It's interesting to me that the discussion appears focused on copyright issues, rather than what seems like a potential First Amendment violation by the police.
It’s also strange that HN is so eager to weaponize copyright for their own agenda.
It’s strange that so many people are arguing for using copyright law against the cop, instead of realizing that it’s absurd that we have to think about having videos taken down for background music.
That said, I’m not even convinced that background music can get the videos taken down, since we’ve all been watching these videos on social media platforms for the past few days.
What are they fighting for if they don't stand up for any principles and are willing to do the same bad things their enemies do? Even if they win, they've become a new baddy.
Your analogy is perfect... for showing why this is wrong.
The "shooting back" solution just ends up with a bunch of people injured (likely including random bystanders). The better solution is to get the shooting to stop entirely.
We don't need to find a new interpretation of copyright law to attack the cop, we need to remove the dysfunctional copyright system that started this. Or in your metaphor, I want no-one to get shot rather than wanting to shoot back.
Yea, talk about not seeing the forest for the trees. This story is about the police department, not copyright. Police have been trying for years to prevent people from recording them, and now they are attacking the publishing step rather than the recording step. The intent is clear. They aren't just jamming out to a song in the middle of an encounter--they are intentionally trying to disrupt citizens recording them.
The cops didn't take down the videos based on copyright. A company did, but, that is apparently acceptable because companies can sensor whoever they please (or at least that is the common view on hacker news).
The police are not abusing law. The bots that do the automatic take-downs are abusing the law.
This is not State censorship, because the police are not censoring the videos. People still get to record them, and still get to share them. If they can't be bothered to post somewhere other than Instagram (which is abusing their rights), then the failure to share is on the people doing the posting.
There's nothing stopping the people who recorded the videos from sending them to the news media. The recordings are still getting made.
They're just being removed by some bot from the Instagram feeds. Shame on Instagram.
Facebook, YouTube, Twitter are not just "websites" they are where much of our public discussion happens. If they weren't you would not care that these videos were censored.
This story, fake news, the shenanigans around the election, etc has shown they are bad stewards of this responsibility.
Like it or not, I believe that the "expectation of privacy" argument has been settled in courts. The answer is that if you're in public, you have no expectation of privacy. People have dashcams, cameras pointing out the front of their homes and businesses, and people may be recording random TikTok videos with you in the background.
Police definitely have zero "expectation of privacy" when out on the job and it's a fairly well established legal fact. Additionally, this information was available at the time they decided to become police officers.
Just mentioning that this is in US. Where I live the dashcams are strictly forbidden like also recording the street in front of your house - police would arrive and destroy your equipment.
> Like it or not, I believe that the "expectation of privacy" argument has been settled in courts. The answer is that if you're in public, you have no expectation of privacy.
That sounds awful. Everybody needs to go out even if it is to buy groceries. What that means is that you can be recorded and there is nothing you can do about it.
The alternative is I'm not legally allowed to operate a camera outside unless I get a signed consent release form from everyone who may potentially be in the view of the camera. That doesn't really sound like a better world to me.
The state constantly monitors the citizens, through actions of their own and contracts with third parties. Police deserve no privacy if they don’t give it.
When you put on the uniform and wear the badge, you're accepting some additional powers granted to you by society.You're also giving up some freedoms. I think people should generally be allowed to drink, but I don't think cops should be allowed to drink while on duty.
It is important for a society to be able to monitor the enforcers of the government, i.e. the police. To me, it seems pretty reasonable for people to be able to record the actions of the police in public spaces, so long as its not impeding the ability for the officers to correctly do their job.
Cashiers that make $10 an hour are under more surveillance and public exposure than cops are. And cashiers can't turn off the cameras like cops are able to.
One has the right to any other job. Compare soldiers: generally one probably ought to have the right to unionise, to sick leave, to certain health and safety standards and so on—there are substantial derogations for particular jobs though based on their nature, and the nature of exercising the coercive authority of the state is such that it seems reasonable to demand all sorts of monitoring (when on the job).
I wonder if the copyright owners could do something to stop the officers? What the officers are doing is probably a public performance and those generally requires permission of the copyright owner.
There are some exceptions, such as for playing a radio or TV broadcast at businesses that are under certain sizes specified in square feet. I think the officers were probably playing recording from their phones or using a streaming service, which I don't think the exception cover. And even if those exceptions do apply, the officers are doing this outside--how many square feet is outside?
There was also a 2020 Supreme Court ruling that state governments were not liable for copyright violations because they have sovereign immunity. That sovereign immunity can be taken away by Congress, and I believe there has been some talk of doing so, but for now they are immune.
According to this law firm [1] that does not apply to local governments. They might still be liable for copyright infringement.
> It is almost impossible to prosecute police for straightforward violent crimes,
That's because criminal prosecution is limited to people who have a professional dependency on cooperation by LEOs.
Civil prosecution does not, and while individual officers may have qualified immunity, state/local government agencies, including police departments, have no legal privilege to disregard copyright.
Police and corporations have a special relationship. The corporations sell things and concentrate wealth, the police prevent other people from breaking the rules and redistributing it. This is one reason why the right talks up respecting the police and the sanctity of private property.
Suffice it to say, corporations are happy when the police find ways to let them exercise additional power that doesn't directly threaten their interests. What do they care if there's a fun song going on in the background if it lets police rough people up at their behest?
Do police and Paul McCartney have a special relationship? He owns the copyright to one of the songs the police played.
(For those who remember that Michael Jackson bought the Beatles catalog a few years ago and are wondering how McCartney has the rights, Jackson later sold it to Sony. When the songs became old enough, McCartney attempted to use the recapture provision of the Copyright Act of 1976 [1], 17 USC 203 [2]. Sony fought this, but in mid-2017 they settled and the rights went back to McCartney).
The preferences of individuals are more idiosyncratic, but certainly a wealthy man like Mr. McCartney would have had many more experiences where the police or security protected him vs. commoners that are treated with suspicion.
