Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

scoringnotes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 205 posts

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#141

Post by zxzax »

ratww wrote: post #126
zxzax wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the wording of that email is bad, but your assessment of the situation is incorrect. The threat of legal action is real and it comes from the copyright holders. The company can't do anything about that, they are being threatened by the same copyright holders. Removing the public API doesn't really change the situation.

"Threat of legal action" is MuseScore letting/recommending the copyright holders to send a DMCA, like in youtube-dl . This is even what the repository owners say in the first few comments. Threatening someone with words like "Chinese government to physically find you and stop the illegal use of licensed content" is extremely serious and shouldn't be casually dismissed. This is not "badly worded". This is either a lie…

I think you may have missed some comments farther down the issue chain:

>If MuseScore was not acquired and continued down the current path, it would have been already shut down by now. This is what many people do not understand. MuseScore was going to be shut down if it was not acquired and a plan put in place with rights holders.

>Any site or system of distribution that includes copyrighted works and is done so under agreement with rights holders and according to their conditions will be shut down. This is simply reality.

The "excuse" for those behaviors is that they got to stay in business. I don't agree with all the actions of the rights holders but that's the way it is. If you feel it's better for there to be no Musescore at all, I would advise you to just not use the website. There's lots of other free sites that will host Creative Commons-licensed media. If you're looking for someone to negotiate hard against the rights holders, you would have better luck trying with a bigger company like Apple or Spotify.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#142

Post by redwall_hp »

Conan_Kudo wrote: post #36
Ecco wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but concretely, what did they buy? And from whom?

They likely now own the copyrights held by the primary developers and all the trademark rights to the Audacity name and logo.

This is how the Bukkit disaster happened. Microsoft "bought" the leading Minecraft server software, hiring some of the major developers and I guess not telling anyone else, and some of them were unamused that they were (in their eyes) doing free work for Microsoft when their colleagues got hired. So they rescinded their GPL licensing of their contributions and sent DMCA notices. Which pretty much ended the project, except for Spigot continuing development in the form of patches that the server operator applies with a script.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#143

Post by freedomben »

I'm quite concerned about this. I use Audacity quite heavily and have for many years. It's become an important part of my workflow. I'm not opposed to it in theory but after seeing how they handled Muse Score, I really worry about how Muse Group will attempt to monetize Audacity.

If anybody has insight into the plans, I'd love to hear them.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#144

Post by nicoburns »

robenkleene wrote: post #131
SirSourdough wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not hugely involved in this space so this is just speculation, but my impression is that Blender is relied on by companies more than GIMP. It seems like Photoshop still dominates the space GIMP occupies. So there’s probably just a lot more money being funneled into Blender because a lot more profit depends on it.

I was under the impression that Blender at the big studio level was still pretty niche? (E.g., when a studio switches, it’s still a news story.) If you’re aware of places Blender is being used that generate a lot of profit, I’d love to hear about them. I was under the impression it had more to do with symbiotic relationships between products. E.g., people using Unreal need modeling software (Epic is a sponsor), peopl…

My understanding is while Blender is not the market leader, it does have significant market share, and significant corporate funding. OTOH, commericial usage of GIMP is pretty much nothing.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#145

Post by kbrisso »

epilloud wrote: post #49
hellcow wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UltimateGuitar is a horrible website full of dirty UX to force certain behaviors and block others. You wanted to zoom in on a tab? That's a paid subscription feature! Trying to browse on your phone while at a practice session with your band? Download our app, so we can track you, show you ads and prevent other basic functionality! They're constantly changing these and implementing new paywalls and ways to ruin their…

I fully agree. Trying to use the browser version of ultimate guitar on a 6 inches smartphone is a very frustrating experience. I remember subscribing to the pro version of ultimate guitar about 5 years ago when the app was a must go and in my opinion, it's just been downwards since then

I use it because it does have a lot of songs. The search on it is the worst and the UI has its own back button that is not easy to use. Most good apps on Android let you use the devices back button.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#146

