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Multiple Beverly Hills PD officers now weaponizing copyright against streaming

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Re: Multiple Beverly Hills PD officers now weaponizing copyright against streaming

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is almost impossible to prosecute police for straightforward violent crimes, I don't think anybody is going to get them on 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?

Re: Multiple Beverly Hills PD officers now weaponizing copyright against streaming

#142
post #3

Earlier 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.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Multiple Beverly Hills PD officers now weaponizing copyright against streaming

#143
post #13

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 h…

A nitpick: "flouting the law".

Exactly. Flaunting the law would be, for instance, waving a copy of law in the face of the person they were arresting.

Re: Multiple Beverly Hills PD officers now weaponizing copyright against streaming

#145

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 ac…

Not sure why I got downvoted for this? I’m just trying to learn.

As for the original (gp) comment, you should check the HN guidelines:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

This (parent) comment falls foul of:

"Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

Re: Multiple Beverly Hills PD officers now weaponizing copyright against streaming

#146
post #18

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.

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.

Re: Multiple Beverly Hills PD officers now weaponizing copyright against streaming

#147
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know everyone is looking for a loophole to prosecute these officers But let’s not rush to make listening to music on the job illegal. That wasn’t the intent of copyright laws that prohibit public performance.

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.

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.

Re: Multiple Beverly Hills PD officers now weaponizing copyright against streaming

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about criminals? Higher standards for them? Maybe that music they play while filming the knockout game, or stuff for Worldstar?

I'm not even sure what you're going off about. But yes, I hold the police to higher standards of professional conduct than I do common criminals.

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.

Re: Multiple Beverly Hills PD officers now weaponizing copyright against streaming

#149
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's trivial: demonetize the video, or extract the standard license fee from the ad revenue. YouTube already knows how to do this.

Re: Multiple Beverly Hills PD officers now weaponizing copyright against streaming

#150
post #144

Why are these people even filming cops in the first place?

...is that... relevant?

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.

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