The officer didn't do anything wrong and just because police are sometimes unreasonable or unethical, it doesn't mean this officer was either. The officer has a right to do whatever he wants with his phone as well. He could be recording with it, or he can play music with it, without recourse. It's his right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that protects him, not the constitution or being an officer.
If someone wants to film him, and then use the power of the Internet to amplify that video to be viewed by many, as is their current right, then they will simply have to do additional work to ensure they are not transmitting the officer's "tunes" to others. Take the time to edit the video provides a means to still publish. Not as easy as clicking submit, but still available as an option, without making a sensationalist claim that music is being "weaponized" by anyone.
People using straw man arguments to "weaponize" language and then place it online where it becomes divisive. That's more of a story than some dude using his phone in a clever way to protect from being video mobbed.
I am aware your comment may be sarcasm, so there's that.
The officer absolutely did something wrong. They intentionally abused copyright to prevent lawful free expression. They should be strung up on First Amendment charges, and the RIAA should come down hard.
A 16 year old working at McDonald's does not have the right to ignore the boss and play a gameboy (I was 16 in the 90's).
Banning music outside cop cars, or over the loud speaker, or on mobile devices while on duty does seem like something they definitely could do and would be within the law.
This would actually fall under a "sync license" which requires approval by both the master rights holder as well as the composition owner which is the artist although it cold be the artist and their publishing company if they have sold shares to them. See "permissions needed" here:
Agreed, but I think it's at least a defensible case if you activate the music specifically and only when you know you're being recorded for a mass audience.
So the officers just claim they always listen to music?
Or that they were simply trying to send a message that they were done with the conversation with someone who is following them around on the job? Which seems to be the case here, honestly.
Or that they didn’t know that a random person with a phone had a massive YouTube following combined with intent to post this video online?
I know everyone wants to stick it to these cops, but let’s be realistic. Normally HN is very against weaponizing copyright law, but the second it feels useful for their purposes we’re flooded with comments from people who want to misuse copyright law as a weapon.
On the contrary, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a de-escalation tactic for dealing with stalkers.
If you watch the video (which is available in the previous article and all over social media, contrary to the narrative) it’s clear that the person is trying to get a rise out of the police officers by following them around and badgering them for content on his social media channels. He even went so far as to watermark the video with his social media handles. It’s clear that the officers are tired of dealing with him and being followed around while trying to do their jobs.
I totally agree with you. There are lots of people that do this to EMS as well. Fortunately, I have HIPPA to get these people away from scenes. Unfortunately, there are a ton of people that have nothing better to do than film/jibe/harangue police and fire/EMS in the course of their duties. We know a lot of them on a first name basis including bday, medical history and how many times we have given them narcan... as we often find them with needles in their arms overdosed.
> Your basic HIPAA obligation when it comes to the press is very simple. Don't divulge any patient medical information to a journalist. Don’t discuss patient specifics within hearing or recording distance, at least not in great detail. Don’t write notes where they can be read. If you have a clipboard with medical information, turn it over so it can’t be seen in a photograph.
> Your HIPAA obligation does not, however, require you to stop me or others from taking images at the scene.
Can you keep them at a somewhat reasonable distance? Yes. Out of the scene entirely? Generally no, barring a hazmat incident or something where you'd need to be getting out too.
Journalists and provocateur's have nothing in common. Journalists, in my experience, are very easy to work with. They understand and appreciate the stress of the situations first responders deal with 24/7 and are keen to keep their jobs generally. That is, filming and then posting someone bleeding out to Instagram is a quick way to get sued. Journalists, in my experience have a common sense of decency that provocateur's lack. There is a massive gap between professionals working a scene and bystanders provoking first responders to get likes.
From the videos (which have not been removed, despite what the headline suggests) it appears the person is following police officers around on the street, trying to provoke reactions while he films, and posting the videos with police names to his Instagram accounts where he sells anti-police merch.
I don’t condone the police behavior, but it’s clear that the person recording is not a hero or even blameless. He’s running a business that profits from anti-police sentiment and promoting it with these videos.
So what you are saying is, the police officer should start following that provocateur around on his day off with a camera? Film the guy who is filming the police officers! I like it!
No, that's a complete misunderstanding of the law on this.
If you antagonize and film a police officer while they are off-duty, that is inappropriate; potentially stalking and harassment. Same in the other direction. The courts have thus far determined there are specific rights to filming police while engaged in their duties; not just for press, but for citizens in general.
Do those "specific rights" include antagonizing a police officer while he/she is performing his or her official duties? I don't think the majority of society will agree with that, just my opinion. At the end of the day, we need to see a few cities that let their entire police force resign due to "woke" culture and watch what happens. People will vote with their feet and wallets.
> So the officers just claim they always listen to music?
> Or that they were simply trying to send a message that they were done with the conversation with someone who is following them around on the job? Which seems to be the case here, honestly.
> Or that they didn’t know that a random person with a phone had a massive YouTube following combined with intent to post this video online?
They can claim those things, sure. But liability (especially civil liability, which is need only be established by preponderance of the evidence, not beyond a reasonable doubt like criminal liability) doesn't go away just because you can present a narrative which is possibly true which would provide an innocent explanation.
Moreover, if a department pays the cost of litigating a couple cases where officers actions in this regard are challenged, they'll have a strong incentive to adopt policies which prevent the dispute from occurring.
I guess I'm triggered by people who feel the need to get in officers faces and video them when they are trying to do their jobs. I'm sure my privilege is showing, but cops don't hassle me because I don't do stupid stuff. I don't deal or use drugs, beat my significant other, steal cars, etc. My last interaction with a cop was getting pulled for not having a front tag on my car. "No prob officer, I'll take care of it." I don't make a thing of it when somebody "disses" me. I don't "not show for court" or anything else that causes me to be flagged for outstanding warrants.
I'm not saying there aren't some abusive, nasty cops out there. But the "nice" cops aren't so effective when dealing with nasty people.
Number 1 way to prevent violence during arrests, or avoid arrest is (Ding Ding!) BE RESPECTFUL.
