I've been meaning to deploy this at my home server, but then with Covid and WFH my need to have it available outside has been reduced dramatically.
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?
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.
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?
