The practice seems to be somewhat wide spread (in the distance between departments case). That might be because it came from a Facebook group or forum where Law Enforcement officers exchange tips. The second is the choice of artist (Swift) who has been in a pretty visible battle with ownership of her music. I suspect that if the officers who use this technique thought about it, they might find that using Disney tunes would be more effective in terms of triggering DMCA takedowns.
What it implies, and is explicitly stated in the referenced video, is that a law enforcement officer is explicitly attempting to deny you your 1st Amendment right (as adjudicated by the courts). While the doctrine of qualified immunity would likely shield them from prosecution, it is still a violation of your civil rights and should certainly merit disciplinary action on the part of the police department.
> A “public performance” of music is defined in U.S. copyright law to include any music played outside a normal circle of friends and family that occurs in any public place.
[0]: https://www.bmi.com/faq/entry/what_is_a_public_performance_o...
If this was a regular citizen with intent to cause copyright strikes it would not be an issue.
The fact that these officers are acting on behalf of the government means that it is arguably the government acting to restrict the distribution of these videos.
In the US, there are strong restrictions on officers acting in a way that could have a 'chilling effect' (legal term) free speech.
It doesn't work now, just like it didn't with the old urban legend. (You can view this video)
Amendments or rights are irrelevant to this. They don't protect you from being so lazy you can't be bother to subtitle something to put it on your favourite media host. Pretty sure the founding fathers didn't design the constitution for that.
In fact it feels like people want the right to easily harass other.
I disagree. It's YouTube that is denying your first amendment right. You have the right to record the officer, but you have no right nor control over what the officer can do. There is absolutely no law against playing a taylor swift song, as distasteful as it may be. He's not stopping the person filming.
There is explicit, and there is reality, and this just doesn't rise to the level of a constitutional violation.
I think the issue is that people are entitled and intoxicated by their "freedom" and publicity. It is not enough if what people say is consumed it must be mass consumed. The freedom of mass publicity is limited by DMCA takedown.
Which I do think is a bad thing, and YouTube should not have automated systems that can be exploited to violate people's rights, but the intention of YouTube is certainly not to violate rights, and the intention of the officer certainly is to violate rights.
Some of the episode Operation Righteous Cowboy Lightning[1] has the central characters singing an argument to each other to the tune of 'Uptown Girl' by Billy Joel, to stop a reality tv show that's following them from being able to air the footage, due to the copyright burden it would cause on them.
Of course reality is far more tragic.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Righteous_Cowboy_Lig...
Apparently the strategy doesn't work.
Yet. Take-downs are carried out somewhat arbitrarily. The point is that there's no guarantee it will continue to be available.
I've seen some videos of people following officers around with a camera and harassing them trying to get some sort of response, so they can post the video on their Instagram/YouTube and make money from ads.
Yes, but under current law, states can ignore the royalty requirement with impunity: "[C]opyright owners suffering infringement by state entities cannot seek the remedies provided by the Copyright Act." [0]
Police departments are almost certain to be held to be state entities, I'd think, and therefore immune from individual personal liability for copyright infringement liability.
And the doctrine of "qualified immunity" might shield the police officer from personal liability for infringement as well.
But I haven't looked into this specific issue.
(Usual disclaimer: I'm an IP lawyer but not your lawyer.)
[0] https://www.copyright.gov/policy/state-sovereign-immunity/
I suppose I’m wondering whether this is an actual potential legal issue for the people making/posting these videos or whether the only issue is the headache of YouTube’s takedown process? If someone posts a video like this how likely is it they’ve infringed on someone else’s copyright? Being careful not solicit legal advice maybe a better question is, what factors would be relevant to weighing whether or not the video infringes on the copyright?
I guess it’s difficult for me to wrap my head around how there could be infringement without the (intentional?) misappropriation of the work.
IMHO the person posting the YouTube video with the Taylor Swift song in background would have an excellent shot at a fair-use defense against any claim of infringement of the copyright in the song or the recording (which could be two different things). See, e.g., https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/
I also strongly suspect that the owner of the copyright(s) in question would think very hard before making an infringement claim in the first place, for fear of the adverse publicity.
"As a general matter, copyright infringement occurs when a copyrighted work is reproduced, distributed, performed, publicly displayed, or made into a derivative work without the permission of the copyright owner." https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-definitions.html
See also a useful FAQ-style article, especially Myth #4: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/intellectual_property_law...
------
> I guess it’s difficult for me to wrap my head around how there could be infringement without the (intentional?) misappropriation of the work.
