Thread by @doctorow

Sennett Devermont is a police accountability activist whose streams police encounters to his Instagram followers. When he visited the @BeverlyHillsPD last Fri to obtain a form, BHPD Sergeant Billy Fair began blasting music from of his phone.

instagram.com/p/CLCpHBQjX8r/

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Fair was following the example of other BHPD officers who have made a habit of playing copyrighted music during encounters with the public, apparently to trigger automated copyright takedowns on the major social media platforms.

vice.com/en/article/bvx…

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As @dexdigi writes for @vicenews, this form of copyfraud has a failsafe: if the filter doesn't block the livestream, the archived footage might be easily removed through copyright complaints.

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Instagram's copyright policy suggests that videos with incidental music are permitted, but the company's filters are incapable of distinguishing "incidental" and "non-incidental" use, while its appeals process is longrunning production Kafka's Trial.

pluralistic.net/2020/05/17/che…

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Moreover, the platforms use a "copystrike" system, which means that cops who successfully deploy this tactic can chip away at activists' presence on the system - three strikes and their accounts are permanently removed.

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Thomas: "...[P]laying copyrighted music as a deterrent to the First Amendment-guaranteed right to openly film police is, if not BHPD official protocol, at least a technique that has been deployed by more than one officer."

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Back in 2019, anti-racist activists experimented with playing copyrighted music at Nazi rallies to make them unpostable on social media. At the time, I warned that this would end badly.

memex.craphound.com/2019/07/23/cle…

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Exactly a year later, BLM protest videos started disappearing from the internet thanks to copyfraud and overactive copyright filters.

pluralistic.net/2020/07/23/cir…

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Copyright filters are a terrible idea, not just because they have all but eliminated the ability of musicians to perform classical music online:

pluralistic.net/2020/05/22/cri…

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Nor merely because they allow giant companies to steal from independent video creators:

pluralistic.net/2020/12/12/fai…

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They're a bad idea because they create a backdoor system for censorship of any and all material - because they fray the fabric of our online speech forums, and give bullies a devastating weapon to use against those who document their crimes.

eof/