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.
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.
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.
----
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.
----
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.
