Audacity Pushes Back on Spyware Claims – PCMag

UPDATE 7/6: Audacity’s owner Muse Group has now responded to the spyware claims via the Audacity GitHub page with a “Clarification of Privacy Policy” post.

According to Daniel Ray, Head of Strategy at Muse, “We believe concerns are due largely to unclear phrasing in the Privacy Policy, which we are now in the process of rectifying … We are working with our legal team to revise our privacy policy to more clearly communicate the above points and our intent.”

Ray then spends time clarifiying each of the clauses in the new privacy policy that caused so much concern, and also points out that this version of the policy “doesn’t actually come into force until the next release of Audacity (3.0.3)” so it doesn’t apply to the current 3.0.2 version people are using.

Responses to the post on GitHub suggest trust between Muse Group and the Audacity community has already broken down. The top comment by TeachandMusic462 is a reflection of this, stating:

“After the telemetry, CLA, and now this, do you expect any trust from the community? MUSE still does not understand open source software at a fundamental level. I am holding out for a fork to gain momentum, and will stay on pre-MUSE Audacity until then.”

Muse Group is expected to publish a revised version of the Audacity privacy policy in the coming days.


Original Story 7/5:
Anyone deciding to download the free and open-source audio editor Audacity is being warned that the software may now class as spyware due to recent updates to its privacy policy.

Audacity is a popular audio editing software tool that’s been around for over 21 years. On April 30, the Muse Group acquired Audacity with the promise that the software would “remain forever free and open source.” However, as FOSS Post reports, last week the Audacity privacy policy page was updated to add a number of personal data collection clauses.

The data collected includes OS version and name, user country based on IP address, the CPU being used, data related to Audacity error codes and crash reports, and finally “Data necessary for law enforcement, litigation and authorities’ requests (if any).”

The personal data collected can be shared with Muse Group employees, auditors, advisors, legal representatives and “similar agents,” potential company buyers, and “any competent law enforcement body, regulatory, government agency, court or other third party where we believe disclosure is necessary (i) as a matter of applicable law or regulation, or (ii) to exercise, establish or defend our legal rights.”

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Source: https://www.pcmag.com/news/audacity-is-being-called-spyware-after-privacy-policy-update