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Multiple Beverly Hills PD officers now weaponizing copyright against streaming
- booleanbetrayal 6y agoThis is an evolution of the story that first appeared on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26082303 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26082303
- ceejayoz 6y agoIt'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.
- acd 6y agoBut people should have the right to work peace. It should also be a basic human right not to be constantly monitored.
- joncrane 6y agoLike it or not, I believe that the "expectation of privacy" argument has been settled in courts. The answer is that if you're in public, you have no expectation of privacy. People have dashcams, cameras pointing out the front of their homes and businesses, and people may be recording random TikTok videos with you in the background. Police definitely have zero "expectation of privacy" when out on the job and it's a fairly well established legal fact. Additionally, this information was available at the time they decided to become police officers. IANAL.
- nojokes 6y agoJust mentioning that this is in US. Where I live the dashcams are strictly forbidden like also recording the street in front of your house - police would arrive and destroy your equipment.
- eznzt 6y ago> Like it or not, I believe that the "expectation of privacy" argument has been settled in courts. The answer is that if you're in public, you have no expectation of privacy. That sounds awful. Everybody needs to go out even if it is to buy groceries. What that means is that you can be recorded and there is nothing you can do about it.
- vel0city 6y agoThe alternative is I'm not legally allowed to operate a camera outside unless I get a signed consent release form from everyone who may potentially be in the view of the camera. That doesn't really sound like a better world to me.
- o-__-o 6y agoNothing preventing you from hiring someone to buy groceries for you. Instacart and the like just lowered the entry barrier for the masses.
- ceejayoz 6y agoI am of that general opinion, but not for the small subset of folks the government invests with the power to shoot me.
- heraclius 6y agoOne has the right to any other job. Compare soldiers: generally one probably ought to have the right to unionise, to sick leave, to certain health and safety standards and so on—there are substantial derogations for particular jobs though based on their nature, and the nature of exercising the coercive authority of the state is such that it seems reasonable to demand all sorts of monitoring (when on the job).
- mtnGoat 6y agoThe state constantly monitors the citizens, through actions of their own and contracts with third parties. Police deserve no privacy if they don’t give it. My ¢2.
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- vel0city 6y agoWhen you put on the uniform and wear the badge, you're accepting some additional powers granted to you by society.You're also giving up some freedoms. I think people should generally be allowed to drink, but I don't think cops should be allowed to drink while on duty. It is important for a society to be able to monitor the enforcers of the government, i.e. the police. To me, it seems pretty reasonable for people to be able to record the actions of the police in public spaces, so long as its not impeding the ability for the officers to correctly do their job.
- heavyset_go 6y agoCashiers that make $10 an hour are under more surveillance and public exposure than cops are. And cashiers can't turn off the cameras like cops are able to.
- ryandrake 6y agoYea, 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.
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- PragmaticPulp 6y agoIt’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 social media platforms for the past few days.
- rriepe 6y agoWhat purpose would realizing the absurdity serve, again? It might be absurd that someone is shooting bullets at you but you should shoot back if that's the case.
- floor2 6y agoYour analogy is perfect... for showing why this is wrong. The "shooting back" solution just ends up with a bunch of people injured (likely including random bystanders). The better solution is to get the shooting to stop entirely. We don't need to find a new interpretation of copyright law to attack the cop, we need to remove the dysfunctional copyright system that started this. Or in your metaphor, I want no-one to get shot rather than wanting to shoot back.
- rriepe 6y agoYou're conflating outcomes and solutions. You've offered no solution.
- ceejayoz 6y agoIt'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".
- mindslight 6y ago... which is a terrible approach, because it validates the cudgel while not actually addressing the dynamic of unaccountable power.
- testesttest 6y agoThe cops didn't take down the videos based on copyright. A company did, but, that is apparently acceptable because companies can sensor whoever they please (or at least that is the common view on hacker news).
- ceejayoz 6y agoThe cops are abusing copyright law in order to violate a citizen’s First Amendment rights. They’ve outsourced the censoring. Censoring is indeed legal if companies do it, but this is functionally State censorship.
