedback they don't like. @SteveDaulton Why so hostile? What's so complicated to understand in "avoid dark patterns"? Especially when two people already described a solution that is easy to understand for the user AND neutral in it's implementation. Looking at how members of the Audacity org on twitter have reacted in the past months to criticism it looks like you got a bet to win how fast you can lose every last user of audacity. FWIW: I've blacklisted audacity for my systems, thus have no incentive to support this hostile and toxic environment. Apart from this: I'll NOT sign the CLA for Audacity. And since you require this for any contributions I'm afraid you'll have to look for someone else to write the patch for this UI change. |
|
The email doesn't threaten the guy. Anyone here, please seek some credibility we all ought to. |
and others
For anyone not yet aware the official privacy policy was updated on the 2nd of July and contains some very disturbing things, most notably under data collection is "Data necessary for law enforcement, litigation and authorities’ requests (if any)", I want to ask what exactly does this mean ? this is completely vague and tells us nothing about what is actually being collected.
As far as I'm concerned any data collection is unacceptable unless what is collected is exactly stated and opt-out is provided, for an open source project this is doubly so, I urge all users to remove Audacity from their system until this is resolved, in addition if you're a Linux user I would contact the package maintainer for your distribution as such a license may not be permitted.
The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered: