Minneapolis police abuse copyright law to censor their controversial shoot-first recruiting video

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/07/13/minneapolis-police-abuse-copyr.html

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If uploaders can have “Copyright Strikes” against them, then presumably people or organizations who abuse the takedown process can have “False Claim Strikes” against them? No? Doesn’t work like that?

Oh.

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What an innocuous load of shite. I genuinely feel dumber having subjected myself to the full 3 minutes of absolute bullshit in that video.

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Other than the first 30 seconds, the video is almost entirely all about solid community policing. Maybe they should just change the open instead of being all weird about it.

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Proposed chyron content:

…Like to go pew? M.P.D. too!..
…Wield a weapon! Then go steppin’…
…Innocent shot? Your back we got!..

"Join the Bedfordshire Police and deal with drunks and bad drivers"

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All this for a soccer game?

And New South Wales Police, Australia - more on helping drunks get home


NZ

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I only puked twice, I feel good about this.

[note sarcasm]

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If they hadn’t been assholes about it, I would have watched it once and moved on.

Now I’m going to save my own copy, for posterity.

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There’s not really anything wrong with this video. Like OK, you have a soldier turning into a cop, but I just took that to mean that they’re saying it might be a good fit for people who’ve been in the military, the same way they appeal to athletes (softball woman) and college graduates. There’s a little bit of “hey we shoot guns” but it’s overwhelmed by commitment to earnest community engagement. The DMCA part is a bad look, but it’s not reasonable to get mad at this video in the first place.

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Is it, though?

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Maybe, maybe not. Police are paramilitary after all, with uniforms and ranks and epaulets. Military people are used to discipline and structure, but at the same time it’s unclear whether they’ve spent too much time thinking in terms of fighting enemies. The point though is that it’s not an offensive idea to recruit veterans as police. Maybe not strictly ideal in all cases, but certainly not offensive.

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Possibly not, the US military generally has much more stringent rules on when and how you’re allowed to open fire on suspected enemies.

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Seemed rather mild. Are you sure this is the right video?

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Eh - that was a pretty tame recruitment video. You should see some of the cringe worthy stuff on private security companies. OMG - it’s like they watch too many A-Team reruns.

That said, I suppose there is some areas one could criticize it. I wouldn’t be trying to quell that criticism because you end up with the Streisand Effect. And then you end up with “click-baity” headlines like “shoot-first recruiting video”, which people will gasp and and repeat and share with out watching the video which I wouldn’t remotely call a “shoot-first recruiting video”.

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No. Having military police events like say, civil rights parades, has been historically a fucking disaster.

No. Nonononononononononononono.

Police should be civilians, and proud of it.

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Yeah, I was kinda underwhelmed. The first transformation was somewhat unexpected and jarring with the woman whirling to point a gun at the camera. But otherwise there’s just some b-roll of shooting range practice without even a trigger being pulled. The bust footage was interlaced with a pistol being reloaded, but I didn’t see cops actually apprehending people with guns drawn.

But anyhow, I suppose the issue is more about the unwarranted copyright takedown. And now the Streisand Effect is in play.

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Gotta agree, this was relatively tame. My takeaway from the video was “wow, they really do all have those creepy mustaches” that, and the production quality would be the reasons I would be trying to suppress this…

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Depends on the country. In some it’s called a police force, in others it’s called a police service.

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