Did the police have the appropriate license to play those disney songs in a public space?

I bet Disney's lawyers can squeeze a lot more money out of municipalities for playing the music publicly in the first place than they can out of random citizens who are uploading to Youtube.

Im guessing the intention wasn’t that Disney would actually sue them in court but just getting it blocked automatically in YouTube, etc

Of course that was the point. But malicious broadcast of copyrighted material to trigger automated enforcement systems sounds pretty far from "fair use" to me. Say nothing of the bad publicity when some video is just so bad it hits the news and now your IP is the soundtrack to a cop beatdown.

When you look at it from a legal "use it or lose it" and corporate risk perspective it's quite surprising that Disney didn't even sent cease and desists.

Edit: Of course you don't lose the copyright but your ability to litigate someone else's unfair use is a lot weaker when their lawyer can trot out a million examples that you were fine with.

Disney seems to be taking a very hands-off approach when it comes to government use, so I doubt they'll do anything about this police case.

Copyright isn't "use it or lose it"

Pretty sure Disney can still go after real targets even if they don’t go after every children’s at home party that showed a Disney movie.

Wouldn't that be covered by fair use?

Nobody who loves Disney songs would listen to them while also hearing police officers shouting, etc.

> "Wouldn't that be covered by fair use?"

There's no human to appeal to in social media platforms. It's automated, algorithmic enforcement; and when it's wrong (or someone exploits it to be wrong, like this), you're powerless to do anything. It means nothing if you're technically in the legal right: the platforms are risk-averse and don't care about your false positive.

> It's automated, algorithmic enforcement; and when it's wrong (or someone exploits it to be wrong, like this), you're powerless to do anything.

Ahem...

In the UK/EU Let me introduce you to article 22 of the GDPR

The data subject shall have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her.

i.e. If subjected to an algorithm making decisions, you have an automatic right of appeal to a _human_.

https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/

You need to adopt a sensible data protection law if you don't want to be exploited.

If you look into it more carefully, you'll find this doesn't apply to social media moderation, but only more consequential AI-biased decisions.

(In the excerpt you quoted: "legal effects" / or "significantly affects").

Oh no! It's against the law. That'll definitely stop companies from doing it with impunity.

Yes. It will.

Though presumably you would prefer the alternative; that such companies are unrestrained in what they may do and the population at large must simply bend over and grab their ankles with both hands?

Nope, I don't want that at all. What I want is a law with actual enforcement behind it and penalties that actually deter bad actors. You don't just write a law and then stop there declaring job done.

GDPR penalties DO deter bad actors. It's so effective that many American companies without a European presence at all take actions

You’re right. Tech companies will surprise us all and suddenly start obeying the DMCA to the letter instead of just taking the shortcut of “rights holders upload content, it’s fingerprinted, user content that matches fingerprint is taken down”. Then, we’ll link arms and sing kumbaya.

Just to note, you can keep the data on French servers as they are a Offshore/DMCA Ignore country.

You can. YouTube doesn't. Instagram doesn't. Facebook doesn't.

When watching local network flows, almost all Facebook traffic originates from Ireland.

That's just their most local reverse proxy.

Theoretically, yes, absolutely. Practically, no, they would be taken down by automatic filters and you'd have to be willing to face Disney's lawyers to try to get them reinstated.

> Wouldn't that be covered by fair use?

This has never once prevented a DMCA notice from being issued, and I'm sure you can guess how easy it is to get a person at YouTube to review your appeal

That’s an admission of guilt by the police, right there. If you have nothing to hide… etc.

“We’ve got ‘em now!”. This’ll be police brutality’s great undoing.

Wouldn't that constitute a public performance of copyrighted material? The police themselves could be DMCAed. Haha

its basically equivalent of them punching you in the face and running away. Yeah you're right and they're wrong, but what would you do about that and your nose is bleeding. Nasty tactics.

Not DMCA, but yes, that would definitely open them to a lawsuit for unlicensed performance.

It doesn’t matter if it’s wrong or illegal if they know nothing will happen to them. The rule of law is dying because it’s becoming only selectively enforced.

has died