In the United States, the right of people to shoot and broadcast footage showing a police officer in action is sanctioned by the First Amendment of the Constitution, the one that guarantees freedom of speech and expression.
However, the freedom to say what you want in the press or on social platforms does not include the possibility of doing so using copyrighted material, unless you have a specific reproduction license: the Shelby agent of the company knows it well. police in Oakland, California, who during a peaceful confrontation with a demonstrator from the Aptp association (Anti Police-Terror Project) began to reproduce Blank Space di Taylor Swift ad alto volume on your mobile.
The purpose, the agent candidly admits in the video released by the protesters, is not to interrupt the shooting or distract the interlocutors: the song serves (in theory) to prevent its spread on YouTube, whose automatic algorithms are able to detect the presence of the song and possibly trigger the removal of the video for copyright infringement. In the video (which at the time of writing is still online) we hear the agent say that “you can record as much as you want, but you won’t be able to post it on YouTube”.
A (not) new tactic
It is not the first time that the American police have used this tactic. Already between the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021 some activists had denounced the same practice, then used by the Beverly Hills police. The difference from the video that emerged this week, in addition to the music selection (Sublime e Beatles in place of Taylor Swift) is that the agents had not openly admitted that they wanted to exploit copyright protection algorithms to prevent the videos from spreading.
Net of ethical considerations, exploiting the automatisms of the platforms to minimize the diffusion of a video is a rather clever idea. Not by chance the idea is not of the police, but of an American anti-fascist activist who already in 2019, on Twitter, had suggested playing music during rallies of the far right to facilitate the banning of racist organizations on YouTube and other platforms. On that occasion, the writer Cory Doctorow he had warned of the possible nefarious uses of such a tactic, which could in fact also backfire against the peaceful demonstrations of civil rights activists.
Interestingly, the confrontation between the members of the APT and the policeman it was in no way violent, not even in tone. The agent had asked for the removal of a sign, according to him positioned badly, while the demonstrators contested the futility of the request. The activists had gathered before the Oakland courthouse during a hearing in the trial of the policeman accused of killing African American Steven Taylor in an East Bay supermarket to April 2020. Precisely because everything took place civilly, it is not clear why the agent Shelby wanted to limit the diffusion of the video with the tactic of the song at full volume.
history
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How does the Content Id
In the end, the ruse didn’t even help: as mentioned, the video is still available on YouTube, where Content Id, the copyright protection algorithm, did not trigger a Claim, that is the procedure that could lead to the demonetization of the video.
Although Content Id often generates false positives, the system works he is not as inflexible as the policeman seems to assume, because the algorithm works in such a way as to always leave the right holder the last word on the lawfulness of the use of the content: “Usually the complaint is aimed only at tracking or monetizing the video, not at blocking it. video remains active with those requests (but may have advertisements) and can still be shared, “reads the YouTube guidelines. Yet: “Content Id claims do not translate to Copyright Strike, suspension of the channel or termination of the channel. However, if you believe that a complaint was made in error, you can dispute the complaint. “
What are Copyright Strikes
However, the warnings for copyright infringement are another thing, which do not concern the Content Id, but must go through a specific legal request to remove the video by the owner of the rights. It is a less immediate procedure, requiring formal notification. After 3 of these so-called admonitions, the red card is triggered for the channel and for the account, which are terminated, with the removal of all the videos uploaded up to that moment and the imposition of a ban on the creation of new channels.
The system implemented by the Google platform is far from perfect: in the past it has generated illustrious cases of false positives and has been used to create scams and extortion based on fake Copyright Claim. In those cases, however, YouTube intervened immediately, declaring zero tolerance towards this type of offense.
The case
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The Streisand effect
In other words, it is extremely difficult that a popular song like Blank Space, probably protected by the Content Id, can trigger a legal request for copyright infringement if used in a video of this type, moreover in conditions potentially protected by clauses of fair use (i.e. the lawful and documentary use, not for profit) of the material. It can be assumed that in a case like the one in this video, a possible complaint via Content Id therefore it would not lead to the suspension of the video or to channel lock. And if a report were to arrive, the authors of the video could in all likelihood prevail in the event of a dispute of the complaint
The question remains, however, why a policeman, during a calm and non-violent confrontation with a protester, wanted to use this clumsy tactic to avoid the spread of a totally harmless video: The answer to this question has a different domain, which has to do with the radicalization of democratic discourse in the United States, a much more controversial and complex issue than Byzantine copyright laws.
Meanwhile, as often happens in these cases, more than copyright laws have been the Streisand effect, i.e. the phenomenon whereby the attempt to limit or censor information or content results in much wider advertising: at the moment, the video that was not supposed to be on YouTube has over 610,000 views. On YouTube, of course.
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