- testesttest 6y agoYea, censorship is great if it aligns with your message. Politics have forced big tech to censor a lot as of late.
- ceejayoz 6y agoIt’s not the message that matters. It’s the fact that one is a First Amendment violation, and the other is not. I don’t think a “websites can’t moderate their content” is a good road to go down.
- testesttest 6y agoFacebook, YouTube, Twitter are not just "websites" they are where much of our public discussion happens. If they weren't you would not care that these videos were censored. This story, fake news, the shenanigans around the election, etc has shown they are bad stewards of this responsibility.
- slowmovintarget 6y agoThe police are not abusing law. The bots that do the automatic take-downs are abusing the law. This is not State censorship, because the police are not censoring the videos. People still get to record them, and still get to share them. If they can't be bothered to post somewhere other than Instagram (which is abusing their rights), then the failure to share is on the people doing the posting. There's nothing stopping the people who recorded the videos from sending them to the news media. The recordings are still getting made. They're just being removed by some bot from the Instagram feeds. Shame on Instagram.
- jlgaddis 6y agoHmm, would the playing of music by the police constitute a "public performance" (per copyright law)?
- ceejayoz 6y agoYes, but I can't imagine many big recording companies wanting to start a fight with police unions.
- jhart99 6y agoI don't see how ASCAP/BMI wouldn't get on their cases about using music without a license.
- PragmaticPulp 6y agoIf they’re listening to their phone exactly like any other person walking down the street might do, then no. If they were deliberately playing it over a PA system to a crowd, then yes. You may not like this behavior, but we really don’t want to set a precedent that listening to music at normal volumes in public spaces is a punishable copyright violation.
- hedora 6y agoThe facts in this case make it clear the officer intends for it to be a public performance. The officer should be fired, and the copyright holder should pursue maximum financial damages. Neither of those things will happen. The system is too corrupt for that.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoWhat non-fictional financial damages did the copyright holder suffer in this case? Is he going to come after me when i listen to music with an ipen window, or have friends over?
- pseudalopex 6y agoCopyright laws have statutory damages. Having friends over isn't public performance. Having a window open incidentally isn't public performance.
- salawat 6y agoThe 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 hypocrisy underlying it all. One more mail in my anti-IP soapbox I guess.
- jacques_chester 6y agoA nitpick: "flouting the law".
- kwhitefoot 6y agoExactly. Flaunting the law would be, for instance, waving a copy of law in the face of the person they were arresting.
- salawat 6y agoAlways after the edit period. Internal mental hash table updated. I knew it was an fl-<something>. Picked the wrong one. Point otherwise clearly communicated though right?
- jacques_chester 6y agoYes, clearly communicated.
- speedballmad 6y agoThe police are hoping that YouTube will flag it for copyright, not the music companies. Once it's uploaded, YouTube will flag it for copyright infringement right off the bat.
- medium_burrito 6y agoHopefully they were playing the "Beverly Hills Cop" theme song! EDIT: It would be the most defensible thing ever- "It's our theme song, we can play it whenever we want to"
- sjg007 6y agoAxel F ... that or the crazy frog version.
- dahart 6y agoI’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.
- analognoise 6y agoYou 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 post identification it should be doable with standard tricks. This is the cyberpunk future we were waiting for. Who wants to do some DSP?! If anyone wants to work together on this, we absolutely should. This is a fun problem with a very, very cyberpunk vibe. Plus it's real DSP work!
- me_me_me 6y agoThat's what I was thinking too. It doesnt even have to be perfect. All it needs to do is mask/distort music to make the algo matching content id not identify it. Hmmm.... would playing another song at the same time not have similar effect? This might be fun weekend project :)
- anaerobicover 6y agoThis won't magically make other audio sources that were present when the recording was made easier to hear, though. Once the recording is made, they're not independent any more. They'll still be masked, maybe even more.
- analognoise 6y agoNo, but it will preserve them online for later filtering/post processing.