Intent isn't a factor in determining whether infringement exists (as opposed to whether a fair-use defense is available). "The U.S. Copyright Act is a strict liability statute. In other words, following a “rule” that you believe to be true but which turns out to be a myth will not excuse you from liability for infringement. Under certain circumstances, it is possible to plead “innocent infringement,” but even that only serves to reduce the amount of damages you may owe and does not excuse your infringement." (From the ABA "Myths" article cited above.)
Some scenarios:
A) like here, I just play on my phone. Idea is that it is for myself, say I left my earphones at home, but I just need my tunes.
B) I have my open headphones on, so the music is clearly audible to anyone near by me
C) I have earbuds (no sound for people near by), but they get disconnected and my phone goes on speaker
This is actually a problem I've seen on multiple (more innocuous) occasions: so-called "content-creator" youtubers casually mentioning that they had to throw away clips or rerecord sections during editing after realising there was copyrighted background noise. So I'd say there's definitely a market.
Although I don't really know how often it's going to be necessary. Here I am watching this police officer blast some garbled mess on a YouTube video.
> I don't really know how often it's going to be necessary. Here I am watching this police officer blast some garbled mess
I don't know how it'd fare in this instance but continuous improvements to the Shazam-esque algorithms used by copyright-flagging bots might make this less and less likely to go undetected.
It clearly has been edited to add the subtitles and the watermark to the top left corner and it has fade to black and then fade in their logo and donation link at the end.
In some ways, the whole debate could be more civil if officers faces and voices were blurred.
After all, it's not really the individual officer who is at fault: it's the system that trained the officer, and the department policies that require officers to apply unreasonable force.
There are also many other contributing factors to policing issues in the US. But the argument that it's just "a few bad apples" seems like deflection to me. And if it's not just a few bad apples, then why do we need to publicly shame individual officers who are just doing their job as they were trained to do, in line with department policies? (Doesn't such public shaming just create opposition and resentment, distracting from the issue at hand)
Just saying... in other countries media don't go around posting/shaming people publicly if there is no conviction. (Sure, there is a balance, a few exceptions, and lots of nuance)
Police have no expectation of privacy when performing their official duties, at least in the US, so that should be a non-issue. If they don't want to bring consequences unto themselves for what they're doing, then perhaps they should stop doing such things or think really hard about their chosen career path.
> After all, it's not really the individual officer who is at fault: it's the system that trained the officer, and the department policies that require officers to apply unreasonable force.
At some point you can't just blame "the system" and there needs to be individual accountability. Mayhaps if they like the lack of it and with less bodily risk, they could pursue politics instead.
That "defense" never really uses the full saying, does it? "A few bad apples spoil the barrel" is the full phrase. Without removing the few bad apples, what happens to the remaining apples in the barrel?
That's why we need to bring these "few bad apples" to the forefront. If they're left alone, or treated as part of the group, they'll either spoil the rest of the department, or the entire department will take the heat for just a few of their coworkers abusing their power.
Holding all officers accountable for the actions of few seems in poor form to me, though I have no data to back this up. To me though, it feels like we'll end up polarizing the LEOs that just want to do good work, much like how "Not all men" began.
EDIT: Bummer, it looks like this route is not available to the copyright holder, since states have sovereign immunity against copyright infringement claims. See _Allen v. Cooper_, 589 U.S. ____ (2020).
I would expect most judges to take a very dim view of that argument.
Youtube's algorithms, however, will do what they're written to do...
The only thing it is doing is creating a false positive in YouTube's copyright protection algorithm.
If not being published on YouTube were the criteria for concealment, then wouldn't the person making the recording also be guilty if they simply decided not to post/share it?
Preventing publishing or distribution isn't concealment.
The cop isn't hiding anything.
YouTube, may decide not to publish something, and that's not 'concealing' anything either.
There's almost a 0% chance that if this went to court on copyright claims, that someone playing music while on the job i.e. cop, insurance adjuster, home appraiser etc. is going to be found in copyright violation.
There's almost a 100% chance that if you film people who are listening to music - and that copyrighted music is in your production ... that's it's going to be in violation.
It's not a perfect civil rights situation, because these laws were not designed for that.
It just is what it is.
Probably they will have to make some policy change for this issue.
Generally, yes:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/106
---begin quote---
17 U.S. Code § 106 - Exclusive rights in copyrighted works
Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;
(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and
(6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.
