Why is error reporting telemetry bad?
Im really lost at why this is such a big deal. They're not collecting personal info. They are just looking to make the product better.
If I want to help the developers debug their app for free I will decide on my own when and how to do that.
I consider any breach of these desires to be ideologically repugnant and indicative of an extreme disrespect for users of your app.
You say this like you pay for the app. Audacity is free.
Are the documents made by a word processor really mine when the word processor collects my input and saves it to disk?
No, in reality, you have a company that bought the branding of a piece of free software. They didn't make Audacity. They contributed to versions 3.0 through 3.2.1 (which I've, personally, never used). They had nothing to do with the award-winning version 1.3.x, nor anything up to 2.4.2.
I'm not against companies taking on the maintenance of free software projects – provided it's not an Embrace Extend Extinguish ruse –, but throwing money around wouldn't entitle one to claim credit. (I'm not aware of Muse Group claiming credit for Audacity, but if anyone is pulling a stunt like that, I would like to write them a strongly-worded letter.)
And don't forget this company initially tried to ship telemetry-by-default in this software before there was backlash. They retreated to a reasonable compromise, but in no way are they entitled to a single byte of my data. I owe them nothing. I did not compel them to "provide me an app for free," not only because that app existed long before they bought its branding, but also because I had no voice in their licensing policy.
If they want to amend their license to require telemetry, they may do so, and I will stop using the software. But never, ever, as long as I live, will I owe them shit.
nobody is forcing you to use it, but you could still ask a refund as the free program that nobody forced you to use has added something that you don't agree with.
If the point you're trying to make is that I don't have to use the software, I already knew that, but thanks.
If the point you're trying to make is that I'm not entitled to opinions on the matter because I didn't pay anyone for the software, that's horse shit.
You can't trust devs that have such bad judgement that they would even think about doing it opt-out with the opt-in data either.
So it will be tied to a unique identifier.
I do think it makes your statement that cannot, "be linked back to you personally", a little less absolute.
My take: An IP address is usually not, in fact almost always not, PII on its own, but there are circumstances where it is part of a package of data that is PII, and others where it could be considered “circumstantial PII”.
> Natural persons may be associated with online identifiers provided by their devices, applications, tools and protocols, such as internet protocol addresses, cookie identifiers or other identifiers such as radio frequency identification tags. This may leave traces which, in particular when combined with unique identifiers and other information received by the servers, may be used to create profiles of the natural persons and identify them.
from https://gdpr.eu/recital-30-online-identifiers-for-profiling-...
Further support for this interpretation in case the above comes off as "only if combined with other data": https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/r...