- 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 6y agoTo escalate this further, couldn't the police (semi officially, or police officers cooperating in private) just create musical pieces themselves to then have even more control over weaponizing them?
- CompuHacker 6y agoYou could add a little texture to LRAD tones to make them copyright-able pieces. (... LRAD Orchestra? Copyright Beam? Litigation Laser? Chilling Effect Spray?)
- sevenf0ur 6y agoIn all these videos, I see entitled live streamers who think it's the duty of the police to answer every silly question they ask. Borderline harassment. Playing copyrighted music doesn't prevent you from recording but it does get the annoying streamers to bugger off so mission accomplished.
- xxpor 6y agoThen write them a ticket. Don't be passive aggressive.
- sevenf0ur 6y agoWould you rather the police be aggressive? I'm sure you wouldn't appreciate it if someone showed up at your place of work and harassed you for no good reason other than Internet clout.
- jschwartzi 6y agoIt's disingenuous to say we, as the public, have no interest in what the police do while discharging their duties. It is a public office, after all. And I think the activities of the police should be scrutinized heavily because they have an incredible amount of power and are accorded a very wide latitude. The police are the only people who can legally shoot you and not be tried. They can arrest you and throw you in jail. They can charge you with crimes, invade your house, and smear your reputation with the public. A police officer with a vendetta can absolutely ruin your life if not outright take it from you. So yes, I think it should be okay for people to video the police going about their business.
- sevenf0ur 6y agoA cop playing a Beatles song in the background does not prevent you from recording. These live streamers are not recording the police to hold them accountable. They antagonize officers who can't do anything about it, then upload that interaction online for monetization.
- tzs 6y agoI 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 streaming service, which I don't think the exception cover. And even if those exceptions do apply, the officers are doing this outside--how many square feet is outside? There was also a 2020 Supreme Court ruling that state governments were not liable for copyright violations because they have sovereign immunity. That sovereign immunity can be taken away by Congress, and I believe there has been some talk of doing so, but for now they are immune. According to this law firm [1] that does not apply to local governments. They might still be liable for copyright infringement. [1] https://www.hodgsonruss.com/newsroom-publications-11717.html https://www.hodgsonruss.com/newsroom-publications-11717.html
- PragmaticPulp 6y agoI 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.
- SilasX 6y agoAgreed, 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.
- PragmaticPulp 6y agoSo 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 these cops, but let’s be realistic. Normally HN is very against weaponizing copyright law, but the second it feels useful for their purposes we’re flooded with comments from people who want to misuse copyright law as a weapon.
- PragmaticPulp 6y agoI 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 tinny, low-volume songs in the background of someone else’s videos. Does anyone have an example of a video that was taken down because police were playing music in the background? I’ve been seeing these videos over and over in the past 24 hours on various streaming platforms. It seems that if they were being taken down, we’d be hearing stories about the takedowns, not stories about them listening to music.
- jawns 6y agoCan 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.
- klyrs 6y agoI can see another purpose for their actions. If they're playing music, then bodycam or external recordings will not capture what is being said by cops and those that they're interacting with. I didn't say it's a legitimate purpose, mind...
- PragmaticPulp 6y agoSeems like they’re trying to send a signal that they’re not interested in engaging in any more conversation. Feels like a de-escalation tactic. Whether you like them or not, these cops have people obsessively following them around, filming them, and trying to engage them for social media clout. I suspect if the filters had more of a legitimate purpose, we’d be hearing about it in these articles.
- kirillzubovsky 6y agoI hope they are at least using the “Beverly hills cop” theme song for that.
- naebother 6y agoPretty much sums up the American psyche.
- andrewmcwatters 6y agoThere'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.
- blt 6y agoAnyone 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.
- exporectomy 6y agoThe problem is YouTube celebrities being dicks for likes. The cops are clearly just annoyed at this guy who keeps trying to wind them up to video their reaction. He's not filming them potentially beating anyone up, they're just standing there while he complains about random drivers going past who they're not stopping. Just because the victim is a cop doesn't mean the bully isn't wrong. If he was honestly trying to record police abuse, he could do it better keeping his mouth shut and from a distance without constantly trying to draw them into a stupid argument.
