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Comment by miguelmota | Hacker News Reader

Does the cop playing the music qualify as a public performance if the citizens are the audience?

Simply playing a song "in the background" without any critique, educational purpose, or other transformative fair use is almost certainly an performance of the original work. If the cop doesn't have an appropriate license, they could be liable for statutory damages up to $150,000[1] per work.

Unfortunately, enforcing this will probably only happen if someone with standing files a lawsuit. I doubt many music labels that hold the relevant copyrights are interested in suing the cops.

[1] damages normally start much lower, but the performance of the copyright protected work is patently willful

There are also sovereign immunity issues, see Allen v. Cooper.

Wouldn't you have to be a party to the infringing work for that to be true? Presumably you can sue the copyright holder of the film and not the "actors" as it were?

For example, if a romcom rips off some music I created can I sue Ben Affleck because he appeared in it? I doubt it. I especially doubt it if he didn't want to be in the film.

There are two separate potential copyright issues here: The public performance, and the recording. The cop was the one responsible for the public performance.

ASCAP, etc. will eventually want their bill paid for the public performances. That was my experience volunteering at small church coffee houses.

If I were an artist and learned that my work had been used in this manner, I would be outraged and would absolutely want to pursue damages for the unauthorized public performance, or demand that my record label pursue damages.

I wonder how the members of Sublime feel about this.

The lead singer died decades ago, but I think it is still very clear what the band would think: the lyrics of one of their songs are about very similar issues:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_29,_1992_(Miami)

TLDR : Sublime is about as "anti-cop" as you can get.

A cop, playing music for himself and one other person, most certainly is not in violation of anything.

The person making the video 'without critique or educational purpose' is probably in violation, hence the take down.

A label would never sue the cops first and foremost because they have no standing.

I think the idea is not to get hit with a "public performance" charge, but to have the video get automatically taken down on Youtube/Twitch/Instagram once it gets uploaded (due to the algorithm detecting copyright-infringing material).

And for that purpose, it doesn't matter whether it was a public performance or not. I can make a video of me sitting in a chair with a copyrighted song playing in the background, and it will get taken down. Hardly what I would call a "public performance".

The point is people should turn around and try to nail the cops for illegal public performances.

thanks - came here to say the same thing. does the police department pay the appropriate BMI license to be able to blast out those tunes in public?

You can try. I'm sure the cops will just start playing songs by artists who approve of cops playing but don't approve of the songs appearing in the background of social media posts.

Do the labels and/or RIAA police that over the objection or permission of the artists?

Depends on who holds the rights. Whoever holds them decides on the permissions.

If the rights are held by a major label, then they don't care a single thing about the artist's permission. For example, a few years ago or so, Madeon's soundcloud account (a big EDM artists) got a bunch of his own songs removed due to the label being the one actually holding the rights. The artist himself was pretty pissed about this.

But if the rights are held by the artists or by a small independent label, then they get to give out the permission.

The point is that it's not a public performance just because someone recorded it in the background.

Seems like it. Last time I checked, unauthorized public performance was a crime.

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