I think the video evidence people wish to collect is exactly the evidence that you are wrong - that people get arrested (or perhaps brutalized, or killed) despite being wholly respectful.
I drive a beater, which is enough to commonly be pulled over with police starting off with a disrespectful demeanor from them. I've gotten "are you employed, son?" as the beginning interaction even before "do you know why I pulled you over?" multiple times. You can watch them re-calibrate in real time when they get the answer "yes, I'm a software engineer".
So initially I don't present as middle class, but once they get a hint of the fact that I am, you can watch them change their behavior nearly instantly. Other times, they don't ask questions like that and have then for instance lied about my drivers license being revoked, taken it, and then pretended like that never happened later, requiring my dash cam footage to even get them to admit they pulled me over.
My friends of color aren't typically even given the chance to re-calibrate their class position to the police by being asked questions like that.
Both are playing music loudly and projecting it openly. Either it’s allowed for all or allowed for none. I’m good with either decision as long as it’s consistent.
My employer expects me to keep my music quiet (preferably confined to my ears only) when I am at the office. At home I can play it loud enough that the neighbors can hear it, and that's okay. I'm fine with professional officers being held to different standards when they are on duty.
As a potential neighbor: no, it's not ok. If I can hear your music, you are intruding in my space. I need at least one place on the planet where I can get some actual quiet without earplugs.
I hear my neighbors all the time. They start up their cars, play basketball in the street, play music in their garage workshop, etc. There are myriad sounds that happen all day long when you live around other people. If you require silence then you choose not to live in a community.
Just because some noises are unavoidable doesn't make it less inconsiderate to knowingly inflict them on people. Music in particular has relatively long duration, is by nature harder to ignore than many of the incidental noises you mentioned, and is easily contained in headphones.
Your last sentence is a common fallacy: just because I pick a certain set of annoyances on a scale of trade-offs (in this case, the scale of living in an apartment to living in the wilderness) doesn't mean I am required to unquestioningly soak up all those annoyances. If that's your logic, you could never speak up about any problem you could in principle escape from, even if that escape would result in bigger problems. This "leave if you don't like it" approach to criticism, where leaving is very expensive and especially where the solution is very cheap, is also not ok (as it more obviously would not be ok in a political context).
I don’t think the cruiser is subject to your elevated standards.
This is a classic case of double standards. We want one set of standards god people we agree with and another set of standards for people we disagree with.
To avoid this, we institute a standard across the board for everyone, like them or dislike them.
Your entire premise was on what could be heard outside the cruiser.
And yes, it's fundamentally OK to hold police to a higher standard than the general public, including literal children. I'm not sure why this is in question.
You can if the offender, police or not, is on the commission of a crime. You do not however have the wiggle room of reasonable suspicion. If you wish to arrest based on reasonable suspicion, all you need to is attend the academy pass whatever they need you to pass and voila, a newly minted officer who can make arrests based reasonable suspicion.
Right, and if all the officer wants to do is play music, he just has to take off his gun, uniform, and badge. Seems like it’s fair to me. He could even dress like the teenager if he likes.
The police are being obnoxious but they are exploiting the streaming platforms and the rightsholders. That's where the problem is.
It doesn't making any sense to ask the rightsholders to pressure the police to stop using a tactic that only works because the rightholders want it to work.
I think it's more important to focus on is the rationality of enforcing copyright law against music captured in the background of a video. Fair use should be much more broad.
So long as the video isn't produced for profit, the producer isn't unfairly benefitting off the presence of the music in the video, and the quality of the audio doesn't compete with that of a commercial recording, I don't see the issue.
These rules were created specifically because so many people were profiting off the ad revenue of music in videos. There's not a simple way to determine if the audio just happens to be in the background or if the content producer is benefiting from the inclusion of music they don't have rights to.
Yeah, because I know that when I am trying to speak clearly to another human being in an emotionally heightened situation, I always do it while listening to my favorite jams.
The person doing the recording operates multiple Instagram accounts where he tries to provoke reactions from cops who are trying to do their job. He sells anti-police merchandise through these accounts.
It’s not correct to suggest that this was a routine interaction with police.
Despite the headline, the videos are still up on his social media accounts.
Are you serious? You’re telling me you think police officers should go around blasting tunes on a boom box? Seems like a serious lack of professionalism. What a straw man
The videos in question are still online. They haven’t been removed. It’s clear that the person filming is following police around, trying to provoke a reaction for his Instagram accounts where he sells anti-cop merchandise.
> let’s not rush to make listening to music on the job illegal.
I’m wondering if it already is illegal for police officers who wear body cams, even when their routine video is not public record. They are recordings intended for other people, and they also can become public record when use of force is involved, as I understand it.
As far as I can tell, these recordings are from an uninvolved 3rd party who has several social media accounts dedicated to recording the police, from which he sells merchandise.
This isn’t a case of victims being drowned out of rightful conversations during arrests. This is a 3rd party trying to insert themselves into police duties and provoke a response while recording.
His Instagram accounts for these videos promote his anti-cop merchandise. It appears the videos haven’t actually been taken down. I’m sure he’s loving the attention, though.
Cities and counties don’t have sovereign immunity. Sovereign immunity is a holdover from Britain, where you couldn’t sue the ruler or any of their assets. Because states started out viewing themselves as independent countries, sovereign immunity was extended to them by courts. Smaller governments have never had sovereign immunity.
Totally incorrect. The courts didn't and can't grant the States sovereignty. They were sovereign states before entering the union and they relinquished some of their sovereign powers by signing the constitution, but certainly not all of them, or indeed any at all that aren't explicitly enumerated in the constitution.
> Totally incorrect. The courts didn't and can't grant the States sovereignty. They were sovereign states before entering the union and they relinquished some of their sovereign powers by signing the constitution
The original 13 colonies, Vermont and Texas were all independent sovereign states before joining the United States as states. However, the other 35 states were federal territories to which Congress granted statehood. Whatever sovereignty they have was given to them by the United States Congress, acting under the United States Constitution, it did not in any way pre-exist the Constitution.
