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Why are so many cops blasting music while being filmed? [video]

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Re: Why are so many cops blasting music while being filmed? [video]

#21

Post by giantg2 »

jasongill wrote: post #9
lowercased wrote: post #4

i'd think self-hosting or smaller platforms might be able to circumvent this... I've may have asked before but... Why aren't the cops hit with license violations for public performance of these songs? They likely don't have a BMI license (or... whatever you need).

If you watch the video, they cover this ("Why aren't the cops hit with license violations for public performance of these songs?") - basically, a judge would have to be convinced by the rightsholders that they intended for the music to be heard by a wide audience, which is clearly the opposite of what they want. It's the same reason that you can't be "hit with license violations" for listening to music in your car wi…

There is another element here. The courts have ruled that police actions on duty and in public interactions are consider public and not subject to most privacy laws, including recording them without permission. This means that their actions can be recorded and broadcast (the very reason they are playing this music to avoid that). It shouldn't matter what the intent is if they are a public figure, then they should know that others can film them and that recording can be broadcast. So they know they are being recorded as a public official and that it could be broadcast to a wider audience. Playing a song to try to limit that broadcast is a completely illogical and stupid idea. If they didn't play it, there wouldn't be any copyright music to be concerned with. By playing it, they know this video could be broadcast on platforms or media that don't filter and that it absolutely, without question, leads to unlicensed reproduction.

Basically standards for public officials are different from normal people.

Re: Why are so many cops blasting music while being filmed? [video]

#22

Post by hartator »

duxup wrote: post #10

"so many" How many? I've seen a number of articles on this and mostly the same videos. I feel like this is akin to twitter outrage where I don't doubt a thing happened ... I just can't gauge how much it happens vs. how much coverage there is.

Yeah, the same exact fact got twisted so much that you feel you have a giant wave.

Re: Why are so many cops blasting music while being filmed? [video]

#23

Post by fidesomnes »

lowercased wrote: post #4

i'd think self-hosting or smaller platforms might be able to circumvent this... I've may have asked before but... Why aren't the cops hit with license violations for public performance of these songs? They likely don't have a BMI license (or... whatever you need).

the "I don't know how these things work" post.

Re: Why are so many cops blasting music while being filmed? [video]

#24

Post by mabbo »

It seems not too terribly difficult to subtract the copyright audio from the videos.

Step 1: Identify the audio being played via Shazaam or similar algorithms.

Step 2: Find the overlap between the copyright song and the video's audio, because it won't be a perfect match.

Step 3: Subtract that audio from the video's audio.

It wouldn't be perfect and I'll bet it creates a lot of weirdness if, say, the office sings your Miranda Rights to the same tune as the song, but overall it would work and it would help stamp out this sort of problem. You could make a website that does this for uploaded videos.

Re: Why are so many cops blasting music while being filmed? [video]

#25

Post by [deleted] »

jasongill wrote: post #9
lowercased wrote: post #4

i'd think self-hosting or smaller platforms might be able to circumvent this... I've may have asked before but... Why aren't the cops hit with license violations for public performance of these songs? They likely don't have a BMI license (or... whatever you need).

If you watch the video, they cover this ("Why aren't the cops hit with license violations for public performance of these songs?") - basically, a judge would have to be convinced by the rightsholders that they intended for the music to be heard by a wide audience, which is clearly the opposite of what they want. It's the same reason that you can't be "hit with license violations" for listening to music in your car wi…

[deleted]

Re: Why are so many cops blasting music while being filmed? [video]

#27

Post by giantg2 »

duxup wrote: post #10

"so many" How many? I've seen a number of articles on this and mostly the same videos. I feel like this is akin to twitter outrage where I don't doubt a thing happened ... I just can't gauge how much it happens vs. how much coverage there is.

I don't think it's very common. I think some departments are starting to tell officers not to do this. It's unprofessional and a complaint should be filed against any officer doing it.

Re: Why are so many cops blasting music while being filmed? [video]

#29

Post by jstanley »

mabbo wrote: post #24

It seems not too terribly difficult to subtract the copyright audio from the videos. Step 1: Identify the audio being played via Shazaam or similar algorithms. Step 2: Find the overlap between the copyright song and the video's audio, because it won't be a perfect match. Step 3: Subtract that audio from the video's audio. It wouldn't be perfect and I'll bet it creates a lot of weirdness if, say, the office sings your…

I'm actually really curious to find out whether this would work. It sounds quite easy to test, I wonder if anyone has already done it?

My feeling is that it wouldn't work very well at all, because of things like the Doppler effect shifting the sound as you move the mic closer to or further from the source, and also the sampling on the microphone might be out of phase with the original recording. But the more I think about it, the more I think those might only be minor problems and it would actually work well?

EDIT: And the frequency response of the speaker & microphone are almost certainly non-uniform.

EDIT2: From a quick test, it doesn't even slightly work. Here's what I did:

1. Find a song on youtube

2. Save the song to an MP3 with https://www.bestmp3converter.com (or use youtube-dl - bestmp3converter.com probably uses youtube-dl)

3. Play the song on YouTube and record it using my phone

4. Load the MP3 and the recording from my phone in Audacity as 2 separate tracks

5. Amplify the phone recording until it looks like it matches the MP3 (Effect -> Amplify)

6. Delete some samples at the start of the phone recording so that the 2 tracks visually line up

7. Invert one of the tracks (Effect -> Invert)

8. Add the 2 tracks together (select both tracks, then Tracks -> Mix -> Mix and Render to New Track)

9. Mute the 2 original tracks and listen to the mixed result - it still sounds exactly like the song. It's not even slightly muffled. It sounds the same even if you don't invert one of the tracks. I think this is just much too far away from lining up sample-for-sample to be close to working.

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