In a movie Released on Thursday, a police officer can now be seen turning on a Taylor Swift song while being filmed by the Anti-Police-Terror Project (APTP) activist group. When bystanders ask him why, he says: “I know you can’t upload this video on YouTube YouTube [als ik muziek aanzet].”
The incident took place outside a courthouse in the city of San Leandro. A hearing was taking place at the time in the case of Steven Taylor, a black man who was shot and killed by a police officer. APTP protested on the spot. An officer asked the group to remove a banner, apparently taking offense at the activists filming him.
Ironically, the trick didn’t work in this case. The video is still available on YouTube.
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Legal to record
Under US law, it is perfectly legal to record videos of officers on duty. In this way, in recent years citizens have put pressure on officers who abuse their position, for example to mistreat people.
Such recordings played an important role in the case of George Floyd, a black man who was killed by a police officer. This cop, Derek Chauvin, got 22 years two weeks ago prison sentence from the judge.
US activists have been reporting since the beginning of this year that agents are abusing YouTube’s ‘Content ID’ algorithms, but so far no agent has admitted this. Content ID matches a video with an existing video.
If the video appears to show similarities with another copyrighted video, the video can be taken offline or it will not be uploaded at all. Content ID is notoriously sharp on music from well-known artists.
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