(Hawaii was an independent sovereign state before being annexed into a US territory after a US-backed coup; to the extent that the present state of Hawaii has "sovereignty", it is unclear what relationship that had to the sovereignty of the independent Kingdom of Hawaii.)
I wondered if we'd see this quibble. The constitution explicitly says that the newly created states are "on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever" which obviously means they must have the same sovereignty. Yes, nearly all of the subsequent states after the first thirteen came into existence as sovereign states and joined the union simultaneously as part of a single process, but those remain distinct events.
Consider Brexit. When the UK wanted to leave, the EU said "we are sad to see you go, please reconsider, but if you really want out, we can't stop you". There was some negotiation over the terms of leaving, but there was never any doubt that the UK had the right to do so. And it was always made clear that if agreement could not be reached on the terms of leaving, the UK would leave anyway, under "default" or "no deal" terms that would be rather unsatisfactory to both sides. (Prior to 2009’s Treaty of Lisbon, the EU treaties didn’t officially permit withdrawal, but almost certainly if some state had sought to withdraw pre-2009, they would have amended the treaties to allow it.)
By contrast, the mainstream position is that US states are not allowed to leave – at least not without the consent of the federal level (Congress), and many say it would even require a constitutional amendment (which would mean the consent of most of the other states would be required as well). So there is a very clear sense in which EU member states are sovereign (they are free to leave) but the US states are not (they have to ask permission to leave, which may well be denied.)
The Civil War really settled this when a group of states tried to leave and their attempt was forcibly suppressed. Now, what complicates the matter is their reason for leaving was to protect the utterly odious and reprehensible institution of race-based slavery. But, there is no necessary connection between the issues of slavery and secession, it is just a historical accident the two got linked.
Some people who opposed secession, and supported the Union side in the War, did so primarily because of their opposition to slavery. And if you imagine some alternative history in which a group of states (whether the same group or a different one) seceded over some other more defensible issue, many of those people might have not opposed secession, or at least not so strongly. But, on the other hand, other people who supported the Union side, their primary concern was anti-secessionism rather than slavery, and they would have opposed secession over some other more defensible issue just as strongly. A secession over some other issue might still have led to a civil war, which could easily have had the same anti-secessionist outcome.
Finally, whatever "sovereignty" the US states have is really at the mercy of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is free to interpret the notion of "sovereignty" as broadly or as narrowly as it wishes, and a future Supreme Court could even turn it into a dead letter, a purely theoretical notion – and since they appoint the Supreme Court, the President and Senate have the ability in the long-run to influence the Supreme Court's positions. In recent times, the Supreme Court has been majority conservative-leaning, and conservatives are probably somewhat more sympathetic to the notion of "state sovereignty" than liberals/progressives are – but, I think the current conservative majority is mostly just a historical accident, the conservative side got lucky, it has had a liberal/progressive majority in the past and could well again at some point in the future.
It certainly looks as though the United States constituted as a federation of sovereign States is slowly de-facto transitioning to a centralized bureaucratic empire. I don't believe that's happened yet, but using the institutions of the old order to institute the new one is a very old trick, just look at the Roman Principate. So if and when that transition does occur[1] I wouldn't be surprised if the courts will be part of the fig leaf used to hide it.
[1] Perhaps it already has, the average Roman had no idea he no longer lived in a Republic.
Sure but with more and more software becoming cloud based, pirating wouldn't help them much with their most commonly used software such as Microsoft Office. Might become an issue for specialty software that has a high price tag due to being useful for only a handful of users.
It also has interesting implications for programs like government-run healthcare where you have zero power if you agree with a decision. At least in theory you can sue a private insurer for breach of contract if they don't cover what they promised.
This is from my American Constitutional History memory from 10+ years ago, so it could be very wrong, but I remember something about if they government sues you, they waive sovereign immunity for a counter suit. If that's the case, just withhold taxes owed in that state and see what happens.
I really don’t think this is the right approach. Plenty of motorcycles have speakers built in, and they’re blasting Creedence all the time. They should be allowed to.
The law is quite capable of distinguishing between someone listening to music for their own enjoyment that happens to be overheard by others, and someone intentionally directing music at strangers for purposes of furthering their own business interests.
What the officers are doing seems more akin to a business use to me, since they are doing it to affect how they can perform their job, so I'm curious if they need to license the songs.
The problem is that the law is not all that capable of distinguishing this. It requires making a determination of intent, which is always blurry. Moreover, police officers will almost certainly claim that they were listening to music for personal reasons rather than trying to intimidate constitutionally protected filming -- and the courts will give them enormous amounts of deference because of their position.
A finder of fact under the law is totally capable of distinguishing this, though you're right that police get lots of deference from both judge and jury. That said, in this case I just don't think the "I was just listening for personal reasons" defense is at all plausible.
Early in the evenin' just about supper time
Over by the courthouse they're starting to unwind
Four kids on the corner trying to bring you up
“Headphones, please” you shout at them “and kindly shut the fuck up”
That sir is illegal. I have to blast Creedence or I can't hear it over the wind noise. I think there are laws about how you shouldn't be able to hear music above a certain volume at a certain distance from a vehicle, but I haven't heard of it being applied to motorcycles.
Punish police from playing music? Seriously, a flesh wound? Let's call this a catastrophic decapitation that demands immediate jail time without possibility for parole like human trafficking and serial-arson.
The subject literally is about two police officers in Beverly Hills who played music. There is no mention of brutality, any violation, or any history of violations.
Two police officers in Beverly Hills who played music for the express purpose of masking lawful recordings of them, such that they're extremely difficult to post online unmuted.
Recording an on-duty peace officer is protected by the First Amendment. Officers intentionally making it difficult to disseminate those recordings should not be taken lightly.
They should just write a law that includes diegetic music in not for profit non-fiction public servant videos in fair use. Then if your video gets flagged you can indicate it is fair use.
