Yup. Minimal editing will remove the music though, plus it's still evidence in a court so it's an attempt to avoid public outrage.

App idea: Strip copyrighted music from a video while retaining voice. Shouldn't edit the original video though, it's evidence.

Even just removing the audio entirely from the affected sections and providing subtitles instead should do, surely? Point out that the perpetrator deliberately played music to try to prevent publication and they will lose any claim of the subtitles being false or edited in the court of public opinion. And surely this attempt to block publication will amplify any outrage.

Interesting idea, but wouldn't the resulting video technically be a derivative work of the copyrighted music?

Not saying that kills the idea, it's just an extra complication.

I'd be surprised if that was the legal view. If I take a picture of someone next to the Mona Lisa and then crop the Mona Lisa out of it, that doesn't make the picture of the person a derivative work of the Mona Lisa.

They don't mean the end result but the process of detecting something requires you to have a copy of that work and hence your software needs the copyrighted material in order to detect copyrighted songs to remove accurately.

I don't know if image cropping is a good metaphor. The algorithm for removing copyrighted music while preserving other sound presumably "subtracts" the copyrighted music. Thus, the copyrighted music is used to create the music-less video.

IANAL, so I defer to anyone with legal expertise.

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.