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.
Multiple Beverly Hills PD officers now weaponizing copyright against streaming
51–60 of 256 posts
Re: Multiple Beverly Hills PD officers now weaponizing copyright against streaming
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, but it will preserve them online for later filtering/post processing.
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?
Re: Multiple Beverly Hills PD officers now weaponizing copyright against streaming
#53Anyone 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 here is much deeper.
Re: Multiple Beverly Hills PD officers now weaponizing copyright against streaming
#54I 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…
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.
Re: Multiple Beverly Hills PD officers now weaponizing copyright against streaming
#55Publicizing 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.
Re: Multiple Beverly Hills PD officers now weaponizing copyright against streaming
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Maybe they should turn it down a bit while on the job? There is no reason the music should to be heard outside their car.
Hmmm, I’d like to see this applied to many a teenager eager to have me listen to their choice of music for free from afar.
Re: Multiple Beverly Hills PD officers now weaponizing copyright against streaming
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 socia…
It's less "copyright law is good" than "copyright law is already being used against us so it might as well be turned around on them a bit".
Re: Multiple Beverly Hills PD officers now weaponizing copyright against streaming
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
It's probably against policy to listen to music while on the beat and definitely when interacting with the public.
Re: Multiple Beverly Hills PD officers now weaponizing copyright against streaming
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 p…
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!
Re: Multiple Beverly Hills PD officers now weaponizing copyright against streaming
#60I 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…
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.