> Monsarrat raises a copyright infringement claim against Newman involving the republication of a comment he originally posted in the Davis Square LiveJournal community in 2010
> Newman contends that Monsarrat has failed to state an actionable claim because the allegations in the FAC establish his entitlement to a fair use defense.
> The Copyright Act codifies four non-exclusive factors relevant to the fair use inquiry:
> (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
> (2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
> (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
> (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
> drawing all reasonable inferences in Monsarrat’s favor, the court agrees that the FAC establishes Newman’s entitlement to a fair use defense as a matter of law.
> As to the first factor, it is clear from the face of the FAC [...], that Newman did not publish the copyrighted post for the same purposes for which Monsarrat initially created it.
> Monsarrat submitted the original post to highlight LiveJournal’s harassment policy and demand deletion of other posts on the community website which he viewed as violative. The Dreamwidth reproduction, on the other hand, was created solely for historical and preservationist purposes. See Bill Graham Archives v. Dorling Kindersley Ltd., [...] (finding that the use of concert posters in a book on the history of the Grateful Dead served a different purpose than the original purpose of "artistic expression and promotion" because defendant used the concert posters "as historical artifacts to document and represent the actual occurrence of Grateful Dead concert events"); Stern v. Does, [...] (finding that defendants’ forwarding by email of a copyrighted post “conveyed the fact of the post rather than its underlying message” and “thus had a substantially different purpose than the post itself”)
> Turning to the second factor, the “nature of the copyrighted work,” the balance again tips in Newman’s favor. The post largely repeats the LiveJournal harassment policy, a factual matter
> The third factor, "the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole," "focus[es] upon whether the extent of... copying is consistent with or more than necessary to further the purpose and character of the use."
> see also Haberman, [...] ("[I]t has long been recognized that a commentator may fairly reproduce as much of the original, copyrighted work as is necessary to his proper purpose.").
> This factor is neutral. Newman copied Monsarrat’s post in full, but a full reproduction is consistent with historical and preservationist purposes.
> Finally, the fourth factor, "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work" – "the single most important element of fair use," Harper & Row, [...] – weighs against Monsarrat. There is no plausible market for the copyrighted post and thus no likelihood that Newman’s reproduction could have any harmful market consequences.
Applying that to the case of a police officer playing copyrighted music into a livestream of police officer behavior, it is obvious that the first factor ("transformative use") favors the streamer, who is both documenting and commenting on the behavior of the police; the second factor favors the copyright owner ("music sold commercially"); the third factor may range from neutrality to favoring the streamer, depending on how much music the police officer chooses to play -- in the example here, the streamer is favored -- and the fourth factor favors the copyright owner.
However, there is a compelling case that, no matter how much music the officer plays, that is the appropriate amount for the streamer to record -- first, the purpose of documenting what the police are doing is not served by censoring what they do, but additionally, the more egregious the copying, the more noteworthy the officer's behavior is.
Furthermore, while it is possible that a video of police behavior in which everyone is respectfully silent while Santeria plays might substitute for other means of consuming the song, it is extremely unlikely, which trivializes the impact of the fourth factor. Here ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3ZeUL4fRyk ) is a YouTube video consisting of the song played over a background of the album art. And here ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEYN5w4T_aM ) is another YouTube video, from "TheofficialSublime", of the official music video of the song. It is not plausible that consumers seeking to consume the song for enjoyment would prefer the cop video to either of those, or even that they might be more likely to find the cop video.
Except no record executives are going to sue the Beverly Hills PD because they all live in Beverly Hills and those cops can and will make their lives a living hell.
I would rather have police playing music and have our lawmakers cleanup the cesspooll that is current copyright law.
There is no reason a poloce department could not actually purchise right to some random tune, and play it publically and ligitimately, and that would still get your videos banned.
Invoking copyright law is unnecessary. It is far simpler and more narrow to claim that they are engaging in the willful destruction or concealment of evidence which is a violation of California Penal Code 135 PC [1][2].
How so?
1. There is a video recording. This is specifically mentioned as a protected category.
2. The video recording of officer conduct prior to and during an arrest constitutes material evidence. Recordings of officer conduct have been entered into evidence previously, so this fulfills the requirement that it be evidence.
3. Officer conduct prior to and during an arrest constitutes an inquiry or investigation. This article indicates that actions prior to an arrest constitute pre-arrest investigation [3] and thus fulfills that requirement.
4. Copyrighted music in the video recording reduces the discoverability of the evidence possibly to the degree of non-discoverability when it previously would have been discoverable. This appears to be at least concealment.
5. The accusation that the officers are deliberately playing copyrighted music resulting in the reduced discoverability. This fulfills the willfulness requirement.
1-4 establish that the specific outcomes observed constitute the hiding of evidence. It should be uncontroversial that the evidence has become less discoverable. 5 is then the only material question, which is whether it was done with the intent to cause the concealment of evidence.
Based on the above logic, I think it is fairly safe to say that, if they are doing as claimed, then they are violating California Penal Code 135 PC. The only part in the above logic that seems weak is point 3 as I am not sure if it is actually an inquiry or investigation. If point 3 is invalid, then I think the best thing to do would be to amend it to include officer conduct during pre-arrest investigation with respect to the eventually arrested party. This is a far better option than invoking copyright law as it would be narrowly defined to only target the specific willful action that seems unethical which is intentionally playing copyrighted music to prevent the posting of video recordings.
I’m suddenly interested in making a neural network that can mute a known reference audio from a stream while leaving the surrounding audio in tact. Doesn’t something like this already exist? It seems like Instagram and YouTube could pretty easily leave audio-edited videos online while addressing the copyright violation, without resorting to takedowns or account bans.
You don't need a neural network for this - after song identification, you might be able to stream the right song at the right location, then simply play the song "inverted" - you'll increase background noise but the song won't be identifiable.
It's a very simple DSP operation after song identification. It sounds like a lot of fun actually.
The front end location identification might not have an extant solution, but post identification it should be doable with standard tricks.
