Why are so many cops blasting music while being filmed? [video] • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by dahfizz » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 2:54 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #21

jasongill wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 kno…

> Basically standards for public officials are different from normal people.

I agree in general, but don't see how that applies in this case.

I don't see any difference to your parent's example of someone playing music with their car windows down. Driving a car out in public, you don't have an expectation of privacy and can be filmed by any passerby, and "this video could be broadcast on platforms or media that don't filter and that it absolutely, without question, leads to unlicensed reproduction."

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

#32

Post by duxup » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #27

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.

I wouldn't be surprised if a number of departments just as policy outright told them "Don't do this, it makes you look silly / guilty of something."

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

#33

Post by bityard » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

For those who don't want to watch a video for the answer: so that if the video gets posted to YouTube, it will get taken down by Google's copyright system.

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

#34

Post by LinuxBender » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

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…

If that doesn't work, another option may be to link the video to the publisher of the song and provide the city/department name. I am not a lawyer, but hopefully one will chime in that is an expert on media content laws. Some publishers take public broadcasting of their works very seriously. Public broadcasting in this case is not just Youtube, but also the police officer playing for the audience in a public setting. Restaurant and bar owners are familiar with this. They are only allowed to play content for their customers that has been licensed to them and license does not mean a personal spotify account. There are fines for non-compliance. [1] This is not the same as blasting music in your car in case anyone draws the comparison. The officer is playing the music for their audience / customers with the intent of it being on Youtube. In my opinion it should be easy to prove intent in this case.

[1] - https://pos.toasttab.com/blog/on-the-line/a-crash-course-in-...

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

#35

Post by gadders » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 3:09 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #5

gadders wrote: post #2

Spoiler alert: they hope that the copyrighted music stops the video being allowed to be shown on Youtube etc.

It won't affect it's usefulness in recording a crime or misconduct for use in a complaint. Frankly, blasting or playing music during an interaction is unprofessional and people should file a complaint against any officer doing this.

Yeah. I'm not anti-police, but if they're doing that it's not a good sign.

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

#36

Post by JohnFen » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 3:25 PM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #29

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…

In a job I had a couple of decades ago, I did work very much like this (not with music, but along the same lines). This certainly can be done, but your method isn't the way to do it.

There are two primary methods of accomplishing this. The fast and dirty method is to employ a notch filter to exclude all frequencies outside of those used by the human speaking voice (which, fortunately, is a rather narrow frequency range). The second is to perform some fancy mathemetics to be more selective about what you're filtering out and when. There are a number of different approaches to this, but they typically involve autocorrelations or crosscorrelations.

Both methods will cause a degradation of the audio you want to keep (the quick and dirty method will cause more degradation than the sophisticated methods). But the Q&D is often good enough, and is often used by karaoke machines and the like.

Simply trying to subtract out the known signal (as you were doing) is technically plausible -- and is done for certain types of signals -- but is very hard to do effectively. There are too many environmental effects that will distort the signal and make naive subtraction ineffective.

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

#37

Post by antisol » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 3:49 PM UTC

bityard wrote: post #33

For those who don't want to watch a video for the answer: so that if the video gets posted to YouTube, it will get taken down by Google's copyright system.

Thanks

Your Text: 97 bytes, ~2 seconds to read

Youtube video: ~45000000 bytes, 5 minutes to watch.

I'll never understand it.

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

#38

Post by giantg2 » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 4:07 PM UTC

dahfizz wrote: post #31

giantg2 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 kno…

> Basically standards for public officials are different from normal people. I agree in general, but don't see how that applies in this case. I don't see any difference to your parent's example of someone playing music with their car windows down. Driving a car out in public, you don't have an expectation of privacy and can be filmed by any passerby, and "this video could be broadcast on platforms or media that don't…

"you don't have an expectation of privacy and can be filmed by any passerby"

That's not true in every state. Many states require consent, or at least implied consent through notification of recording, or have restrictions on how such recordings can be used/broadcast.

Do stores (or government buildings) need a license to play music? They are public spaces/entities and know that people can hear and record the music. Do you need a license to play music at a family BBQ even though the neighbors can hear it? No.