I will start this off by saying that not ALL cops that are doing what that headline says -“Using Copyrighted Music so you Can’t Upload Videos of them to YouTube,”- are bad cops. Now then, a sergeant from the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department, hiding behind a Taylor Swift song is…kind of disturbing.
My mother always told me: “No hagas cosas buenas que parezcan malas.” If you had trouble understanding that, you’re not dumb lol. It’s Spanish. What that translates too is “Don’t do good things that look bad.” In other words, police officers that have recently been hiding behind copyrighted music like “Santeria” and Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” in an effort to avoid being blasted on social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube may very well not have been doing anything wrong, but it sure looks sketchy.
The incident occurred at a pre-trial hearing for police officer Jason Fletcher, who last year was charged with manslaughter in the shooting and killing of Steven Taylor, a Black man, inside a Walmart. Taylor’s family alongside advocates from the Anti Police Terror-Project (APTP) gathered at the courthouse to listen to a hearing of the broadcast and show solidarity.
James Burch, policy director of the APTP, was seen standing outside the Alameda Courthouse when an officer approached him and asked him to remove a banner. The confrontation seemed to start like any normal altercation between protesters and police officers but as the two argued, the sergeant noticed he was being filmed. He then pulled out his phone and started playing “Blank Space” by Taylor Swift. His goal? To trigger a copyright takedown on social media sites that would stop the footage from being shared. if that ain’t some PRO GAMER sh*t right there…
What this cop didn’t know is that just because you upload copyrighted music doesn’t mean that the video will be removed. Typically, the choice is on the copyright holder whether or not the video is removed entirely. For the most part, YouTube will allow the video to stay up, instead giving monetization to the copyright holder. You tried:
