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Comment by jefflombardjr | Hacker News Reader

There's no way the cops doing this on duty have that music licensed for non-personal use. Where are the RIAA lawyers when you need them?

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IANAL but spent a lot of time around DMCA and rights... I doubt the cop playing music on a paid Spotify account/etc in this way would be considered commercial reproduction. At least not by the cop - possibly the by the person uploading the video... and thus the issue and the opportunity for take-down.

I also deal a lot with music copyright, professionally. In this case it’s not about commercial reproduction of the recording, it’s about unauthorized public performance of the underlying work (composition).

If that was really enforceable then anyone playing music out of their phone speaker in public, eg on the bus, would be infringing. It's not a thing.

(why people insist on playing music in public out of their phone speaker in an annoying way is another topic!)

That is, in fact, infringement, however trivial. It’s obviously not something worth pursuing in court.

> There's no way the cops doing this on duty have the music licensed that for non-personal use.

States are immune from copyright infringement:

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/24/820381016/in-blackbeard-pirat...

Supreme Court has ruled that in general individuals cannot sue sovereign states without their permission in federal court

Can someone explain why this is the case?

11th amendment.

Municipalities do not enjoy the same freedom from responsibility.

Also, federal copyright preemption only covers "equivalent" laws. So, for instance, state "true name and address" laws could still be used.

I'm absolutely ignorant about those rules, but couldn't you sue the individual cop?

(un)qualified immunity makes this really hard.

My understanding is it only applies if the officer believes they aren’t violating the law? Given the explicit goal is triggering copyright enforcement that seems to negate such a claim?

Qualified Immunity has been interpreted so broadly that it is virtually unqualified - it is almost impossible to actually bring a case against a police officer for something that happens while they are on duty.

General incompetence and ignorance of the law have been used as justification for invoking qualified immunity. I'd be willing to bet there is almost no chance of successfully suing a police officer over something like this.

Yeah, and similarly they've been found to not be required to "protect and serve" :-/

This a genius response to this if the RIAA actually cared. He is clearly using the music in a public performance as he intends for it to be added to an online video. If the RIAA gave a rats ass about anything but money they could get some serious brownie points by asking anyone who has this down to them to forward the videos so they can serve the individual cops.

If they could just sue the police departments as a whole, then they'd have the money they want.

It's not a genius response because it makes no sense. The police officer is not responsible for how some stranger filming him decides to use the footage.

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