- blt 6y agoNo. The question isn't "is a cop allowed be annoyed with a youtuber?" or "is this youtuber causing net harm to the public good?". The question is: "can a cop interfere with a youtuber's ability to record and publish their actions?".
- sawjet 6y ago> No. The question isn't "is a cop allowed be annoyed with a youtuber?" or "is this youtuber causing net harm to the public good?". The question is: "can a cop interfere with a youtuber's ability to record and publish their actions?". This doesn't interfere with the youtubers ability to record and publish the cop's actions. It only prevents them from profiting from it.
- true_religion 6y agoIt sort of feels worse to think that the police are interfering with a business simply because that business is anti-establishment. Sure they can be annoyed by this guy, but they lose respectability by trying to harm his business. The additional powers that police have, must come with some additional responsibility.
- josefresco 6y agoPublicizing 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.
- PragmaticPulp 6y agoIf anything, the fact that we’ve all been watching this supposedly forbidden video across social media sites shows that the technique doesn’t actually work.
- josefresco 6y agoThey're just making it harder (not impossible) to share recorded videos of police actions on social media. This video being publicized by an experienced activist is not sufficient evidence in and of itself that the technique isn't working.
- snarfy 6y agoCool, I'll just stream the video but replace the audio with NWA's fuck the police.
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- necheffa 6y agoCould a fourier transform be used to try and remove enough of the copyrighted audio without making the voices of those in the video unintelligible?
- almost_usual 6y agoThese police are missing a prime opportunity to play Don’t Stand So Close To Me.
- phjesusthatguy3 6y agoOn the one hand: neat hack! On the other hand: let's go kill some cops EDIT let me put it this way: when cops in my jurisdiction start murdering people I consider mine, I will gladly join my local dumb-ass militia to overthrow the government. As things are, members of my local dumb-ass militias are on trial for plotting the murder of the governor of my state for having the temerity to tell people they should attempt to stop infecting their fellow citizens with a virus that could kill them.
- ill13 6y agoInvert the waveform of the copy-written music, then sync the music to the video, mix both audio streams causing the copy-written music to be effectively removed.
- darepublic 6y agoThe word weaponizing is being weaponized imo
- tppiotrowski 6y agoThere 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 actions should be open to public scrutiny? I know companies operate in private but still need to make some data publicly available. Is there a balance? What is a good heuristic for how much data we should collect on cops, politicians, companies etc while still respecting privacy.
- tppiotrowski 6y agoNot sure why I got downvoted for this? I’m just trying to learn.
- lsllc 6y agoAs for the original (gp) comment, you should check the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html 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."
- Tepix 6y agoRecording is permitted, the issue is live streaming.
- matheusmoreira 6y ago> Is it that if you’re a public figure or tax funded then your actions should be open to public scrutiny? Yes, always. Governments are given extraordinary powers by the people. Transparency is necessary to ensure these powers aren't being abused. Otherwise it's easy for corruption to set in.
- lscotte 6y agoThis is great, actually! I'm happy to see the police finding creative approaches to the boneheads who think they have to stream everything. Streaming everything is not a good thing.
- jb775 6y agoWhy are these people even filming cops in the first place?
- jMyles 6y ago...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.
- yellowapple 6y agoBecause it's generally a good idea to hold people accountable for their actions, especially when those people have a long and well-documented history of abusing the general public at every opportunity. Transparency is a dependency of trust. If we can't see what police are doing, then under what pretext can we even remotely trust them to serve our interests?
- jb775 6y ago> have a long and well-documented history of abusing the general public at every opportunity The macro level statistics do not back this up. I agree with holding people accountable, but this issue has been over-sensationalized strategically by the media for political purposes. I feel a much more impactful use of energy would be to focus on getting complete transparency from politicians for every decision they make, irrespective of political party. Just look at the mess Cuomo caused in NY...there should be people recording politicians like that all day.
