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Ask HN: Fable hacked my piano, can I release the results?

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Re: Ask HN: Fable hacked my piano, can I release the results?

#71

Post by walrus01 »

jdlshore wrote: post #38

Don’t ask Hacker News for legal advice. If you really want to know the answer, ask a lawyer.

On the other hand, this is Hacker news, so my first inclination of a response was going to be something like this:

"Get some small amount of bitcoin and pay a VPS hosting provider in Moldova for a year's service on a $15-per-month equivalent KVM VM and put what you know on there anonymously as static content, then publish the link here."

Not that a sufficiently dedicated nation state federal crime agency or intelligence apparatus probably couldn't trace back to you, but it raises the bar for something like random civil lawsuits from piano companies.

Re: Ask HN: Fable hacked my piano, can I release the results?

#73

Post by noduerme »

I'm sorry, I'm hung up on the idea that an LLM could look at a midi file and listen to something and write an improved version with better sustain. Did you feed it other midi files, or was this something it was able to accomplish by parsing raw audio of Piano Man?

Re: Ask HN: Fable hacked my piano, can I release the results?

#75

Post by nerdsniper »

phire wrote: post #30
Giefo6ah wrote: post #15

If you live in the USA, the "decoy notes" may be considered an "effective technical measure" from the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act". If you live in Europe, this restriction may be considered "gatekeeping" and exempted by the Digital Markets Act. Don't bring attention to yourself by asking for permission. Publish your codec, and if the company cares about this they will send a cease and desist. If you want the wo…

> the "decoy notes" may be considered an "effective technical measure" from the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act". I really hope not. My understanding is that to be "effective" it needs to at least be a form of encryption with a secret key. At least, I'm not aware of any case law that allowed anything less than that. IMO, "dummy notes" are nothing more than a form of obfuscation. If it's obvious how to filter them o…

shitty CAPTCHA’s and simple checksums have been ruled to be “effective measures”, so this would probably be too.

However, Section 1201(f) is designed to allow developers leeway in reverse engineering to make "independently created computer programs" talk to other "computer programs". But this usually distinguishes between talking to a binary (good) and reading a media file (bad).

My guess is the encoder is probably legal under 1201(f) because it’s reverse engineering a DMCA covered application to create new media files for it to use. But the decoder would be illegal because it reverse engineers a DMCA covered application to extract copyrighted media.

Re: Ask HN: Fable hacked my piano, can I release the results?

#77

Post by embedding-shape »

Doohickey-d wrote: post #32
Giefo6ah wrote: post #15

If you live in the USA, the "decoy notes" may be considered an "effective technical measure" from the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act". If you live in Europe, this restriction may be considered "gatekeeping" and exempted by the Digital Markets Act. Don't bring attention to yourself by asking for permission. Publish your codec, and if the company cares about this they will send a cease and desist. If you want the wo…

If you don't want to be responsible for it, another way is to just publish it anonymously: make a GitHub that isn't attached to your real name etc, perhaps using a one-off disposable email address, and put it there. Then you don't have to think about what the lawyers think. Worst case it'll get taken down, but by that point it'll likely be popular enough that there'll be plenty of copies. [Pirate flag emoji here]

> Worst case it'll get taken down,

Eeh, worst case scenario you'll get sued as Microsoft will have no problem with handing over everything they have from your Windows installation information, GitHub accounts, NPM authentication and everything else they own today if the courts tell them to.

You can't just commit crimes on the open internet without really hiding IPs and what not, and expect that to not come back to haunt you eventually. Kind of poor form to suggest otherwise too.

Re: Ask HN: Fable hacked my piano, can I release the results?

#78

Post by lukan »

embedding-shape wrote: post #77
Doohickey-d wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't want to be responsible for it, another way is to just publish it anonymously: make a GitHub that isn't attached to your real name etc, perhaps using a one-off disposable email address, and put it there. Then you don't have to think about what the lawyers think. Worst case it'll get taken down, but by that point it'll likely be popular enough that there'll be plenty of copies. [Pirate flag emoji here]

> Worst case it'll get taken down, Eeh, worst case scenario you'll get sued as Microsoft will have no problem with handing over everything they have from your Windows installation information, GitHub accounts, NPM authentication and everything else they own today if the courts tell them to. You can't just commit crimes on the open internet without really hiding IPs and what not, and expect that to not come back to ha…

"You can't just commit crimes on the open internet "

Who said it is a crime, are you a lawyer?

Re: Ask HN: Fable hacked my piano, can I release the results?

#80

Post by embedding-shape »

lukan wrote: post #78
embedding-shape wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Worst case it'll get taken down, Eeh, worst case scenario you'll get sued as Microsoft will have no problem with handing over everything they have from your Windows installation information, GitHub accounts, NPM authentication and everything else they own today if the courts tell them to. You can't just commit crimes on the open internet without really hiding IPs and what not, and expect that to not come back to ha…

"You can't just commit crimes on the open internet " Who said it is a crime, are you a lawyer?

Allegedly commit potential crimes*

I'm not saying yay/nay if this is a crime or not, but if you think it might be, and you create a new account on GitHub to "be anonymous", you're not taking opsec seriously enough for something you believe might be a crime.

By the way, generally judges or juries would be the ones to decide if something was illegal or not, it's not the lawyers who decide this, in any country I'm familiar with.

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