Re: Babe project - Legal feedback

Paul Brown <[email protected]> Sat, 03 Feb 2018 20:06:42 +0100

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.kde.devel.community,gmane.comp.kde.devel.general,gmane.comp.kde.users.multimedia
Organization	KDE e.V.
Message-ID	<2185355.Wq9ZIrT9hZ@linux-lpbb>

Hello Camilo,

Not a lawyer either and you would need confirmation from a legal expert, but 
you questions are not hard:

> 1- I would like to either have the option to *stream live* the music an
> user is currently listening to to a group of friends. here the music file
> isn't being storaged in the audience computer...
> How ilegal is it? How illegal is to stream live, but privately, copyrighted
> music?  and how illegal is it to stream owns music content to a selected
> group of friends?

This is illegal in most countries, since it is akin to file-sharing. In 
Germany they can fine private users up to € 1,000 euros for this.

Solution: Build in a license-identifier and allow streaming of music only 
under permissive licenses or in the public domain.

> 2- If the stream part wouldn't be enough problem, I'd also like to sync a
> user playlist marked as public to some other friends, that would mean to
> share music files between users, and technically downloading another users
> music files. How illegal is this part? how illegal is to share a music file
> for example, in a conversation in telegram or whatsapp, or even how illegal
> is it to send a mp3 to a friend over an email or even over google drive?

Illegal in most countries because it is actual file-sharing of copyrighted 
material. 

Solution 1: see above and only allow sharing of music distributed under 
permissive licenses.

Solution 2: allow sharing the playlist, only the list, but not the files 
themselves. Excuse me because I don't know much about your software, but, if 
you share the list, surely there would be a way to allow the receiving users 
to compile the list from their existing collection and complete it legally by 
facilitating purchasing of the missing songs from a store or using an online 
streaming service like Spotify (or whatever kids use nowadays).

There is a silver-lining though: If you do implement a license identifier (I 
have no idea how that would work) and users see the additional advantage of 
listening to free (as in freedom) because of the extra features they can 
enjoy, you will be helping the Free Culture movement.

Cheers

Paul
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