The Daily Populous Friday February 12nd, 2021 night edition
Authored by interestingengineering.com and submitted by Sorin61

A report has emerged of a Police Sergeant playing popular music on their smartphone when they realized they were being filmed, BoingBoing.net writes.

The strange behavior may be part of a concerted effort to have these types of videos flagged and removed by copyright-strike algorithms on YouTube, Instagram, and other social media sites.

The example was shared on Instagram — which has not flagged the video — by mrcheckpoint_ who filmed a Sergeant of the Beverly Hills P.D blasting Sublime's 'Santeria' out of his smartphone.

Mrcheckpoint_ said the following in his video description:

"I believe Sergeant Fair aka BILLY FAIR is using copyrighted music to keep me from being able to play these videos on social media. Then tells me in the second video he couldn’t hear me earlier in the day and also couldn’t hear me then, all while playing music."

He isn’t alone. I have video of this happening with another officer who played music as I was talking. Is this an order from the top? Wait till I show you more. Until then I’ll be filing a complaint on this officer Fair and officer Reyes who had done it before to me. It’s outrageous."

View this post on Instagram A post shared by ALWAYS FILM THE POLICE #AFTP (@mrcheckpoint_)

Though it would be conjecture at this point to say this particular use of playing music is an order from higher up in the Police Department, it isn't unthinkable.

Starting in October last year, copyright and DMCA strikes became a hot topic as popular streamers on Twitch and other content creator platforms found that their recent and older videos were being removed due to music copyright infringement.

In fact, the incredibly hyped-up triple-A videogame Cyberpunk 2077, released in December 2019, even included a dedicated feature for content creators allowing them to disable copyrighted music that would otherwise have their streams or video uploads removed by copyright algorithms.

In any case, this particular Sargeant's attempts present us with a brilliant example of the Streisand Effect, a social phenomenon whereby someone trying to hide their actions has the complete opposite effect of having them exposed to an even wider audience.

blot_plot on February 11st, 2021 at 22:35 UTC »

oh boy wait until they find out how a bunch of platforms dsont monetize videos and therefore dont care about this

this basically stops the videos going on youtube

TuxedoCorgi on February 11st, 2021 at 19:11 UTC »

As long as the videos are circulated via social media and not making a profit this won't be an issue. Same reason Tik Tok videos can go viral. They really didn't put much thought into this

edit: Another way of looking at it - especially with a topic of this magnitude, once it's out into the internet its never really gone

SergeantMrSir on February 11st, 2021 at 18:47 UTC »

"1 police sergeant played copyrighted music while being filmed and the video is being copyright claimed online"* FTFY

Edit: 2 officers