Audacity removes text in privacy policy that discourages use by children

The team behind Audacity has published a new privacy policy. Among other things, the new owner of the audio software has removed a passage that urged children under the age of thirteen not to use the app.

Audacity sets it up what has changed in the updated privacy policy. For example, texts that were unclear have been adjusted and certain sentences should provide more transparency. The text that Audacity is not intended for children under the age of thirteen has been removed. The privacy policy, which appeared in early July, bluntly stated: “If you are under thirteen years old, please do not use the app.”

On GitHub, users responded amazed at this discouragement. It was speculated that this had to do with the GDPR, which stipulates that member states can allow only users aged 13 and older to give consent. Others pointed out that the GPLv2 and GPLv3 licenses did not allow restrictions on use.

The policy now also explicitly states that no additional data will be collected for authorities. The previous policy stated that Audacity “collects data necessary for investigation, prosecution and possible requests from authorities”, which led to a commotion among users. Furthermore, steps have been taken to ensure that no full IP addresses are stored, nor are any data in error logs that could lead to the identification of the user.

In fact, the fuss started in May after Audacity was acquired by Muse Group and soon wanted to implement telemetry passing in the open source software. This plan fell through, but subsequently the proposed privacy policy was criticized. Muse Group now apologizes for the situation.