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The real problem is that the cops face no recourse for blatantly defying a law they're suppose to follow - these are people that are, after all, suppose to enfo

• read_if_gay_ 6y ago
  What law are they defying by playing music? Motives aside, in principle, if people should be allowed to film why should they not be allowed to play music?
  • onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
    In 12 states, you are NOT allowed to film cops. This implies that in the other 38 states, the public has decided you are allowed. Law is subjective by spirit, and playing music so that anyone filming you cannot legally share the film seems like a violation of the spirit of the law.
    • dogsgobork 6y ago
      There are 12 states where you can't secretly record the police, or at least audio record the police, due to wiretap consent laws. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/06/you-have-first-amendment-right-record-police https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/06/you-have-first-amendme...
      • SoylentYellow 6y ago
        The two/all party consent laws are unconstitutional when applied to filming police in public. Unfortunately, not all Federal Appellate Courts have had cases to made that ruling.
    • ScoobleDoodle 6y ago
      In the US the above is not correct. Excerpts from: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/06/you-have-first-amendment-right-record-police#:~:text=Although%20the%20Supreme%20Court%20has,have%20directly%20upheld%20this%20right https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/06/you-have-first-amendme.... > You have a First Amendment right to record the police. Federal courts and the Justice Department have recognized the right of individuals to record the police. Although the Supreme Court has not squarely ruled on the issue, there is a long line of First Amendment case law from the high court that supports the right to record the police. And federal appellate courts in the First, Third, Fifth, Seventh, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits have directly upheld this right. EFF has advocated for this right in many amicus briefs. > The right to record the police unequivocally includes the right to take pictures and record video. There is an added legal wrinkle when recording audio—whether with or without video. Some police officers have argued that recording audio without their consent violates wiretap laws. Courts have generally rejected this argument. The Seventh Circuit, for example, held that the Illinois wiretap statute violated the First Amendment as applied to audio recording on-duty police officers. > There are two kinds of wiretaps laws: those that require “all parties” to a conversation to consent to audio recording (12 states), and those that only require “one party” to consent (38 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal statute). Thus, if you’re in a one-party consent state, and you’re involved in an incident with the police (that is, you’re a party to the conversation) and you want to record audio of that interaction, you are the one party consenting to the recording and you don’t also need the officer’s consent. If you’re in an all-party consent state, and your cell phone or recording device is in plain view, your open audio recording puts the officer on notice and thus their consent might be implied. > Additionally, wiretap laws in both all-party consent states and one-party consent states typically only prohibit audio recording of private conversations—that is, when the parties to the conversation have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Police officers exercising their official duties in public do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy. Neither do civilians in public places who speak to police officers in a manner audible to passersby. Thus, if you’re a bystander and want to audio record an officer’s interaction with another person in a public space, regardless of whether you’re in a state with an all-party or one-party consent wiretap statute, you may audio record the encounter.
  • underwater 6y ago
    They're conducting a public performance of copyright music without appropriate licenses.
    • Hnrobert42 6y ago
      Are you arguing that playing music out loud is illegal?
      • 8note 6y ago
        It is if other people can hear it and you have not licensed it.
      • underwater 6y ago
        A public performance would be in violation of civil law rather than criminal law. But if you're being pedantic you could argue that, yes, it was technically illegal.
        • greyface- 6y ago
          Good thing, too -- if it were a criminal matter, we'd have to rely on them prosecuting themselves.
        • Hnrobert42 6y ago
          I am not being pedantic. I don’t understand your position. It seems you are saying that the police officer is violating copyright by playing music in a public space. Whether or not ASCAP would come after me or not, is it really true that in the US I cannot play music aloud on public property?
          • kube-system 6y ago
            Public performance is an exclusive right of the copyright holder as per the Berne Convention, which is signed by 179 countries. https://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/11.html https://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/11.html https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention Enforcement varies.
  • jmj42 6y ago
    Public performance of a copyrighted work. Unless the officer has a license to play the music for public consumption, it is illegal for him/her to do so.
    • adolph 6y ago
      Is it a criminal or civil offense? If the officer is playing the music incidentally as they go about their day, would that be fair use? I wonder if a de-music service would be feasible so that the copyrighted audio within a video would be detected and suppressed without suppressing the video and other noises.
      • gpm 6y ago
        Willful infringement of copyright is criminal. Incidental infringement is not (also incidental recording of music would probably not be civil infringement either in my honest and not at all a lawyer opinion).