---end quote---
There are some exceptions to this regarding specific permitted performances at 17 USC § 110 as well as the general exception to copyright in fair use at 17 USC § 107, but I don’t see an obvious argument that these or any other copyright exceptions apply to this use for this purpose. (I can see an argument that the police use would render the recording and reuse by the person recording the officer fair use, but that's not an issue here, because we already know that copyright protection schemes by platforms are hostile to fair use.)
Copyright law has a lot of subtlety and courts have to make reasonable decisions. Considering this a violation is not in any way a reasonable decision. Taylor Swift and her record company are not harmed.
Others probably are harmed (the public), but that isn't a copyright thing.
Seriously concerned. Not that I want to defend the cop (o haven’t watched the video), but I feel that if we start enforcing these restrictions we are going to get ourselves into a rabbit hole of no fun.
It probably wouldn't have passed judgment, but it was enough to scare the shop into forbidding its employees to play music at work.
Nobody is going to be charged for playing a song on their phone in public.
That's just not going to happen.
Edit: Wow, it really is considered unlawful. I reflexively hate the idea that playing a song can be considered violating copyright. Yes, I know there's more to it than just that, but wow.
Generally speaking, "public performance" means outside a small social group consisting of friends and/or family.
Someone working on the job, like a taxi, driving a truck, or even in the office, listening to music is not going to be in violation - unless the music were played as part of entertainment for customers/patrons.
The cop will unlikely be found to be in violation.
The person filming in uploading, that production would probably be in violation under the 'Transmission Clause'.
As a Canadian the most prominent in my memory is when the Alameda county sheriff's office outright lied about circumstances involving Masai Ujiri (president of the Toronto Raptors) and one of their deputies at the 2019 NBA Final.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masai_Ujiri#2019_NBA_Finals_in...
For those who’d not know the song: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4′33″
When I recently reported a crime police didn't show up and when I asked them to come for a follow up, they lied that I have not asked anyone to come. The lovely lady even said "We listened to your call and you didn't ask us to come when incident happened."
This is why the quality and success rate of call recording apps varies - it depends how many kinds of configurations the app authors managed to implement support / workarounds for.
It's YouTube and Instagram that are broken. The right to record is preserved. The ability (not right) to distribute is hampered by these organizations.
Why are you trying to diverge the attention spot here?
There's even a strong case for a third problem: copyright itself is a tool fundamentally one-sided and OP.
Three different things can all be true at the same time without detracting from each other.
The problem with focusing on just the police here is that there are any number of circumstances where copyrighted audio will be naturally occurring that the issue will require more than just getting the police to refrain from using the loophole.
I suspect the idea that they can play music in the background to prevent YouTube views is a misconception about how the system actually works.
Also, YouTube is not the internet or the world's preservation archive of video. It's a massive tv station from a massive ad company. I can't imagine there won't be a time where YouTube doesn't start deleting videos that are uploaded to their service just because they are taking up storage. So let's not give YouTube that power.
On one hand there is a personified "evil", which we are very good at handling mentally, dishing out imaginary punishments, righting their wrong etc. On the other hand there is a faceless corporate entity that not only scales massively in their "evil" but also in a way that is not quite intelligible to us right away. And our minds immediately flow to the more graspable object which is the cop, even though the cumulative harm of automated rent seeking is probably greater.
You think YouTube has any incentive in this? If it were up to YouTube they would just bring in rules that give creators ample flexibility while still making sure there's no infringement.
I'm not sure the phrase "and yet" is precise; it seems like these are cause-and-effect. This is power corrupting, with the corruption approaching absoluteness as the power does.
I often wonder what a police force with a zero-tolerance sobriety requirement, on and off duty, would be like. Is there some places in the world with a policy as strict as that and actually enforces it?
Now if a cop was calling you those things and you had all of those weapons and verbally engaged in escalation, i think maybe, you might not survive the encounter.
If the officer really wanted to engage with the protestors, all he had to do was not play the song. The cops care more about protecting themselves than protecting the citizens they aren't even sworn to protect.
https://mises.org/power-market/police-have-no-duty-protect-y...
It is painfully obvious that he did NOT want to do that. The protestors wanted to engage with him and nitpick on whatever order he had given them. They are acting hostile and trying to land the officer in question in trouble.
Yeah he kind a does it to himself by trying to play the music so the video won't end up on Youtube, but I can only see this as anti police folks having bad blood. When the protestors do anything that prevents their surveilance / recording by the police (like in Hong Kong when they were shining blinding lasers into officer's eyes and into recording equipment that was touted as genious use of technology and civil disobedience. Now that a cop tries something similar they are touted as trouble makers and assholes for simply not wanting to be recorded.
Yes it is a public place and you are allowed to record them but you don't have to bring your phone into their face.
