Related news
We live in strange times, in which getting to upload content to the Internet can be a risky sport, something common in Spain. But to peculiar situations, peculiar measures. Or so these officers of the Beverly Hills police force must have thought, who tried to avoid being recorded on Instagram with copyrighted music.
No, it’s not a joke. As we can read in Vice, Last Friday an activist tried to record inside the Beverly Hills police department, with the excuse of submitting a form to obtain images from a policeman’s body camera. Sennett Devermont’s idea was to uncover the act of a policeman who imposed a fine, in his opinion, unfair.
The reaction of the agents, to avoid the direct of Instagram that Devermont was doing, was at least peculiar; the police officers they start playing music with copyright, in a clear attempt to get Instagram to block the broadcast.
Copyrighted music
tv/CK9s6LUDmQd/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="13" style="background: #FFF;border: 0;border-radius: 3px;margin: 1px;max-width: 540px;min-width: 326px;padding: 0">
As we can see in this fragment of Sennett’s live show, the agents are about to play music with copyright the moment the activist starts asking them questions. The conversation between Devermont and Corps Sergeant Billy Fair is cordial at first. It’s not until Devermont starts streaming the recording that Fair gets upset and plays the music.
Fair stops responding to questions when Devermont informs him that it is broadcasting the incident, and takes out his mobile phone to play music. It is not simply limited to playing copyrighted music; he stops answering Devermont’s questions and actively ignores him, looking at his phone and stating that he “can’t hear you.”
Quickly, the viewers of the live show (which was not blocked) began to laugh at the event, since Fair tried in a futile way to use the protection policies of copyright of social networks to block Devermont live. And it is that what surely Fair did not know, is that Instagram is not limited to audio.
Instagram and the copyright
It is true that the vast majority of social networks, especially Instagram, have become very strict when it comes to copyright. In fact, the Zuckerberg network has warned on many occasions that you cannot post video containing music, even if it is playing in the background, as it is subject to potential deletion.
Sergeant Fair playing music.
Omicrono
–
–
However, Instagram updated its policies in March 2020 on live broadcasts. And it is that he advised people to only use short music clips and to make sure there was a “visual component” to the videos. According to Instagram, “the recorded audio should not be the main purpose of the video.” In a statement from an Instagram spokesperson to Vice, it stated that its restrictions “take into consideration the following: how much of the total video contains recorded music, the total number of songs in the video, and the length in seconds of each song included in the video.”
If we take all of this into account, then Fair’s attempt is useless, since a very slight fraction of the songs are played that the sergeant reproduces and, moreover, does it accidentally. Not to mention that it is highly unlikely that the ‘affected’ group will report the images for copyright.
That doesn’t exempt Instagram from its own flaws; In the pandemic, we have seen how high-profile artists have been penalized for playing their own songs live on the platform.
The most interesting thing is that this does not seem like a casual incident. In a separate part of the live show, Devermont again approaches Fair on the outside. Events occur almost exactly; Devermont starts asking questions, and Fair plays the music. Fair also claims to “not hear” him again, holding the phone.
The same happened weeks before in another direct shared privately with Vice by Devermont himself, in which another cop imitates Fair trying to reproduce songs with rights to silence the activist. Fair’s videos are “currently under review,” according to Beverly Hills police.
You may also like…
– .