Post by ratww »

zxzax wrote: post #141
ratww wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Threat of legal action" is MuseScore letting/recommending the copyright holders to send a DMCA, like in youtube-dl . This is even what the repository owners say in the first few comments. Threatening someone with words like "Chinese government to physically find you and stop the illegal use of licensed content" is extremely serious and shouldn't be casually dismissed. This is not "badly worded". This is either a lie…

I think you may have missed some comments farther down the issue chain: >If MuseScore was not acquired and continued down the current path, it would have been already shut down by now. This is what many people do not understand. MuseScore was going to be shut down if it was not acquired and a plan put in place with rights holders. >Any site or system of distribution that includes copyrighted works and is done so unde…

No. There are never any excuses for making false accusations, like claiming that a publicly, documented, authenticated, third-party API was being used illegally.

There is also no excuse for sending threats of use of physical force by CCP instead of sending a proper DMCA.

Even if musescore-downloader was doing illegal things (and I would argue it wasn't, since there was no circumvention of anything), the law should be followed by both sides, no excuses. That means sending a DMCA instead of a threat.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#147

Post by class4behavior »

Read the comment from Daniel Ray under the article. In short, Muse Group seems to be planning to continue their established business model for Audacity and possibly other future acquisitions. That is, offering standalone open source software with optional paid cloud services.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#148

Post by ericpauley »

redwall_hp wrote: post #142
Conan_Kudo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They likely now own the copyrights held by the primary developers and all the trademark rights to the Audacity name and logo.

This is how the Bukkit disaster happened. Microsoft "bought" the leading Minecraft server software, hiring some of the major developers and I guess not telling anyone else, and some of them were unamused that they were (in their eyes) doing free work for Microsoft when their colleagues got hired. So they rescinded their GPL licensing of their contributions and sent DMCA notices. Which pretty much ended the project, e…

It should be noted that the authors didn't rescind any licenses, per se. Rather, distributing binary versions of Bukkit was always in violation of the GPL (since the bundled Mincraft code did not have source available). The former author simply started enforcing this. Important distinction since rescinding the license would be a far more legally/ethically dubious action.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#149

Post by ratww »

zxzax wrote: post #136
ratww wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way the issue is worded is not how things work in the civilised world. The affected parties have first to prove or at least argue that the software is doing anything illegal. The repository owners were using a documented, public, authenticated, third party API that was only taken down after the issue was posted. This is not illegal. If there were anything illegal like piracy happening, it should have been resolve…

If you are committing crimes in China, the police (i.e. the Chinese government) will find you and stop you. I don't know why this is a point of contention. That is a fact. If the API was protected in any way, the usage can fall under anti-circumvention. That's how the DMCA works. This is also a fact. We can dispute what actually happened, and we can dispute invididual laws in China (or in EU, or the US), but your ass…

Making a program is not illegal, as long as it's not circumventing anything. If it were, SEND A DMCA. FOLLOW THE LAW.

The API was public, authenticated, documented and intended for third party developers. Even if it was reverse engineered there is still legal grounds for that, as seen by the YouTube-dl situation.

If there was any law-breaking, it would be the people downloading scores and MuseGroup for distributing them.

Repeating what I said below:

Even if musescore-downloader was doing illegal things (and I would argue it wasn't, since there was no circumvention of anything), the law should be followed by both sides, no excuses. That means sending a DMCA instead of a threat.

Re: Audacity Aquired by Muse Group

#150

Post by augustk »

mort96 wrote: post #100
augustk wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still use the old colored icons if you choose Edit -> Preferences -> Icon Theme -> Color.

I know. You might've missed this part: > (And I know you can switch icon themes, but when we're talking about UX, we're largely talking about the out-of-the-box experience. 99.9% of users are going to stick with the default icon pack.)

I agree, for me it wasn't obvious that the icon theme can be changed.
Post reply on HN