If you live in Europe, this restriction may be considered "gatekeeping" and exempted by the Digital Markets Act.

Don't bring attention to yourself by asking for permission. Publish your codec, and if the company cares about this they will send a cease and desist.

If you want the world to benefit from your code but you don't want to be responsible for it, try to adapt the codec to ffmpeg. The ffmpeg project is used to dealing with these matters, and will keep your codec working for eternity.

That's not how the DMA works at all, there is no concept of gatekeeping practices. Instead, the EU Commission designates companies that act as gatekeeper for some services (current list here: https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/gatekeepers-portal_...) which then puts constraints on what they do.

[Pirate flag emoji here]

You could also create a text document instead of a software that details the mechanism used to fool other MIDI decoders and publish only that (for now).

Finally, familiarize yourself with the Art. 6 Software Directive (2009/24/EC) / §69e UrhG — decompilation for interoperability. It may be your ticket for a legal status in Germany/EU.

Eeh, worst case scenario you'll get sued as Microsoft will have no problem with handing over everything they have from your Windows installation information, GitHub accounts, NPM authentication and everything else they own today if the courts tell them to.

You can't just commit crimes on the open internet without really hiding IPs and what not, and expect that to not come back to haunt you eventually. Kind of poor form to suggest otherwise too.

Who said it is a crime, are you a lawyer?

I'm not saying yay/nay if this is a crime or not, but if you think it might be, and you create a new account on GitHub to "be anonymous", you're not taking opsec seriously enough for something you believe might be a crime.

By the way, generally judges or juries would be the ones to decide if something was illegal or not, it's not the lawyers who decide this, in any country I'm familiar with.

Does it matter? What's important is if it can happen or not, and how if so. We already know that MPAA is willing to basically do whatever, even contribute themselves to piracy, if it means they can put people in jail for copying stuff eventually. They themselves also gotten in trouble for copyright violations themselves in the past, so doesn't seem like they're hiding away from breaking a little bit of laws to hunt pirates.

I really hope not. My understanding is that to be "effective" it needs to at least be a form of encryption with a secret key. At least, I'm not aware of any case law that allowed anything less than that.

IMO, "dummy notes" are nothing more than a form of obfuscation. If it's obvious how to filter them out, then I don't think it comes close to meeting the bare minimum of what might count as an "effective technical measure".

Of course, who knows what way the courts will rule if it ever reached that far.

However, Section 1201(f) is designed to allow developers leeway in reverse engineering to make "independently created computer programs" talk to other "computer programs". But this usually distinguishes between talking to a binary (good) and reading a media file (bad).

My guess is the encoder is probably legal under 1201(f) because it’s reverse engineering a DMCA covered application to create new media files for it to use. But the decoder would be illegal because it reverse engineers a DMCA covered application to extract copyrighted media.

And while courts might have ruled that a CAPTCHA might count as a "technological measure" they haven't gotten as far as ruling them as "effective" yet.

But in general yes. The protection scheme doesn't need to be well designed or free of design flaws to count as "effective". But from what I can tell, it does need to be a valid attempt at some cryptographic scheme requiring a secret known only to the copyright holder.

[0] https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/387...

Anti-SLAPP laws exist for a reason, and if corps can bully anyone, how is it that corps routinely lose lawsuits on either side of the docket, hmmmm?

Keep licking that corporate boot, folks. Corps send C&Ds because they cost them all of maybe $100-200 and they're so effective.

There is a long road between "got a C&D" and "am getting sued." Among other things, a judge is going to want to see that both sides attempted to negotiate. If the company sending the C&D just demands that and then tries to file suit, the judge is going to tell them to go back to step 2 and stop bothering him/her.

Folks, stop telling people that if they get a C&D they have to just fold. Good chance you never hear from them again because the cost of suing you is nowhere near the damages they will be able to prove in court.

Sometimes!

Just release the code somewhere, anonymously, it isn't yours anyway.

The thing is, at least in Germany, lawyers are required to carry a liability insurance and in the case th advice ends up being really bad you can hold their insurance accountable.

