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July 2019
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Unsealed Warrant Shows SFPD Officer Misled Court About Journalist's Occupation

Furnished content.


One of the search warrants used by the San Francisco police department to go after a journalist for documents a PD employee leaked has been released. This is only one of the five warrants targeting "stringer" Bryan Carmody, whose house was raided by the SFPD back in May.This search warrant targeted Carmody's phone records. It was granted on March 1st, allowing the SFPD to obtain records from Verizon. This was done supposedly to track down which cop called Carmody over a two-day period prior to the release of the leaked document to California news agencies.Earlier this month, Judge Rochelle East quashed the warrant, saying it showed the SFPD omitted key info that would have made it clear it was targeting a journalist -- something forbidden by California's journalist shield law. The judge also unsealed the warrant. It has finally been released and it shows SFPD Sgt. Joseph Obidi writing his way around the fact that Carmody is a journalist.In the application [PDF], Sgt. Obidi cut-and-pasted part of Carmody's LinkedIn profile. The officer included the part that said Carmody was a "Freelance Videographer." But he excluded the part that said Carmody "has decades of experience shooting, editing and reporting news," as well as the long list of new agencies he had worked with. It also excluded the fact that the SFPD had issued a press pass to Carmody -- one that was still current when the warrant was obtained.This was pointed out during the hearing about the warrant by Judge East, who said the existence of a press pass should have told the SFPD to steer its investigation away from Carmody.

While under other circumstances in other cases there may be some question as to what a journalist is. In this case I think there is none. The fact that he has a press pass from the San Francisco Police Department indicates to this Court that he is a journalist.
The narrative in the application shows the SFPD suspected an officer or SFPD employee. Yet, the Department decided to go after a journalist for possessing and distributing a document that was illegally leaked by one of its own. It could have limited its investigation to its own staff and their phone records. But it didn't, and now it's only a few weeks away from seeing all of its warrants tossed (and hopefully unsealed) and presumably less than 365 days away from being sued by Bryan Carmody.

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posted at: 12:00am on 26-Jul-2019
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Popular Stream-Ripping Site Declines To Play Whac-A-Mole With YouTube

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We have been talking these past few weeks about a strange game of whac-a-mole currently being played between YouTube and a whole bunch of stream-ripping websites. While stream-ripping sites have been targeted by the music industry specifically for some time now, despite a wide range of non-infringing uses of such technology, it was only recently that YouTube decided to participate in all of this by blocking access to its platform for many of these sites. Built around claims of ToS violations, it's fairly clear that YouTube's actual goal in all of this is to appear to be attempting to bow to the music industry's wishes. Despite the blocks, many of these sites have managed to route around the blockade, thus the game of whac-a-mole.But not all such sites have taken this stance. Onlinevideoconverter.com, which initially routed around the block, has since announced that it is voluntarily leaving the hide-and-seek game and will simply stop converting YouTube videos itself.

However, the team behind the site isn’t planning to keep up this fight. People who access the stream-ripper today will notice that YouTube downloads have stopped working again. A site representative informs TorrentFreak that this is intentional.“In view of YouTube’s latest stance, we’ve decided to disable the conversion of all YouTube videos on our service,” OVC says.The stream-ripping site notes that the decision was taken voluntarily and not after it was contacted directly by rightsholders or YouTube. OVC simply believes that it’s the best direction to take and it stresses that other downloading and conversion tools remain available.
While other sites are still keeping up with the game, the exit of OVC is significant, as it is certainly one of the most popular stream-ripping sites on the internet. This may, of course, have been part of YouTube's overall plan. While its initial strike wasn't particularly effective, perhaps it actually was if seen as something of a warning shot. Google and YouTube have a ton of legal and influential weight to throw around, after all, and taking this initial action was bound to be enough to spook some sites.Which is a shame, actually. The fact remains that these sites have legitimate uses. I've used them in the past for publicly available lectures and educational material from technology manufacturers that have no reason to view an audio rip as problematic. And, again, what about the artists out there who actually embrace what the internet can offer and want their work made as widely available as possible?They don't matter in this fight, apparently. And that's a reality the music industry, and apparently now YouTube, can't seem to recognize.

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posted at: 12:00am on 26-Jul-2019
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