There's been a lot of news in the last 24 hours about how Audacity was acquired by a private firm and how many ITSEC professionals are calling the new version of the application spyware. Here's a good article that explains what's going on with the application.

I use Audacity myself, and it was a great thing when I was starting out and had next to no budget for expensive software. Many aspiring voice actors use it….it’s no frills, free, and it gets the job done.

With the advent of Audacity being acquired by Muse Group and the accusations of ITSEC professionals calling it “spyware”, this will certainly affect the voice acting community.

Here’s some of my thoughts based on the research I’ve done and conversations I’ve had with IT and security professionals.

Is it spyware?

Maybe. It looks like version 3.0 has elements that will harvest data from your computer that the owning firm, Muse Group, has said that they may turn over to the government or sell to 3rd parties, as detailed in the user agreement.

Is that legal?

A bit fuzzy here.

The biggest concern is that most people wouldn't expect an offline desktop application to be used in such a way (as opposed to, say, playing an online game like MtGA where you know you are connecting to other users through a remote server).

Another concern is that the company is based overseas, and may have contacts with potentially unfriendly governments.

It is absolutely illegal to harvest information from minors under the age of 13. Muse Group has tried to make it clear that people under 13 shouldn't use the software, but as of right now they don't have any hard controls on that. It is yet to be seen how much this "strong warning" will shield them from legal proceedings, should they arise.

For adults...still fuzzy. It's definitely shady, as they are still purporting Audacity as "open source".

Do I need to delete Audacity?

That's up to you. It looks as though older versions, prior to 3.0, don't have these "features", so it shouldn't be harvesting any details. For example, I'm running 2.3.3, so with it being 3 years old, it doesn't have this new code.

As long as you are running an older version and don't run any updates on the software, you should be OK, but really, that's a judgement call on your part.

Final Thoughts

Personally, and this is just my opinion, I wouldn't recommend downloading Audacity for any new voice actors out there as of now. It's probably worth it to get a license for Reaper. Maybe this will change in the future.