This is the cyberpunk future we were waiting for. Who wants to do some DSP?!
If anyone wants to work together on this, we absolutely should. This is a fun problem with a very, very cyberpunk vibe. Plus it's real DSP work!
I don't think this is realistically achievable when you have all kinds of distortion and echoes.
You'd also need a way to identify the exact position on the song and correct that if it was wrong because it was in the refrain.
I was thinking about this - a convolution filter with a long enough window would have a pretty good chance of identifying the right refrain location.
You're right about echoes, but it doesn't need to be perfect - the echoes are already probably below the detection floor for the takedown filter.
Also: If you identify and match up with a refrain, you'd still nullify that refrain. You'd just have to keep on your toes and move to the right location once you realized there was a mismatch. This is a classic cat/mouse "warring filters" problem!
Isn't this how balanced audio cables work effectively? Have two signals, one hot and one cold, invert them against each other and noise would be cancelled out. Replace noise with the song that got identified, and you can cancel it out.
I think if you time your destructive interference to the source of the audio perfectly and cancel out the sound, you haven't gotten the whole picture. As sound travels away from the source it reflects off surfaces and some of those reflections also reach the microphone. Those sounds have traveled a different distance than the original source and are no longer timed with your interfering element. Imagine holding your hand to block your direct view of a person in a house of mirrors but you can still see them in the mirrors. On top of that these reflections won't contain identical audio as the surfaces will absorb different spectral content, so now even if you had infinite perfectly timed anti-signals for each reflection, your anti-signal has spectral content that is missing from the incoming reflected audio and now your anti-signal is a signal unto itself. In order to create a signal that perfectly cancels out all of the copyrighted audio you would have to have knowledge about the form and materials of the physical environment as well as the position of the microphone within that environment.
In the end, the solution does not have to be perfect. Just have to hide the song well enough so the content ID cannot be made. As you say, the sound that will manage to bypass the "inverted balanced-like filter" will be distorted and hopefully content ID is not accurate enough to recognize it.
This won't magically make other audio sources that were present when the recording was made easier to hear, though. Once the recording is made, they're not independent any more. They'll still be masked, maybe even more.
Level-wise they are separate though. It should be easy enough to find the proper gain for the reference recording (how loud does it sound in the video?), and then subtracted, leaving any residual energy in that band from desired sources. Yeah, there will be some gain-matching and spatial artifacts, but probably not enough to make things (voices for instance) unintelligible.
Thats actually where any ML component would naturally sit. It would try to basically determine a "close-enough" deconvolution envelope for the reference recording.
Maybe, depending on the details of your scheme, I guess? If you subtract data, that data is gone, and there's no separate stream of data in the recording for the cops' voices vs. the phone.
We just "play" the song - so it's a spotify call. Ideally anything not aligned with the song meant to induce takedown and the inverted playing of it will still be maintained.
To clarify, we don't want to subtract the data from the feed, we can just nullify it near the microphone.
I think it would be harder to filter on an instagram feed directly, not sure how their api looks or if it's possible?
I see, you're saying play the inverse at the recording time. So I misunderstood, I thought you were meaning doing it to the recording.
This is also complicated, because you need to factor in the relative locations of the original source, your source, and the pickup to make sure the phase is correct.
Yeah it does seem technically within reach and potentially solvable. I was thinking of including song identification when I mentioned an NN as a potential solution. I’m also assuming that there a bunch of other serious complications like resampling and clock skew between the two streams, a changing frequency response over time, etc. You can imagine that if there are audio dropouts or song pauses in the video you’re trying to fix, then naively subtracting the source song will result in accidentally playing the copyrighted song instead of removing it. And it might be trickier if people sing along to the song, etc. I think this situation is quite a bit tougher than the standard trick people use to remove ambient audio by recording with a 2nd mic further away and subtracting it.
That's what I was thinking too. It doesnt even have to be perfect. All it needs to do is mask/distort music to make the algo matching content id not identify it.
Hmmm.... would playing another song at the same time not have similar effect?
It’s definitely similar, though should be a lot easier when one of the things you’re trying to distinguish and remove has a known high quality reference track you can use, right?
No the exact thing you're after, but you may be interested in Spleeter[0] which can pick out individual instruments from a given track with surprising accuracy. Deezer uses it to aid in song recognition. In this case, you could theoretically pick out the whole track and leave everything else or something.
Nah, I am more interested in charging the police officers with DMCA violations and penalties on top of disturbing the peace and purposeful interference with someone exercising their First Amendment rights.
Seriously, we don't need to fix the DMCA. This isn't the problem here. The problem is staring us in the face. Police are empowered by their unions which have a stranglehold on local if not national politics; even that 350 billion in the covid bills to shore up state finances is a little disguised bailout of public employee pension systems.
the simple fact is, public sector employee unions are a threat to the financial and physical security of all Americans. their actions permit their members to provide bad to no service in both schools and police if not general public services over all. Remember, qualified immunity is not just a police issue, it covers all public employees.
Isn’t undermining someone’s ability to use copyrighted material with the intent of causing a video takedown in the first place going to be a lot easier to achieve, and have the same outcome that you want?
It isn’t realistic to think the officers could be prosecuted for DMCA violations, nor is it even that clear cut - they aren’t posting the videos that are being taking down. It takes two parties here to result in the copyright violation.
This is definitely not a good look for law enforcement to fight against public videos this way, even if it’s a clever hack. It is potentially violating the law, and it runs against the very reasons they have body cams. But enforcement won’t be easy and requires proving intent, which makes it even harder. So much simpler to just take away this particular avenue for avoiding public records.
Anyone suggesting that this tactic can be stopped with copyright law is hilariously missing the point. The cops will just find a pro-cop artist and record label to play.
The problem is YouTube celebrities being dicks for likes. The cops are clearly just annoyed at this guy who keeps trying to wind them up to video their reaction. He's not filming them potentially beating anyone up, they're just standing there while he complains about random drivers going past who they're not stopping. Just because the victim is a cop doesn't mean the bully isn't wrong. If he was honestly trying to record police abuse, he could do it better keeping his mouth shut and from a distance without constantly trying to draw them into a stupid argument.