"Get some small amount of bitcoin and pay a VPS hosting provider in Moldova for a year's service on a $15-per-month equivalent KVM VM and put what you know on there anonymously as static content, then publish the link here."

Not that a sufficiently dedicated nation state federal crime agency or intelligence apparatus probably couldn't trace back to you, but it raises the bar for something like random civil lawsuits from piano companies.

> jumps through a lot of inconvenient hoops to "anonymously" publish code

Something doesn't add up there.

Likewise, if you're able to upload your own custom MIDI (or other) files for your piano to play, then all you'd be doing is sharing a utility that creates mixed audio/MIDI MP3s, which may or may not be used to create files which can then be legitimately uploaded to a piano.

What a cursed format!

I don't understand what the designers were thinking of... 2000 Hz square wave on right channel? Seriously? Nobody would hear something suspicious and nobody would literally see it on spectrum analyzer. Maybe it's holdover from analog days and it was on casette tape before.

Also somebody reverse engineered it before - https://www.kinura.net/mid2pianocd/

So Fable probably just igested it from documentation of this software or some very obscure forum thread somewhere.

If it matters, ask your lawyer.

If it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter.

Or to put it another way, trademarks (you've mentioned two) and copyrights (it's a crapshoot) are complex. And in some jurisdictions (notably the US) anybody can sue anyone for anything.

Your risk aversion is yours, not someone else's. Your financial and legal wherewithal is likewise yours.

That should be the case in all jurisdictions. The justice system exists so that, if I feel treated unfairly, I can go to the state to settle the question whether/how much that is true. If there are issues where I cannot go to court, what am I supposed to do? Go fight you over the issue?

What differs (a lot) is how effectively the system rejects frivolous/unjust cases, how much time/money it costs you to defend yourself against remaining claims, and what systems there are to prevent people from going to court (having affordable care will prevent people from taking some medical claims to court; obligatory car insurance means most fender bender cases get handled by insurance companies, etc(

Or sue your ass…or file a DCMA takedown with Github.

Or all of the above.

The best likely outcome is probably “no.”

Because they have lawyers and that’s what lawyers do.

If you really really want to share the information, you might write a blog post with technical details without linking to any code. Sharing the blog to the “Facebook group” will let you assess community and corporate interest and make an informed decision.

Keep in mind that they could say yes and still do all that bad stuff anyway.

If you do this, I can nearly guarantee they will either never respond as a best case scenario, or they will object.

There is effectively zero chance a company would give you any indication that you have their blessing. Even if they don't actually care one way or another they will make the assumption that giving you any kind of positive response is nothing but a negative for themselves in terms of future liability, etc

The phrase that it is "better to ask for forgiveness than permission" exists because of situations like the one you're in.

Just publish the repo. Don't contact them. If they C&D you, take it down if you don't want to deal with the legal repercussions.

For all the same reasons that it is easy to predict how they will react if you ask, it is easy to predict how they will react if you don't and they find the repo and object. They will send you a cease and desist letter telling you to take the repo down. You will then take the repo down and face no other legal action because it will not be worth their time to make any bigger deal of it than that.

It is better to ask forgiveness than permission.

> The dataset contains about 200 hours of paired audio and MIDI recordings from ten years of International Piano-e-Competition. The MIDI data includes key strike velocities and sustain/sostenuto/una corda pedal positions. Audio and MIDI files are aligned with ∼3 ms accuracy and sliced to individual musical pieces, which are annotated with composer, title, and year of performance. Uncompressed audio is of CD quality or higher (44.1–48 kHz 16-bit PCM stereo).

If your goal is to not pay them money - which you strategically unwisely hinted at with this question - then that's not covered by that exemption, I think.

So from my understanding, adding new music and releasing the tooling for that should be fine, but IANAL.

Frankly, what is or isn't legal doesn't matter as much as your story, as you will be judged by that. It also helps if the story is actually genuine, but that is a somewhat optional requirement all things considered. At least the industry treats it as such.

__

FWIW, as these capabilities trickle down to everyone through LLMs, it is worth asking yourself whether it is worth the trouble of releasing it in the first place.

If anyone can replicate this within a reasonably short timespan, then maybe not.

___

With this stuff in particular, it's also worth considering the business model of the entity.

