MuseScore/Audacity employee theatening to destroy a Chinese developer's life
github.com
github.com
Hi,
I'm Musescore developer. You need to takedown this repository: https://github.com/Xmader/musescore-downloader and any other your public repositories with same code. Because you illegaly use our private API with licensed music content. All not Public domain content on musescore.com is licensed by major music publishers (Alfred, EMI, Sony, etc.). Distribute licensed music content from Musescore.com for free you violate their rights.
Therefore, in pre-trial procedure, I suggest you close the following resources:
• https://github.com/Xmader/musescore-downloader (and all your forks and mirrors)
• https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/391931-musescore-downloade...
Otherwise, I will have to transfer information about you to lawyers who will cooperate with github.com and Chinese government to physically find you and stop the illegal use of licensed content.
*Thanks,*P.S. You can always download Public Domain content for free from musescore.com.
Interesting facets:
Illegally using a private API with public documentation?
Somebody seems to have skimped on the authorization in their API.
Pre-trial procedure? Let's use our big words!
"To suggest that taking an extra 15 seconds to create an account is far too much of an inconvenience is out of balance with the millions of dollars and thousands of hours that have been spent for there to be anything to be able to download at all.
"Again, MuseScore is a community that is a balance of give and take and invest and share... not simply take."
The irony is strong.
"When it comes to copyrighted works, the way this is handled is not only not within our control, it also influences the licensing structures and mechanisms we are able to provide on the site as a whole. We understand very deeply the various forms of CC licensing beyond simply CC-0, but are unable to provide such variants on a site that also distributes copyrighted works. These conditions are dictated by rights holders of copyrighted works."
Translation: they cannot let you use CC licenses because the RIAA told them not to.
"Upon further investigation, it became clear that Wenzheng Tang is a Chinese national, but not resident in China. As a guest in his current country, his residency status is predicated on a number of conditions, one of which is not violating the law.
"If found in violation of laws, residency may be revoked and he may be deported to his home country.
"This becomes even further complicated given another repo of his - Fuck 学习强国, which is highly critical of the Chinese government. Were he deported to China, who knows how he may be received."
This is from workedintheory; the comment has been edited.
Edit: the comment contents were deleted. They are still visible via the GitHub edit history. Here's an archive, just in case: https://web.archive.org/web/20210719115639if_/https://github...
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Upon further investigation, it became clear that Wenzheng Tang is a Chinese national, but not resident in China. As a guest in his current country, his residency status is predicated on a number of conditions, one of which is not violating the law.
If found in violation of laws, residency may be revoked and he may be deported to his home country.
This becomes even further complicated given another repo of his - Fuck 学习强国, which is highly critical of the Chinese government. Were he deported to China, who knows how he may be received.
While under normal circumstances, he could apply for asylum in order not to be deported, but this option is extremely limited when found in violation of the laws of the country you are a guest in.
> And just like we’re doing at MuseScore, we’re now planning on significantly improving the feature set and ease of use of Audacity – providing dedicated designers and developers to give it the attention it deserves – while keeping it free and open source.
Glad to see what they really meant was start using their resources to serve legal notices that are borderline blackmail.
And to be very honest, if they were to take down the repo, I would be very surprised if it does have an effect on the immigration status of the author.
This whole saga leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I'd be very careful in dealing with this company in the future, and might even consider dropping my subscription to them (or their parent company).
I’m not a lawyer so I’d be interested to learn ways that this isn’t a violation of California penal code PC 519, very specifically PC 523, and more generally PC 518. If anyone could educate me and help me see how it is not blackmail/extortion, I would genuinely appreciate that.
Penal Code 518 defines the California crime of extortion. The law says that a person commits extortion by:
obtaining property or other consideration from another person without that person’s consent, …and doing so by means of force or fear.
Penal Code 519 says that, for purposes of extortion charges, fear is an emotion generated by certain specific threats. These include the threat to:
…accuse a person, or that person’s relative or family member, of a crime,
…report a person’s immigration status or suspected immigration status.
New York’s law is quite similar, https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/PEN/135.60 but merely a class A misdemeanor.
It does seem that the developer is probably violating copyrights - you usually can’t just post Disney’s IP for others to freely use.
There does seem to be some gray area. Recent cases have been relaxing the grip of CFAA as it pertains to accessing publicly available APIs. 10-15 years ago it likely would have been a violation. Today I genuinely doubt it, especially if it received a knowledgeable judge like Alsup. But I bet a court would look at the copyright issues separately from the API access. While the API access is (probably?) not against the law, the copyright violations would probably stick without some amazing lawyer work. Perhaps you could make the argument that Muse made these public via their API rather than the developer who scraped them but I don’t feel like that would succeed because it’s really two independent faults. Muse failed to secure the IP and the developer didn’t just access, they republished on IPFS.
I had been very critical of the extreme nonsense of Tenacity / Sneedacity. I also felt the general outrage over un-materialized concerns of nebulous “telemetry” was unconvincing. I certainly never expected Muse Group to somehow lower the already low bar down to the Marianas Trench, and yet, here we are.
Here’s what Daniel wrote to the developer, in public:
>> Upon further investigation, it became clear that <developer> is a Chinese national, but not resident in China. As a guest in his current country, his residency status is predicated on a number of conditions, one of which is not violating the law.
>> If found in violation of laws, residency may be revoked and he may be deported to his home country.
>> This becomes even further complicated given another repo of his - Fuck XXQG which is highly critical of the Chinese government. Were he deported to China, who knows how he may be received.
As marcan said, that does appear to be blackmail. I have trouble finding a view of that in which it is not blackmail. Blackmail is a crime at state and federal levels for good reason.
>So, both repositories remain up, for now, not because we are powerless to take it down... it is that the process of exercising this power could very literally ruin the actual life of another person.
The whole thing is based on extremely dubious and misleading interpretations of the various laws involved, and designed to instill fear in the developer in question.
Blackmail is a valid explanation if you don't have another more powerful recourse. But they do, they can just report them to the law.
Is it intended as a threat then? Perhaps. But a threat is still much better than the nuclear option of reporting him.
What else could they do between (a) asking him (which they seem to have done already), (b) threatening him with reporting him, and (c) reporting him? Bend over and take it?
Or that their reporting would be to his country of residence, not to the Chinese, and that the "arrested by Chinese" part is not something they would do, but something his host country might opt to do (extradite him), if he is found to violate their law.
They could also choose to just, y'know, not report them to anything full stop, unconditionally, like any reasonable empathic human would.
That’s blackmail and it’s a felony. Whether the things that Daniel Ray said specifically is blackmail or not, obviously I’d need a lawyer or court to tell me. But it’s not a good look at all.
Are you sure? This seems to be the same category of software as youtube-dl.
As other commenters have pointed out on GitHub, Muse does not appear to have a legal leg to stand on. If they did, they would have simply sent a DMCA takedown notice a long time ago — but that would require Muse to swear under penalty of perjury that they believe the content is really infringing, and they must know it isn’t.
So instead they’re making scary threats and hoping to spook the developer into taking down the repository himself. As you put it, they “don't have another more powerful recourse” and so they’re making threats that they can’t actually follow through on.
Someone who threatens like that wouldn't hesitate to report him either... only if they could.
> At the same time, the company is legally obligated to enforce violation of copyrighted works licensed to them. There will soon come a time where hesitation is no longer possible.
They’re not showing restraint, they’re saying “we’d rather not destroy your life, but we can and will if you don’t comply.”
What are the series of paths someone could take in their lives to care so little about another person's life?