By your logic, if someone is playing music in a park or beach, I could start filming them and they'd have to turn it off. Obviously that is ridiculous.
He should be fired for other reasons (making the department look bad by attempting to avoid accountability), but he is not violating copyright. Nor would the person filming it be, since "courts consider whether the use in question acts as a direct market substitute for the original work", and this isn't. No one is going to say "I'm not going to pay for Taylor Swift's version because I can just watch this video of a cop playing it on his phone" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#4._Effect_upon_work's...
That literally is the definition of "public performance." He is in public, playing for an audience that is not his private close family and friends.
> By your logic, if someone is playing music in a park or beach, I could start filming them and they'd have to turn it off. Obviously that is ridiculous.
You can't perform publicly without the copyright holder's permission regardless of whether someone is filming you. You have to turn it off anyway, recording or not. I agree that this is a ridiculous part of copyright law and should not exist. I'm leveraging the system we have here to fight oppression.
The fact that he plays it knowing that it is being filmed for broadcast is what adds the "willful" piece to the already "infringement" piece of the public performance.
I'm not making a normative argument here - copyright law in the US is asinine and needs major reform. I'm just combing through this like a determined prosecutor/RIAA goon would, looking for the right charge.
What you're doing is taking a phrase which has a contextual meaning within copyright law, looking at the individual words of the phrase based on their common usage, and then saying that your new understanding based on the individual words is how copyright law actually works.
If I drop my phone, and then walk into a McDonalds, am I guilty of "breaking and entering"? That's what you're doing here with "public performance"
But that's not (just) what the officer was doing - he was playing music as background to his business operation, which RIAA have definitely sued establishments over[0]. If you're playing music as a soundtrack for your business (in this case, the business of law enforcement), you need a license. Even in a non-business context, if they had a chance to sue you for playing music in public, they would. There just haven't been any prominent/worthwhile cases for them to do so. Just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean that isn't what the law allows.
[0]: https://www.frantzward.com/news-blog/june-2017/let-the-music...
It's mind blowing to me that people on Hacker News don't see the absurdity of enforcing copyright law as you are suggesting. This article sums it up well:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071005/094552.shtml
"The repair firm, Kwik-Fit, has a pretty weak response, saying that it's banned personal radios for ten years. Instead, it should be fighting back on the idea that this is a public performance in any way. Otherwise, you get into all sorts of trouble. If you have the windows open in your home and are listening to your legally owned music (or your TV!) and your neighbor can hear it, is that a public performance? What if you live in an apartment building with thin walls? What about when you're driving with the radio on and the windows open? What if you're in your cubicle and the folks in the cubicles around you can hear the music? At which point do we realize how silly this becomes? It's difficult to see how, with a straight face, anyone in the music industry can claim that any of these situations represents harm done to them."
Is that really the world you want? Geez.
> A “public performance” of music is defined in U.S. copyright law to include any music played outside a normal circle of friends and family that occurs in any public place.
This is a quote from a RIAA member explaining their interpretation of public performance.
Yes, it does; most public performances other than radio/TV broadcast are, by nature, only for those in the immediate vincinity.
> By your logic, if someone is playing music in a park or beach, I could start filming them and they'd have to turn it off.
No, because asserting that this case, independent of how other Fair Use factors might apply to it, doesn't fall into Fair Use because its purpose is to suppress commentary does not indicate that your counterfactual would not.
Market effect is 1 of several factors courts consider for fair use.
If you knew you were being recorded, had reason to be believed it would be broadcasted and your stated intention was to turn that otherwise normal and non-infringing broadcast into copyright infringement, ya, you might have an issue with the courts.
It's simply not a copyright case. If there is a law on the books that says that cops can't use sneaky methods of avoiding accountability, then that's a court case. The public is harmed, not the owner of the content.
Better yet, the cop should just be fired for doing something that is clearly against the public's interest, making the department look bad.
But this is not a copyright case.
Don't pretend. Don't make up funny narratives, because you think that a police officer "deserves" it.
This silly hypothetical just isn't going to happen. And people are lying to themselves that something like that would happen, because it sounds cool.
The law is not a piece of code that is run through your computer, and if you can find some technicality, or "well actuuuaaallly" argument, then it means that someone is going to go to jail.
Instead, the law is interpreted by normal, human beings.
And any actual normal human being, is not going to fine someone, or send someone to jail because they played a couple seconds of a song, in a public street, on their phone.
The technicalities, and debates, and loopholes that you think that you found in the law simply do not matter.
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Absolutely nobody, in the entire world, would ever have a recording of police brutality taken off of youtube because the police played a couple seconds of music, on their phone, while walking down the street.
Don't pretend. Don't make up funny narratives, because you think that the recorder "deserves" it.
This silly hypothetical just isn't going to happen. And people are lying to themselves that something like that would happen, because it sounds cool.
The youtube moderation is not a piece of code that is run through your computer, and if you can find some technicality, or "well actuuuaaallly" argument, then it means that someone is going to go get their video removed.
Instead, the law is interpreted by normal, human beings.
And any actual normal human being, is not going to remove a video that is attempting to keep the police accountable because they played a couple seconds of a song, in a public street, on their phone.
The technicalities, and debates, and loopholes that you think that you found in the youtube algorithm simply do not matter.
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Obviously the above does not describe reality. The police seem to get to take advantage of the system to hide their misdeed, but as you (probably correctly) point out, citizens are NOT able to take advantage of the system to expose police misdeeds. This is why people are angry, and this is why you were downvoted.
No one is saying this. You are leaving out a lot of crucial details that have been brought up.
Call it whatever you want, I am talking about any form of major copyright consequence on that person, because they played a couple seconds of a song, in the street.
Its just not going to happen. No judge will ever cause any significant consequence on someone doing that, solely as a result of a copyright issue.