Cops prove how stupid the SMART Act is

Blasting Disney tunes as a way to foil accountability.

Cory Doctorow

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The three wise monkeys; the faces of hear- and see-no-evil have been replaced with the glowing red eye of HAL9000; the face of speak-no-evil has been replaced with Mickey Mouse. Behind the monkeys is a police car with its lights on. Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en Japanexperterna.se (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/japanexperterna/15251188384/ CC BY-SA 2.0: https://creativeco

Remember back in Feb ’21, when cops in Beverly Hills were caught blaring Taylor Swift songs to prevent videos of their misconduct from being posted to social media by triggering copyright filters?

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/10/duke-sucks/#bhpd

At the time, the Beverly Hills PD was publicly shocked and appalled by the conduct and promised to root it out. Other police departments didn’t get the memo. One county over, in Santa Ana, cops spent Monday night blaring Disney tunes out of their cruiser in an (unsuccessful) bid to keep themselves off Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f-z-5HZr6w

The officer — an SAPD corporal, badge 3134 — woke the sleeping residents of W Civic Center Dr and N Western Ave at 11 p.m., and kept the Disney tunes going for hours until a resident — who was also a Santa Ana city councilor — confronted him.

https://abc7.com/santa-ana-police-officers-youtube-video-disney-music-during-investigation/11718827/

Councilmember Jonathan Hernandez asked the officer why he was playing Disney music. The officer answered “Because they get copyright infringement,” meaning Youtubers who post videos in which cops play…

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Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow

Written by Cory Doctorow

Writer, blogger, activist. Blog: https://pluralistic.net; Mailing list: https://pluralistic.net/plura-list; Mastodon: @pluralistic@mamot.fr

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