Corrupt and destructive individuals should just simply not be admitted into positions of authority. Any position where they can enact their hate and evil onto people, is a disgrace to all of us.
it’s generally allowed. They just get any money from it.
It does allow me to either mute or replace the song if I don't want UMG claiming my video, but most likely it will just completely destroy the audio in the entire video.
(https://youtu.be/7_C14lT4Tzw if anyone's actually curious)
One is a random guy recording the cops then being able to cut it and edit it how he pleases to spread any info they want. Other is full recording of what happened from the officer's point of view.
That, and it also trips up algorithms that scan live feeds (e.g. Facebook Live, Instagram Live) to make live streaming the encounter more difficult.
(citation: my virtual fitness instructor who gets booted off of Facebook Live mid-workout when certain songs are playing)
Anyway, a possible solution would be to swap the audio with a fsk encoding of a timecode plus decentralized hard to take down p2p address in which the users can find the original audio. A browser plugin could automate everything by finding the audio track then play it in sync with no apparent difference from the original.
It’s not a weapon. The officer is using music to prevent videos from being put online. I really don’t see the problem in this.
You do the little you can to enforce rules in the most effective way possible with the least opinions being raised at the methods you used to get there. “How do I do my job and create the least amount of fuss?”
Lots of people here upset with the officer’s tactic, but he didn’t interfere with any right to record. If anyone is at fault it is YouTube for preemptively taking down videos containing copyright that fall within the Fair Use Doctrine…of course that is YouTube’s legal right also, they don’t have to host anything.
If it were my video, and if it were actually important to share online for one reason or another, I would look at it like an opportunity to request a limited license from the copyright holder to post the video…then they would have a great YC application also.
Its that police officers use tactics to prevent recordings of themselves being uploaded and spread. The fact that they explicitly go out of their way to avoid accountability is bad. It is bad because, given the privileges we give police, a strong force of accountability is needed.
This situation is worsened by the fact that this happened at a hearing where police conduct was the subject. There already are doubts in that community about police conduct. If they close ranks, that suggests there is indeed something wrong. Certainly, it means the relationship between police and the community is becoming more and more adversarial, and police aren't trying to bridge that gap. That is simply bad.
I won't argue about the police actions in US. I've said my piece on the matter.
[1] https://github.com/deezer/spleeter/releases [2] https://paperswithcode.com/task/speaker-separation
I haven't tried speaker separation, but it seems there are some models from SpeechBrain on HuggingFace that seem to handle this:
or perps.
A good idea for an experiment. We could try different things in different places (states?) and see what is what.
I suppose the cops playing Taylor Swift could pay the ASCAP mafia or whoever and be above board.
Generally, I'd say that if the public wants to watch all police activity, they'll have to get used to sausage being made. Maybe that's not such a bad thing, life isn't as clean and sanitary as you might think from a cubicle.
I'm glad some precincts burned down last summer. I'm glad a bunch of cops quit, and the ones remaining are all on edge, maybe negative reinforcement works on them too xD
Be careful what you wish for.....
Edit: You may hate the cops, but do you really think that mobs will be more accountable than the police?
Considering cops currently face accountability that approaches 0, yes.
(I do see the post is now flagged but presume that's users disagreeing & abusing the flag button as it's within guidelines; I see what users may disagree with but still don't see what they should be "careful" about)
To the currently politically powerful who disproportionately control what is done by government, no.
To people on the other side of that power imbalance? Well, who do you think the mobs are, and why do they use that mechanism instead of the formal political system to attempt to impose accountability?
Obviously, not a desirable durable state of affairs, the desirable condition is to resolve the power imbalance in the formal systems. But if you can't convince those who control those systems that the systems they control will be forcibly rendered irrelevant if the imbalance in them persists, that is unlikely.
[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/police-officers-convicte...
The officer here was, to my view, the more sane one. He said you could record. If something happened bad enough to justify publishing the video to expose the interaction, a little Taylor Swift music shouldn't stop that dissemination of information. What it can do is dampen Ambient Outrage; a citizen surveillance state of uploading every police interaction out there to social media for Internet Crazies to get angry about because Cops Are Just Evil, where there is no nuance, no context, just outrage and ad dollars for the protestors behind the uploads.
Its memey and sad that this is the lengths officers have to go to. That's it. But if it works, especially in a situation when the officer flat-out says "yeah you can record, that's fine" (good on him!); I think their underlying rationale is perfectly sound.
