Which copyright law are you talking about? My impression is that streaming a reasonably large collection of copyrighted music (say 10,000 tracks) to a reasonable number of friends (say 10) would not be considered fair use by U.S. courts. The RIAA doesn’t sue people for this because it’s hard to detect and the damages are too small to cover legal costs, not because they accept it as fair use.
In the Betamax case, the Supreme Court said that it would not be fair to use copyrighted works in a way which “if it should become widespread … would adversely affect the potential market for the copyrighted work.” Time-shifting was not considered to adversely affect the market for commercial TV. But surely a tool like Funkwhale, “if it should become widespread,” would adversely affect the music streaming industry?
How is this different from the case of a dude with a big CD collection and a copier who tell his friends "bring blank cds and burn copies if you want anything"?
Who would they sue, how would they monitor the usage and how would they enforce anything?
With torrents and big sites it's easy to show who is distributing what and the distribution can be done by anyone.
This is a decentralized tool that can have its access controlled. The only you could get sued is if you have a really shitty friend who goes to court and brings evidence showing you distributed too many songs.
One difference is that blank CDs cost money. In the Betamax case the cost of blank tapes was one reason why time-shifting was not seen as a serious threat to the market that copyright laws are intended to support, because it made it hard to build up a big library. But in any case, I think the RIAA would say that both the CD dude and the Funkwhale dude are infringing copyright, and U.S. courts would agree.
It’s true that enforcement is a practical challenge. However, the developers of the Funkwhale software are probably not as decentralised as the operators of Funkwhale pods. Copyright holders could potentially get future development shut down on the basis that the service implicitly authorises or encourages copyright infringement, as they are trying to do to youtube-dl. The details depend on where the developers live, but this strategy has worked for some tools like Napster, KaZaA, and some BitTorrent trackers, while failing for BitTorrent clients. Which side of the line will Funkwhale fall on?
So does internet access, electricity to run the servers, disks to store the data. Your point?
> Copyright holders could potentially get future development shut down on the basis that the service implicitly authorises or encourages copyright infringement, as they are trying to do to youtube-dl.
Bullshit. The same argument could be made against a web browser. It's not just because RIAA is making some absurd claim that is yet to be dropped in court that their claims are valid.
Also, even if the RIAA managed to block access to a central point of development, it would be at most a nuisance. Developers of whatever project gets blocked from Github need to do nothing youtube-dl
> this strategy has worked for some tools like Napster, KaZaA, and some BitTorrent trackers. while failing for BitTorrent clients.
Very easy to see how the strategy only works against corporations, not against open source projects. KaZaA got sued, but GnuTella lives on.
My point is that the courts decide what constitutes “fair use,” and based on past decisions, I don’t think they would agree that using Funkwhale to share 10,000 tracks with 10 friends counts. Until a court says otherwise, it’s not FUD, bullshit or absurd to point out that these tools exist in a legal grey area.
And my point is that claiming it to be in a "legal grey area" is the absurd part. Funkwhale is as much of a legal grey area as a web browser and a web server.
In the Betamax case, the Supreme Court said that it would not be fair to use copyrighted works in a way which “if it should become widespread … would adversely affect the potential market for the copyrighted work.” Time-shifting was not considered to adversely affect the market for commercial TV. But surely a tool like Funkwhale, “if it should become widespread,” would adversely affect the music streaming industry?