        • jariel 6y ago
          These are ridiculous arguments, essentially implying that 'playing the radio for yourself' is copyright violation. Obviously, it's not. Maybe uploading a video containing such music is.
          • gpm 6y ago
            Public performance is copyright infringement, playing it to yourself is not, playing it to the live streaming video camera is.
            • jariel 6y ago
              Obviously not. If you are playing music to yourself, and someone films you - you are not infringing - the person filming and uploading is - possibly, though that's more questionable.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • thrwn_frthr_awy 6y ago
    It isn't "people", it is the police trying to obfuscate and avoid punishment for misconduct.
  • HarryHirsch 6y ago
    why should they not be allowed to play music? Because it gives the impression that the cops have something to hide when they are triggering the Facebook copyright filter, seemingly on purpose. Caesar's wife must be above reproach.
  • ashtonkem 6y ago
    They’re trying to stop themselves from being filmed and held accountable for excess violence applied against the citizens they’re supposed to protect.
  • munk-a 6y ago
    > Motives aside ... Motives aside isn't a valid reduction of their action, the motives you have when you take an action are very much a part of whether that action is illegal. This is why both murder and manslaughter charges exist as separate crimes in most legal jurisdictions. I don't know if this would be strictly illegal - it'll depend on what, precisely, police officers are required to do w.r.t. civilian oversight and it might require specific legislation to resolve. However, the intent of the police officers is to prevent people from filming, if they are attempting to accomplish this through playing music because more direct actions have been restricted then a court is probably not going to look kindly on their actions. As a parallel if you are barred from dumping hazardous materials on state park land and instead dump that on an interstate that passes through state park land a court will likely find you in violation.
    • dghlsakjg 6y ago
      Filming police activity, and posting the footage has been continuously upheld as a first amendment protected activity. If these claims are true then the police (acting as the government) are attempting to restrict free speech. If the cops are dumb enough to have put this in writing (most cops generally forget that text messages are admissable in court), it would seem that the government is intentionally restricting free speech.
      • HarryHirsch 6y ago
        Apparently, the suggestion of playing music to defeat witnesses was made in some warrior cop training seminar. What to do about that? They are training cops to defeat the constitution using copyright filters, that can't be right.
      • stale2002 6y ago
        No, this is not them restricting free speech in the same way that if the cop walked away he would be restricting anyone's free speech. You can film them all you want, but they aren't forced to stand there. They can go away if they like.
  • spoonjim 6y ago
    “Motives aside” is not how the law works.
  • LocalH 6y ago
    Police should not be allowed to abuse copyright in this way. They're not playing the music out of some sort of self-expression, they're playing the music for the express purpose of tripping copyright filters, thus increasing the likelihood that otherwise legal livestreams and VODs would be muted or deleted. I hope the RIAA comes down hard on this. Just as hard as they came down on Napster, tbh.
  • darig 6y ago
    If the police are public servants, then their amplified distribution of copyrighted material is a public performance. Election campaigns have to deal with musicians denouncing the use of their works all the time, demanding that future use of their copyright works stop; however no DA will stand up to charge anyone with a crime, even after violators habitually break the law. If the musicians have waived those public performance rights and publicly condone or refuse to renounce these acts, they should be charged with conspiracy to tamper with evidence or conspiracy to interfere with an investigation.
  • Veserv 6y ago
    IANAL, but given that they are doing this in California, I would say Penal Code 135 PC [1], the willful destruction or hiding of evidence during a legal proceeding such as a criminal investigation. Police conduct during an arrest constitutes material evidence and thus the intentional playing of music that they believe will prevent those recordings from being produced or discoverable constitutes a willful hiding if not destruction of said evidence. Such a crime may result in up to 6 months in jail per offense. [1] https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/defense/penal-code/135/ https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/defense/penal-code/135/
• taneq 6y ago
  There are at least two real problems here.
• darig 6y ago
  The real problem is you didn't serve them the recourse you blatantly know they deserve - because you are, after all, a coward.
• chongli 6y ago
  Even more fundamental is the adversarial relationship that the culture of policing has developed with the public. The warrior mindset is at the root of so many of these problems. We need to disband all of the police forces and start again with a new culture based around a guardian mindset and community service. It's a similar problem (albeit much less extreme) to what's happening right now in Myanmar with the military. It's so difficult to defuse because the military and the civilians there have such an adversarial relationship due to the long years of dictatorship. The solution in both cases is to reincorporate the warrior subculture (police or military) into civilian life. I just don't know how you achieve that.
