Audacity Rewrites Privacy Rules After Criticism. The company behind the popular sound editor says it has communicated poorly.
At the beginning of this month, the company behind Audacity, one of the most popular open-source audio editors globally, got into a fight with some of its users. Muse Group recently acquired the program, and that company has all kinds of plans for the software.
This also included a new term of use, with some strange rules. For example, the app would no longer be usable for people under 13 years old, and collect usage data was occasionally shared with the headquarters in Russia.
That privacy policy has now been amended and includes an apology on Github. In addition, muse Group states that its legalized terms have been misunderstood and that its good intentions can be inferred from the source of the software itself.
In the update, the company emphasizes that it does not collect any personal data and that data from which someone’s identity can still be derived, such as the IP address provided when checking for an update, is not stored. Also, no additional data will be collected for police or government purposes.
The advice that children should not use Audacity is also disappearing. That was probably because children can’t permit the law to keep their data in the EU or the US. Muse now says that after contacting its lawyers, it has concluded that the rule is no longer necessary. So it wouldn’t collect and maintain enough data to get in the way of this legislation, which in itself is a good sign.
For the average user who feared that Audacity had suddenly become spyware after the acquisition, this will probably be comfortable enough. However, as an open-source program, Audacity has a vocal user base and a set of volunteer programmers who contribute to the source code. Muse Group already managed to oppress them, so that’s the subsequent fire that the company can put out.