Does your work pose a relevant risk for their bottom line? If yes, then bad. If no, then shrug.

Is music sold their main revenue channel, or are they just also doing that because recurring revenue is nice to have?

How user-friendly would you want your work to end up as? Would it target the demographic that would otherwise just buy the music?

Truth is that this is all just an elaborate dance.

___

To close the "polish trains" gap in what I just wrote in the last section:

"Is their business model ethical? And is it considered that by the majority, common sense, and politicians?"

> Gymnopedie No 1

Eric (or as he preferred, Erik) SATIE.

Now its likely soiled and I have to throw it away. Doh! I asked it about legality and it went "its almost green" but when googling, reverse-enginnering like that seems very illegal.

The weird thing is in this case, it could have pretty easily gotten the needed info from using the code as a black box, and that is apparently legal!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Satie

Also, when you bought from PianoDisc, did you agree to abide by a certain jurisdiction's laws in your use of PianoDisc? And did you explicitly agree to not share any sort of decoder/encoder in any ToS?

https://store.pianodisc.com/pages/terms-of-service-and-condi...

I don't see details about them mentioning and decoder or encoder.

IANAL. But I think reverse engineering their data structure, identifying a security measure - even one as weak as obfuscation, and publishing code to circumvent it is clearly against your license.

If the security measures exist in plain sight, as they apparently do, are they allowed to be discussed?

I reckon that if OP posts the encoder/decoder software that'd be against some sort of license clause. However in the age of AI who cares about the software at this point? Anyone can prompt their own private version into existence.

Just thinking out loud here. I have not considered AIs use as personal "cheat engines".

This decoy notes scheme seems pretty unethical.

If you sell your decoder or encoder the company will, eventually, kick your butt. Getting money involved raises the stakes.

If you distribute a file that is sold by the company, even if it was transformed by a decoder, the company will, eventually, kick your butt. (A recording or sample of how it sounds post-transformation for demonstration purposes would be reasonable.)

If your software requires files that must be paid for in order to function, then it’s critical that you do not bundle those files with your decoder or encoder. That would be piracy.

How your software was made matters. Did you have access to non-public information about anything involved? It seems like the answer is no, so you might be fine. It sounds like you legally obtained a copy of the file, hardware that runs it, and figured out how they work.

What terms of service did you agree to? While not everything listed may hold up in court (which gets determined BY a court IN a court so don’t think that’s an easy win), the company is surely within their rights to ban you from their online service.

If you want some relevant legal advice, check out the GameCube Dolphin emulator and how the team stays legal. I love learning about how stuff works, so I’ve followed lots of console jailbreaking and reverse engineering news for years. There is a way to do this stuff legally. HN is focused more on finance than hacking. So talk to some hackers (who aren’t trying to break the law).

I saw you ask about contacting the company. If this was a blog, I’d love a followup about what they say and do, but alas I’ll probably never see it. (I guess the worst outcome is that they spend more money on making their proprietary stuff more locked down?) Regardless of what they say, their word is not the law. Know the law, know your rights, and know when it’s safe to stick your neck out and when it’s not. I am obviously not a lawyer.

Oh, and which US state you are in and what they are based in will be relevant.

On a serious note: reverse engineering is legal in australia, even for DMCA violations.

I was under the impression thr prescedant was:

Data Access Corporation v Powerflex Services Pty Ltd (1999), alongside specific provisions in the Copyright Act 1968.

The australian DMCA is called the TPM, it's more aimed at Bypassing, decrypt, or circumvent a digital lock or DRM (Digital Rights Management) protecting copyrighted material.

I do not think that phantom notes are encryption or rights management.

If you do your hosting in australia for your code/software, the US companies will probably have a bad time trying to convince the australian courts that access is the same as copyright infringement.

I'm not a lawyer, but i'll be damned if the 'vibe of it' shouldn't be a legal defense.

For example, remove all code from your training data, and then see if the model can code regardless.

> For example, remove all code from your training data, and then see if the model can code regardless.

Would you accept this weaker version: make up a new programming language (that's guaranteed not to be in the training set), and see if the model (which has trained on programming in existing languages) can cope?