If you live in the USA, the "decoy notes" may be considered an "effective technical measure" from the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act".
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.
> If you live in Europe, this restriction may be considered "gatekeeping" and exempted by the Digital Markets Act.
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.
The nature of these tools is that your post and the device should suffice to replicate so in some sense you have already published the encoder and the decoder.
You are free to interpret this comment as prohibition or as my blessing, but...
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.
They might object to the existence of the software and demand “its destruction.”
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.
> I might just email the company. If they object, I won't make my GitHub repo public.
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.
If I ever owned a self-playing piano, figuring out how I could play custom songs of my own creation would be my top priority. It’s awesome you’ve found some success. Jmpman, what your post is missing is motivation. Why are you doing this and what is your goal?
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.
IANAL, but it might be relevant to others trying to answer what jurisdiction you are in. (US, EU, CN, JP, elsewhere?)
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?
> (k) to interfere with or circumvent the security features of the Service
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.
I am also NAL, but out of curiosity does OPs post detailing the obfuscation transgress any laws?
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".
Would love for sources / prior case law around this? I'm Australian and involved in reverse engineering insulin pumps and CGMs, and we are constantly worried about getting our butts DMCA'd.
my experience with LLMs is that when you get answers to questions you didn't ask that it's repeating something that already exists.
In other words, it probably regenerated a tool from which it was trained on.
If you live in the USA, the "decoy notes" may be considered an "effective technical measure" from the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act".
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.
> If you live in Europe, this restriction may be considered "gatekeeping" and exempted by the Digital Markets Act.
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.
The nature of these tools is that your post and the device should suffice to replicate so in some sense you have already published the encoder and the decoder.
You are free to interpret this comment as prohibition or as my blessing, but...
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.
I might just email the company. If they object, I won't make my GitHub repo public.
This seems like the worst possible advice. It will only bring negative attention and maybe legal repercussions.
They might object to the existence of the software and demand “its destruction.”
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.
> I might just email the company. If they object, I won't make my GitHub repo public.
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.
Have you ever worked corporate before?
It is better to ask forgiveness than permission.
You bought a hardware device and you own that device?
This decoy notes scheme seems pretty unethical.
Find someone in Europe or Australia, or some other place with non-insane digital laws, and have that person publish it as the “developer.”
If I ever owned a self-playing piano, figuring out how I could play custom songs of my own creation would be my top priority. It’s awesome you’ve found some success. Jmpman, what your post is missing is motivation. Why are you doing this and what is your goal?
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.
Personally I’d just do it
Why not publish the methodology in detail and leave it at that?
typo: did you mean Erik Satie?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Satie
IANAL, but it might be relevant to others trying to answer what jurisdiction you are in. (US, EU, CN, JP, elsewhere?)
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?
US.
https://store.pianodisc.com/pages/terms-of-service-and-condi...
I don't see details about them mentioning and decoder or encoder.
> (k) to interfere with or circumvent the security features of the Service
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.
I am also NAL, but out of curiosity does OPs post detailing the obfuscation transgress any laws?
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".
You publish it as the organ-guy piano system for a virtual piano that you've lost the code for.
On a serious note: reverse engineering is legal in australia, even for DMCA violations.
Would love for sources / prior case law around this? I'm Australian and involved in reverse engineering insulin pumps and CGMs, and we are constantly worried about getting our butts DMCA'd.
I'm your lawyer, you should do it
why are you on hn, you are billing in 6 minute increments!
my experience with LLMs is that when you get answers to questions you didn't ask that it's repeating something that already exists. In other words, it probably regenerated a tool from which it was trained on.