[adolph]

Is it a criminal or civil offense?

If the officer is playing the music incidentally as they go about their day, would that be fair use?

I wonder if a de-music service would be feasible so that the copyrighted audio within a video would be detected and suppressed without suppressing the video and other noises.

[gpm]

Willful infringement of copyright is criminal. Incidental infringement is not (also incidental recording of music would probably not be civil infringement either in my honest and not at all a lawyer opinion).

[jariel]

These are ridiculous arguments, essentially implying that 'playing the radio for yourself' is copyright violation.

Obviously, it's not.

Maybe uploading a video containing such music is.

[riknos314]

To perform or display a work “publicly” means . . . (1) to perform or display it at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered; or (2) to transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of the work to a place specified by clause (1) or to the public, by means of any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance or display receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times.

- Section 101 of the 1976 Copyright Act

[aamoyg]

They will use the argument that their partner cop in the squad car is a "social acquaintance" or work friend, and that the music was intended for them.

[jariel]

This argument would be completely unnecessary.

Playing music to yourself, your friends etc. is 100% legal in all cases.

The cop doesn't need to make any arguments whatsoever about who it's being played for.

The person doing the filming and distributing is the person infringing.

It's completely obvious, there is no ambiguity.

The only approach, however hairbrained and ridiculous - would be for the IP owner to go after both the content video/distributor - and then somehow also rope the cop in as though they were somehow 'part of the preformative act' of making the video. But that's beyond a stretch.

In reality there are no hairs to split. If there is infringement, it's the person making the video.

[jariel]

Wonderful, thanks, you've just proven my case.

Anyone playing the music to themselves is not playing it where 'a substantial number of persons' can hear it, nor are they projecting in such a manner.

If this were the case, then anyone playing music, anywhere would be in violation, which is obviously ridiculous and no, it's not about some odd technicality of the law.

It is straight up, 100% legal to play music to yourself.

Given that there are millions of instances of people doing this every day, and zero cases of infringement in these scenarios, it would seem both the letter of the law, and case history quite handily demonstrate how crazy the claim is.

HN threads descend into a weird distortion field when dealing with hot-button issues such as DRM, policing, NIMBYism, blockchain, privacy etc.

-> Someone playing music to themselves (and not filming themselves and putting said video in public) is not infringing on anything.

-> Someone filming someone else else playing music, may be infringing by virtue of the fact they are posting the content 'in public'.

I don't think it's a matter of 'a difficult case to make' against a person being filed while listening to music to themselves, there is no case.

The videographer, yes.

Twitch / Youtubers know this as they cannot stream DRM'd music in their streams, but of course, they are directly making said music public, in which case it's a legal problem.

[gpm]

Public performance is copyright infringement, playing it to yourself is not, playing it to the live streaming video camera is.

[jariel]

Obviously not.

If you are playing music to yourself, and someone films you - you are not infringing - the person filming and uploading is - possibly, though that's more questionable.

[8note]

You are infringing if they can hear it.

That cases are not pursed is incidental.

I imagine it's hard to build a case against the guy blasting his car radio without a recording, and the affected people aren't particularly unhappy with it.

If copyright was more like trademarks, and they had to protect it to keep it, you'd see more cases of people playing their music too loud.

We'll see the same happen with streaming services as smart TVs get popular. You'll have to pay per viewer as licenses change

[jariel]

You are not infringing on anything by playing music to yourself, and it's not a matter of cases being failed to pursued, it's straight up legal to do so in every sense.

If there is some random person filming you - then they are infringing - not you.