- jahnu 6y agoI wonder if a band pass filter would suffice to defeat this attack?
- kizer 6y agoPretty funny :D (Ready for the downvotes)
- dboreham 6y agoAxel Foley would be proud. Banana in the tailpipe...
- lsiebert 6y agoRecording cops while music is playing should be a fair use under US copyright law, right? So it's mostly about the take-down system and it's abusiveness.
- PragmaticPulp 6y agoAs far as I can tell, none of these videos have actually been taken down. It’s just speculation at this point.
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- phs318u 6y agoAnother approach here is for the streaming services to tweak their takedown algorithms - if they detect a police officer in the video don’t automatically take down the video. Lobbying for this is probably themost likely to yield results. Police opposition to such a move would expose their real intent at which point shifting the focus back to the police actions becomes viable.
- antisthenes 6y agoThis is a general reminder to everyone when engaging in thought and conversation about policy and laws. Always consider the possible second and third-order effects of your proposal. There will always be people who use (or at least attempt to use) the new policy to their own maximum benefit, possibly not in the intended way at all. Consider that behavior does not necessarily make them bad or evil, merely agents acting in their own self-interest. Consider then, also, not simply making a list of "if then else" exceptions and bans for these behaviors, but rethinking the entire policy in the first place. I strongly believe we could all be in a better place civically if we adhere to these simple guidelines before we slap down policies left and right and get trapped in vicious feedback loops where we can't repeal certain laws because they are "grandfathered in".
- phjesusthatguy3 6y agoThey're not weaponizing copyright, they're weaponizing Instagram's copyright-infringement-avoidance filter. HN really should look into their headline editing policy, because it really does change the context of the conversation in this instance.
- PragmaticPulp 6y agoThe videos are still up on the person’s Instagram account, from which he sells anti-cop merchandise. As far as I can tell, there hasn’t been a copyright removal. It appears the police were tired of being followed by this guy trying to provoke them to promote his Instagram and associated merch.
- phjesusthatguy3 6y agopragmaticpulp> The videos are still up on the person’s Instagram account, from which he sells anti-cop merchandise. I read what you typed, you brown-nosing piece of shit. It's perfectly okay for citizens to record the state depriving citizens of their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, you brown-nosing piece of shit. It's already been established that the state can lie to citizens. You brown-nosing piece of shit. The problem is when the state interferes with citizens exercising their rights, you brown-nosing piece of shit. Citizens can say whatever they want, whenever they want. Full stop. They have to face the consequences of their actions afterwards. You brown-nosing piece of shit. The problem, you brown-nosing piece of shit, is that the cops know there is no way for their actions to be held against them. So they abuse the rules the corporations have created to make sure citizens can't exercise their God-given rights. You brown-nosing piece of shit. I'm not even sorry about my language, you brown-nosing piece of shit. You, and the people excusing the bad apples in the police barrel, are the problem. You brown-nosing piece of shit.
- mechnesium 6y agoCertainly the same technology that identifies the music can be used to cancel it out? An ML song identifier, coupled with destructive interference acoustic noise cancellation, could filter out music entirely.
- kcolford 6y agoI'm going to go against the grain here and say I actually quite like this. It's totally non violent. People can still record cops doing their job. They just face challenges posting and sharing such footage on social media. Honestly I'm of the opinion that social media is a net detriment to society, giving social media more fuel for the fire is not a good thing. If there is truly something wrong, then mute the video and it becomes like watching security footage, you can clearly see something wrong and if there's important words then subtitles fill it in, but it's no longer a viral smear campaign and it circulates on the merits of there being something wrong. The original footage can still be published, there's just a higher barrier to publishing it. The cops are also less afraid of being video taped so it's safer for the person recording the footage. All in all it's quite clever and I hope it catches on. On the other side, I do hope that this eventually leads to reforming the broken copyright fingerprinting systems in place.