[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.