No. The question isn't "is a cop allowed be annoyed with a youtuber?" or "is this youtuber causing net harm to the public good?". The question is: "can a cop interfere with a youtuber's ability to record and publish their actions?".
> No. The question isn't "is a cop allowed be annoyed with a youtuber?" or "is this youtuber causing net harm to the public good?". The question is: "can a cop interfere with a youtuber's ability to record and publish their actions?".
This doesn't interfere with the youtubers ability to record and publish the cop's actions. It only prevents them from profiting from it.
It sort of feels worse to think that the police are interfering with a business simply because that business is anti-establishment.
Sure they can be annoyed by this guy, but they lose respectability by trying to harm his business. The additional powers that police have, must come with some additional responsibility.
Have any of these videos actually been taken down?
I watched them on the guy’s Instagram account, where he’s using them to sell his anti-cop merch.
I’ve been seeing this headline on multiple sites in the past few days, but all of them include the video, which apparently hasn’t been taken down anywhere? Starting to think the person filming is doing so to promote his personal brand, and it’s working.
Weaponization of another human being's emotions against them, a human who in their official capacity is not allowed to defend themself, for the sake of video views, for ad money, paid for by companies willing to exchange money for bulk attention or bulk meta-data. Man, humanity is fucked.
They're not weaponizing copyright, they're weaponizing Instagram's copyright-infringement-avoidance filter. HN really should look into their headline editing policy, because it really does change the context of the conversation in this instance.
The videos are still up on the person’s Instagram account, from which he sells anti-cop merchandise.
As far as I can tell, there hasn’t been a copyright removal. It appears the police were tired of being followed by this guy trying to provoke them to promote his Instagram and associated merch.
If they’re listening to their phone exactly like any other person walking down the street might do, then no.
If they were deliberately playing it over a PA system to a crowd, then yes.
You may not like this behavior, but we really don’t want to set a precedent that listening to music at normal volumes in public spaces is a punishable copyright violation.
The facts in this case make it clear the officer intends for it to be a public performance. The officer should be fired, and the copyright holder should pursue maximum financial damages.
Neither of those things will happen. The system is too corrupt for that.
Publicizing this probably does more harm than keeping it something unique to Beverly Hills PD (aka the Streisand effect). We'll now see officers across the United States employing this same tactic. Hopefully this will finally force some sort of sanity when it comes to automated copyright enforcement online.
If anything, the fact that we’ve all been watching this supposedly forbidden video across social media sites shows that the technique doesn’t actually work.
They're just making it harder (not impossible) to share recorded videos of police actions on social media. This video being publicized by an experienced activist is not sufficient evidence in and of itself that the technique isn't working.
In all these videos, I see entitled live streamers who think it's the duty of the police to answer every silly question they ask. Borderline harassment. Playing copyrighted music doesn't prevent you from recording but it does get the annoying streamers to bugger off so mission accomplished.
You could always offer stalking as a service a la William Gibson's "Followr". Police are sick of streamers, hire someone via app to stream the streamer!
Would you rather the police be aggressive? I'm sure you wouldn't appreciate it if someone showed up at your place of work and harassed you for no good reason other than Internet clout.
It's disingenuous to say we, as the public, have no interest in what the police do while discharging their duties. It is a public office, after all.
And I think the activities of the police should be scrutinized heavily because they have an incredible amount of power and are accorded a very wide latitude. The police are the only people who can legally shoot you and not be tried. They can arrest you and throw you in jail. They can charge you with crimes, invade your house, and smear your reputation with the public. A police officer with a vendetta can absolutely ruin your life if not outright take it from you.
So yes, I think it should be okay for people to video the police going about their business.
A cop playing a Beatles song in the background does not prevent you from recording. These live streamers are not recording the police to hold them accountable. They antagonize officers who can't do anything about it, then upload that interaction online for monetization.
> They antagonize officers who can't do anything about it
The officers can't do anything about it because it's not illegal to film police officers in public while carrying out their official duties. It's a constitutionally protected activity.
Is it at times obnoxious? Sure. (Although in many cases, these videos capture police officers behaving badly, rather than live-streamers behaving badly.)
A lot of First Amendment protected activity is irritating to at least some people. Cursing at police is, in general, a First Amendment protected activity, and I don't suspect a lot of officers appreciate that, either.
But the entire point of the First Amendment is to protect activity that other people might not like.
Precisely my point. The officers are required to sit there and take verbal abuse. I can't begrudge them for taking out their phone and playing a song. It doesn't hinder your ability to record the police and it gets annoying people to leave.
This is great, actually! I'm happy to see the police finding creative approaches to the boneheads who think they have to stream everything. Streaming everything is not a good thing.
The police are hoping that YouTube will flag it for copyright, not the music companies. Once it's uploaded, YouTube will flag it for copyright infringement right off the bat.
There are many posts on HN about invasion of privacy and surveillance. Even if you’re “not doing anything wrong” you should strongly oppose any data collection that could be used against you in the future.
On the other hand we also seem to permit recording in other situations like law enforcement.
Eager to hear how people distinguish these two scenarios. Is it that if you’re a public figure or tax funded then your actions should be open to public scrutiny? I know companies operate in private but still need to make some data publicly available. Is there a balance? What is a good heuristic for how much data we should collect on cops, politicians, companies etc while still respecting privacy.
> Is it that if you’re a public figure or tax funded then your actions should be open to public scrutiny?
Yes, always. Governments are given extraordinary powers by the people. Transparency is necessary to ensure these powers aren't being abused. Otherwise it's easy for corruption to set in.
