A malicious law enformement officer or a criminal can exploit copyright laws to prevent criminal activities to be posted on mainstream platforms. Read the article for a real life example.
No matter your stance on copyright laws, I think we can all agree there needs to be an exemption to copyright laws where if a video or audio recording contains copyrighted material but also contains unrelated content (like police violence or other criminal activity), then that should be exempt from copyright laws. Beside, who wants to listen to music that also has a cop screeching in the background, therefore, this wouldn’t affect music subscriptions services in any way.
Even with such law, I don’t have hopes of youtube changing their policies. I’m honestly sad for the future.
Doesn’t this usually fall under the Fair Use policy? Like, how you are allowed to post copirighted content if you are using it as a joke or as a comentator and such?
I think you are right in theory, but it looks very different in practice. These automatic takedowns are done by the company hosting the files without any official legal regulator getting involved.
The rightsholder of such music licenses usually have vastly more resources and there are no negative consequences for false flags. This means it is better to overregulate which leads to a form of censorship.
I’m not a lawyer, but they need to make it absolutely clear that recordings that include copyright music shouldn’t be copyright infringement unless the recording is solely containing the music and nothing else. Like if someone is talking over it, it should be automatically exempt. (Most pirates wouldn’t talk over music just to avoid copyright laws. Most pirates are gonna want the original, high quality version, not one where there are people talking over it.)
I think such a change would be acceptable to most people, even those who are against piracy.