A Police Officer Admits to Playing a Taylor Swift Song During a Confrontation to Trigger YouTube Copyright Claims on a Video
A confrontation Tuesday between a police sergeant and member of the public didn’t start out unusually. James Burch, policy director of the Anti Police-Terror Project (APTP), was standing outside the Alameda Courthouse in Oakland, California when an officer approached him and asked him to move a banner. As the two argued, the sergeant noticed he was being filmed. Then, he pulled out his phone and started playing “Blank Space” by Taylor Swift — in an apparent play to exploit copyright takedowns and keep the video off social media.
“You can record all you want,” he said, according to a video obtained by The Verge. “I just know it can’t be posted to YouTube.”
Bystanders have a First Amendment right to record police, but police officers have allegedly tried to exploit copyright law to prevent people from sharing those videos, playing music that could trigger a takedown notice. While playing music in the background of a video isn’t necessarily against YouTube’s rules, it can set off the company’s automatic takedown system.
