BRISTOL, England – In the newsroom section of the Avon and Somerset Constabulary’s website, you can read about all sorts of interesting news involving the A&S police, including the recent seizure of “Samurai swords and a quantity of class A drugs” in Taunton, or advice about how to be a “Halloween hero.”
What you won’t find in the newsroom is a statement released by the constabulary apologizing for the “human error” that resulted in its Operational Support Team tweeting a link to a pirated stream of the Anthony Joshua/Carlos Takam fight.
What’s striking here is from the constabulary’s perspective, the problem isn’t that one of its officers tweeted a link to an illegal video stream, but the fact the stream also included pornographic video –- something the pirate who posted the feed to Periscope likely did as a lark.
Apparently, the illicit stream switched over to displaying porn in between rounds of boxing, prompting some of those who saw the police retweet to complain, mock the police for their embarrassing social media mishap or otherwise call attention to the situation.
“We are aware that last night a spam link, containing inappropriate content, was accidentally retweeted on one of our official A&S Police Twitter accounts,” the A&S Police said in a statement provided to the media but not published in the newsroom. “Unfortunately, this was due to human error, and the account user was unaware that it had happened.”
Hm. The user was unaware he/she had tweeted something? Or was the user just unaware they’d accidentally tweeted porn in addition to a pirated live pay-per-view event? The language of the A&S Police statement clearly suggests the latter.
“The post containing the offending link was removed within an hour, as soon as we became aware of the matter,” the A&S Police statement continued. “We would like to thank those who brought it to our attention, and we apologise for any offence that may have been caused through the sharing of this content.”
While the reports about the incident do reference the illegal aspect of sharing the stream stemmed from it being a copyright violation, I have a sneaking suspicion we never would have heard about any of this had it not been for the porn displayed in the process.
I can’t help noticing the police apologized for any offense taken at the content, not for any offense taken by the rights-holders who were selling pay-per-view access to the fight or to the public for the fact one (or more) officers decided it was fine to ignore the law to “share” something they didn’t own in the first place.
Is copyright violation a capital offense? Of course not. These days, among a lot of consumers, I think it hardly even registers as a form of wrong, much less a crime.
I also don’t expect people to shed any tears for boxing promoters and others who profit from selling PPV fights. It just irks me to have a police force, people who are explicitly tasked with upholding the law, acting as though the only problem here is an accidental retweet of pornographic video footage.
Heck, you would think the A&S Police would at least hold a hearing alleging misconduct on the part of the relevant officer(s). Then, if history is any indication, find the responsible officers guilty of misconduct, but conclude there’s no reason for discipline.