The fact that he plays the copyrighted track is evidence that his statement about "oh, sure, of course you can record ;)" was not made in good faith. I give the officer zero benefit of the doubt here. Transparency is necessary in all police interactions in public, not just the ones that are "bad enough to excuse a little Taylor Swift." Cops can cry me a river about the internet outrage machine.
The Court of Public Opinion is the court that drives teens to suicide through internet bullying, that accused the wrong man of bombing the Boston Marathon, and killing students at Sandy Hook, even suggesting Sandy Hook didn't happen. That's the internet.
The standards for evidence on the internet are low, and tempers are high. Transparency in "all" public police interactions isn't necessary, just like transparency in "all" doctor interactions isn't necessary in order to judge doctor competency. Its an infuriating distraction; it gives you an excuse to be angry about everything. And moreover; media outlets fuel this outrage machine by purposefully omitting context and nuance in order to drive clicks.
You believe you're using a critical eye to analyze these situations. You're not. This is undeniable, because it is difficult even for the people there, at the scene, to analyze a complex situation like these critically, to have all the information, and understand if the right call was or was not made, let alone someone sitting in a dark room in their basement a thousand miles away getting all of their information from Buzzfeed and The Verge.
Its the job of the Court of Law to look past the Taylor Swift; they're held to a higher standard, just as officers themselves are. That doesn't mean mistakes aren't made. But those mistakes are not an excuse to break the system and raise tensions in every police interaction. This will only lead to more violence.
The issue here is that people have justifiable reason to think that the police themselves are breaking the law, in very brazen ways because the system that should hold them to account has broken down. When the system that maintains order breaks down, there is going to be violence, and trying to contain that violence to just the ones with the badges and guns is not a better outcome.
Reducing tensions at this point must begin with police not supporting every single police act of violence, no matter how obvious. Until that happens, anything that people do will be considered "raising tensions". Since the situation is lose-lose for them, you're the one who's going to have to reconsider what outcome you want.
it would just be harder to publish on youtube itself and there are other social medias
Edit: on reading the rest of this thread I’m more convinced of the dubious legality of the cop’s playing music with the expectation that the recording will be made public
You're convinced by angry internet hobby-lawyers sitting in their Aerons taking a quick break from writing HTML? This is precisely the very low standard of evidence that the officer involved here is trying to short circuit.
It's not the cop's job to do prevent this video from getting onto YoutTube. We have a whole SLEW of legislative channels that could be used to "protect" cops from people recording them. Don't want videos of cops being posted on the internet? Contact your local representative and have them sponsor a law.
Also, in an environment in which trust with the police has been eroded to the point of rioting because people feel the cops are dishonest and hiding bad behavior, admitting on camera "I'm trying to hide my behavior from scrutiny" is about the worst thing you can do, and will get a national publication to pick you up.
The cop has a police union, qualified immunity, and the entire law enforcement segment of the government to protect him. It's assumed that whatever his report said happened is what happened. Protesters only have cameras to prove their side of the story.
(edited for spelling/grammar mistake)
The line is drawn where that footage is distributed and used. Unfortunately, that's less a line, and more of a hazy, impossible to legislate boundary.
A courtroom is, undeniably, the best place. This is where this footage should be used; as one piece of evidence in a very long-term narrative about what happened and who is at fault.
A neutral site whose entire purpose is to document encounters with the police in an almost database-like format? Maybe there too. Transparency does matter. Dissemination can matter, especially in instances of extreme police brutality or corruption, which does happen (especially outside developed nations).
YouTube? Facebook? Twitter? No. Stop making YouTube the single place for all internet video. Stop letting the algorithm make you angry. It won't do it for you. It will surface videos which make you angry. You share those videos. Like a virus, the outrage spreads. What's the plan? Be angry? Tear the system down, or let it tear you down? Defund the police? Get him fired? So, Destruction in any form? All that matters is revenge disguised in a veil of "making the world better", but destruction never ends this way.
You believe you can escalate tension because "the police can take it". Its still escalation, and they can take it. Do you want every encounter with a police officer to mean War? Do you enjoy the fact that officers approach cars pulled over for speeding with their hands on their weapon? Do you think this policy actually makes the world safer, or is it self-defense in an unsafe world that actually increases the probability of a negative outcome for citizens? A scale with one pound on each side is balanced; a scale with a hundred pounds on each side breaks.
What would a law look like that would prevent people from posting videos of police officers on the internet while also complying with the First Amendment?
But you can do it.
And it didn't work. So it was neither original nor effective. There's nothing to laud.
There were people who noted the cleverness of it months ago. This is merely script-kiddie stuff... and ineffective at that.