  • infogulch 6y ago
    > The solution is to reincorporate the warrior subculture into civilian life. I have friends that believe that the only solution is starting a war just to provide the cultural outlet. Destroying warrior culture altogether is not an answer either (and a foolish idea besides), but I hope we can discover some other answer before the next war. Aliens maybe?
    • toomanybeersies 6y ago
      Reducing the number of military veterans who become cops would be a good place to start.
      • 23iofj 6y ago
        Reducing the number of military veterans period would be a good place to start. The USA does not need a massive standing peacetime army/navy/airforce. There's a real human cost too -- we kill more of our own soldiers in accidents than in actual combat. Cut personnel in each branch by half, significantly consolidate bases, and modestly increase pay for the people who remain. Then, redirect the enormous savings to actually useful jobs programs. Build roads instead of running around in circles in rural Alabama/North Carolina for four years.
        • 6y ago
• ryandrake 6y ago
  Exactly. I'm astounded at the number of replies here who think, at its root, this is about copyright or the DMCA. This is about police departments, who after exhausting all efforts to try to prevent people from recording them, have moved on to trying these kind of hacks to prevent people from publishing said recordings. They're not just innocently jamming out to a random song in the middle of a police encounter. They're clearly doing it with the intent to disrupt citizens from documenting and publishing their actions.
• anonymouse008 6y ago
  I must be the only idiot who thinks this is the most genius thing I’ve ever seen. It’s very Sun Tzu to me — this group (from the few I’ve interacted with) feels beat down by censorship, so decides to use their ‘enemy’s’ strength... I’ll just admire it for a minute then adjust accordingly.
  • betenoire 6y ago
    I also found it kinda funny. And even more so that the cop is playing Sublime, and had to skip right past "April 29, 1992 (Miami)" (a song about participating in the Rodney King riots) to get to Santeria, assuming he has the album. It is obnoxious though, we are expected to act in good faith with the ocifers, but they don't do the same.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• 8note 6y ago
  Does it have to be a cop for it to be bad? Playing music to make a public space unrecordable seems like a flaw in how the public space works
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• hinkley 6y ago
  Disband internal affairs, and hand all investigations over to the FBI.
• dylan604 6y ago
  ASCAP & BMI need to get involved and sue the police for illegally using music in a performance/live event/concert without the proper licensing. The videos people take are just evidence of the police's flagrant violations of the music licensing.
• dang 6y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26083214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26083214.
  • onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
    Curious - I usually see you give reasons for doing stuff like this - I'm wondering why this was detached. Thanks!
    • dang 6y ago
      Two reasons: (1) we try to prune subthreads when they get too massive; and (2) this one was a step in a generic direction (i.e. police in general), away from the specifics of this story. Steps toward the generic nearly always lower discussion quality [1], because the larger the topic becomes, the harder it is to say anything new about it. Therefore the conversations tend to repeat the same points over and over, same as the last N times the topic came up (and this has been one of the most-argued, if not most burnt-out, topics in the last year). They also to get nastier as they proceed. My semi-serious theory is that the mind resorts to indignation to amuse itself in the absence of new information [2]. The generic topics are like massive planets that exert a strong pull on passing discussions—there's always a strong tendency to hop to the nearest generic orbit, because that's what our pre-existing mental associations connect to [3]. The trouble with this is that points away from curiosity, which is interested in new and specific information more than in familiar and general arguments. Curiosity wants the diffs [4]. Generally we're not aware of these competing directions in ourselves, but the effects show up unmistakeably at scale. It's not that you or the other commenters did anything wrong! it's perfectly natural for conversation to drift in this way, and a balance of familiarity and curiosity makes for good conversation. But from a moderation perspective, it's our job to look out for the site globally, and try to dampen the sequences where each step makes sense locally but the sequence still ends up in a much less curious place. That's a longer explanation than you probably expected, but since it's not possible to explain every individual move (it would be too much work, and also too noisy), I try to make up for it by periodically giving longer ones. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=generic%20discussion%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=mind%20amuse%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... [3] And the hottest controversies are even stronger—those are like black holes: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20black%20hole&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... [4] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=diffs%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...