I'm going to go against the grain here and say I actually quite like this. It's totally non violent. People can still record cops doing their job. They just face challenges posting and sharing such footage on social media. Honestly I'm of the opinion that social media is a net detriment to society, giving social media more fuel for the fire is not a good thing. If there is truly something wrong, then mute the video and it becomes like watching security footage, you can clearly see something wrong and if there's important words then subtitles fill it in, but it's no longer a viral smear campaign and it circulates on the merits of there being something wrong. The original footage can still be published, there's just a higher barrier to publishing it. The cops are also less afraid of being video taped so it's safer for the person recording the footage. All in all it's quite clever and I hope it catches on.
On the other side, I do hope that this eventually leads to reforming the broken copyright fingerprinting systems in place.
This is a general reminder to everyone when engaging in thought and conversation about policy and laws.
Always consider the possible second and third-order effects of your proposal. There will always be people who use (or at least attempt to use) the new policy to their own maximum benefit, possibly not in the intended way at all.
Consider that behavior does not necessarily make them bad or evil, merely agents acting in their own self-interest. Consider then, also, not simply making a list of "if then else" exceptions and bans for these behaviors, but rethinking the entire policy in the first place.
I strongly believe we could all be in a better place civically if we adhere to these simple guidelines before we slap down policies left and right and get trapped in vicious feedback loops where we can't repeal certain laws because they are "grandfathered in".
I think Betteridge’s law of headlines is relevant here; If these videos were being removed by social media, we’d be hearing about the removals. Instead, we have journalists asking “Are cops playing music to use copyright law to have the videos removed?” We then watch the non-removed videos.
I’m not thrilled about this, but I’m not entirely convinced that police officers are trying to get videos taken down by playing tinny, low-volume songs in the background of someone else’s videos.
Does anyone have an example of a video that was taken down because police were playing music in the background?
I’ve been seeing these videos over and over in the past 24 hours on various streaming platforms. It seems that if they were being taken down, we’d be hearing stories about the takedowns, not stories about them listening to music.
Can you propose some other legitimate purpose for their actions? I don't regularly see police officers playing music on their cell phones during the course of their official duties, nor do I see any reason why they should.
Edit: To response to your edited comment, I don't think the problem with this conduct hinges on whether YouTube or other video-streaming services actually do flag them as copyright infringement and filter them. The problem is that the officers are attempting to trigger the sites' filtering algorithms. Whether or not they're successful, it's still a problem.
Seems like they’re trying to send a signal that they’re not interested in engaging in any more conversation. Feels like a de-escalation tactic.
Whether you like them or not, these cops have people obsessively following them around, filming them, and trying to engage them for social media clout. I suspect if the filters had more of a legitimate purpose, we’d be hearing about it in these articles.
It feels like a de-escalation tactic? This is pretty classic passive-aggressive behavior. And aggressive behavior, whether in the form of overt aggression or passive-aggressive tactics, does not contribute to de-escalation.
Recording police in public as they perform their official duties is a constitutionally protected activity, upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, whose jurisdiction covers California. The police are trying to deter and prevent people from exercising that right.
The mature way to send a signal that they're not interested in engaging in conversation is to say, "I'm sorry, I'm not interested in engaging in any more conversation. I've got to attend to the duties of my job. It was nice talking with you."
I do acknowledge that police officers often face special scrutiny from the press and from the public. But that is because they are public servants with the ability to impinge upon people's life and liberty. And the more the public records LEO interactions, the more bad apples they seem to uncover.
In the video (which hadn’t been taken down, contrary to the headlines) the officer does what you suggest: He calmly states that he can’t continue to engage the person recording in the same conversation over and over again.
This doesn’t appear to be a simple case of the police ignoring someone’s first question. The person recording the police appears to be following them around, recording them, badgering them with accusations and taunts, and posting the videos for social media clout.
I can see another purpose for their actions. If they're playing music, then bodycam or external recordings will not capture what is being said by cops and those that they're interacting with. I didn't say it's a legitimate purpose, mind...
Don't exclude the middle: they could be trying to get them filtered, and failing at doing so.
I can easily see a coworker having a "brilliant" idea about copyright mumbo jumbo and a bunch of people buying into it. People try things that don't work all the time.
To escalate this further, couldn't the police (semi officially, or police officers cooperating in private) just create musical pieces themselves to then have even more control over weaponizing them?
You could add a little texture to LRAD tones to make them copyright-able pieces. (... LRAD Orchestra? Copyright Beam? Litigation Laser? Chilling Effect Spray?)
The thing that kills me is this just goes to prove beyomd a shadow of a doubt, that punishment for breaking law is more a function of who you are, and your usefulness to those with the power to levy suit.
Here you have police officers flaunting the law, and yet, record labels have destroyed lives through punitive damages of regular citizens over unintentional sharing.
It just completely undermines and lays bare the hypocrisy underlying it all. One more mail in my anti-IP soapbox I guess.
Invert the waveform of the copy-written music, then sync the music to the video, mix both audio streams causing the copy-written music to be effectively removed.
Another approach here is for the streaming services to tweak their takedown algorithms - if they detect a police officer in the video don’t automatically take down the video. Lobbying for this is probably themost likely to yield results. Police opposition to such a move would expose their real intent at which point shifting the focus back to the police actions becomes viable.
There's potential for a really weird incentive here to find the most insatiable DMCA filers and figure out what their most popular hits are and play those for the most effective weaponization of takedowns, or possibly play multiple songs over some period of time, encompassing the most diverse collection of DMCA filers for the largest saturation you can hit.
Because it's generally a good idea to hold people accountable for their actions, especially when those people have a long and well-documented history of abusing the general public at every opportunity.
Transparency is a dependency of trust. If we can't see what police are doing, then under what pretext can we even remotely trust them to serve our interests?
> have a long and well-documented history of abusing the general public at every opportunity
The macro level statistics do not back this up. I agree with holding people accountable, but this issue has been over-sensationalized strategically by the media for political purposes.
I feel a much more impactful use of energy would be to focus on getting complete transparency from politicians for every decision they make, irrespective of political party. Just look at the mess Cuomo caused in NY...there should be people recording politicians like that all day.
Documenting every executive action taken by government - and ensuring that documentation is available in an open way - is at the heart of a decent society.
