Billy: Hey everybody.

John: Hello Billy! 

Adrianne: Hi, Billy.

Regina: Hey, Billy. 

Adrianne: Regina. 

Regina: Sorry.

Billy: It’s okay. I don’t take it personally, whatsoever. 

Regina: Good. 

Billy: Now I do. Just based on how you said that.

Regina: Should we start over?

Billy: No, that was fine. 

Regina: Okay.

Billy: So I want to play you all a press conference.

Adrianne: Ooh.

Billy: And this took place at the tail end of 2020.

Sheriff: Merry Christmas everyone, it’s time for our daily briefing. As I told you, we were going to bring you several different press releases this week of Christmas cheer that we’ve provided for those who violate the law.

John: What?

Adrianne: What?

Regina: I’m sorry, huh?

Billy: So that’s Grady Judd. Have any of you encountered this guy? 

John: No.

Regina: Have I encountered sheriff Grady Judd just in my day-to-day life?

Billy: In your day-to-day life, you probably wouldn’t encounter him unless you live in Polk County, Florida, where he’s the sheriff and where he’s conducting this press conference from.

Regina: Okay.

Sheriff: So we thought we would start with our investigation that began in the month of October, as a result of a concerned citizen that came to us and said, “you know, I think they’re doing illegal stuff out of that international flea market.”

Billy: Any guesses? Any guesses on the illegal stuff they’re doing out at that international flea market?

Adrianne: Tax evasion?

Billy: Well, I think that’s basically just a given that any flea market.

John: Are they selling pot?

Billy: No.

John: Are they selling a drug of some sort?

Billy: No, at least that’s not what he’s here to talk about.

Regina: They’re selling like food and they’re not supposed to sell food?

Billy: It’s not food.

John: Hmm? 

Billy: All right. I’ll keep playing.

Sheriff: And we said, “like what?” And they said, “like the monthly fees for television that the rest of us are having to pay for? Something’s got to be wrong with that.”

John: What? Is this about Kodi boxes?

Billy: Great question! Well, let me just keep playing.

John: Okay.

Sheriff: We started an undercover investigation and here’s what we found out. You can see the fire stuck- sticks. All four- the people we arrested, admitted they were jailbroke of firesticks. 

John: Yup!

Sheriff: That’s your clue. Jailbroke firesticks. A jailbroke firestick was sold between $80 and $107 by these four folks that I’ll introduce to you in a minute. 

Regina: My God.

Sheriff: A regular firestick sells for between $25 and $40.

Adrianne: He’s holding up a picture of the fire TV stick 4k. 

Billy: Yes.

Adrianne: This is the- it’s like an Amazon set top box?

Billy: Yes.

Adrianne: Okay. I like only sort of know of what this is so, explain for me.

Billy: Okay. A firestick or an Amazon Fire TV stick, as it’s officially called, it’s like a Roku, you know, it’s a smart device that you plug into your TV, so you can watch Netflix or play games or whatever.

Adrianne: Got it.

Billy: And they run a version of Android. So they’re relatively easy to customize with software beyond what’s available in Amazon’s app store. Much easier to customize than say an Apple TV or a Roku. And Sheriff Judd is calling these devices, quote, “jailbroke.”

Adrianne: Jailbreak for iPhones and for Android, and something else?

Regina: I always thought jailbroke was an iPhone thing. Yeah.

John: I think it’s like a more generic term now. 

Adrianne: Rooted.

John: Rooted! Yeah. 

Billy: As a term, it was first popularized in reference to exploits that allow people to install unauthorized software on Apple iPhones. And that started way back like when there wasn’t even an official way to add third-party apps. I did it for many years. 

John: Same. 

Regina: As did I am. 

Billy: Generally you’re right on Android devices, which again, the firestick is an Android device, the equivalent process would be called rooting.

Adrianne: Gotcha, Sheriff!

Billy: Gotcha! Throw it out of the court! 

Adrianne: Idiot.

Billy: But it’s also worth noting that the firestick like many Android devices doesn’t actually require root access to install on authorized apps. You literally just flip a switch in the settings and you can install apps directly without having to go to the app store.

John: What’s the county sheriff doing getting involved in this? 

Billy: Well, I guess we’ll find out. Let me keep playing it here.

Sheriff: We did search warrants and we took all of these firesticks last Saturday after making our fourth by.

Adrianne: Close up of the firestick.

Actually, close up of the firestick poster.

Sheriff: And on each of the times that we made a purchase of this illegal product from the sellers, they all admitted that this is how you avoid paying communication services fees. They weren’t that technical. They said, this is how you get free TV.

Billy: Which, hold on. Those are two very different things. He’s saying they admitted to something very specific. And then he’s like, well, they weren’t that technical. They just said, this is how you get free TV.

Sheriff: You must understand that here’s how it works, If you’re in possession of one of these firesticks and you’re streaming content, you’re committing a misdemeanor. 

Regina: What?

Sheriff: So let me put that in Polk County vernacular, every time you turn that TV on, to a channel or a station or Hulu or Netflix that you’re supposed to pay for, and you’re not paying for it-

Regina: What? No! 

Sheriff: You’ve committed a misdemeanor.

John: I don’t think you can watch Hulu on this for free.

Regina: Right. No.

Billy: Probably, they could probably install an app that gives you access to links for streaming Hulu shows on the internet.

Regina: Right, but it’s not Hulu. Like it doesn’t come preloaded with a Hulu subscription.

Billy: Yeah. He doesn’t really seem to understand how it works.

John: This stuff is really frustrating.

Regina: Yeah. It really is.

Billy: Let me keep playing here.

Sheriff: Now here’s my Christmas present to you to save you potentially problems down the road, unplug it, just unplug it. I would give it to the garbage man for Christmas, broken up in pieces because you don’t want to be committing a misdemeanor.

John: Wait, is this what he meant about Christmas cheer for people committing crimes?

Adrianne: This is like Oprah?

Billy: Yes, this is his definition of Christmas cheer.

Adrianne: You get a broken fire stick and you get a broken fire stick and you get a broken fire stick.

Regina: Nothing about this as Christmas cheer.

Sheriff: But sell of these firesticks…are felonies.

John: Oh-

Adrianne: Oh, no..what’s a felony?

Billy: He’s claiming that if you sell it, that’s a felony.

Sheriff: You sell a firestick that’s jailbroke, it’s a felony. And the key to it is you jailbreak it for personal gain, and then you turn around and resell it.

Billy: So the sheriff- he’s making a lot of definitive statements here, right? 

Regina: Yeah.

Billy: He’s claiming that the devices are quote “illegal products,” he’s claiming that using them as a misdemeanor, he’s claiming that selling them as a felony and he’s not yet clarified what he means by a jailbroke firestick or what the advertised claims of “free TV” actually mean in practice. Which seems important to me.

Sheriff: So let’s meet some of the folks. The entrepreneurs that were committing a felony every time they sold one of these firesticks.

Adrianne: Have these people been convicted?

Billy: No, at this point, they had not. I’m going to beep out these people’s names because they have not been- 

Adrianne: They haven’t been convicted.

Billy: They have not been convicted of a crime.

Sheriff: She’s 59 and we in conversation said, “well, how did you get into this?” She said, “well, originally I bought a jailbroke firestick and I had some problems with it, so I took it back. And they wanted too much to repair it. So I went online to figure out how to break my own firestick,

Adrianne: That’s amazing! 

Sheriff: and that’s how I got into the business.” And from there, she started selling them to the public. So even if you buy a legal firestick and go online and figure out how to jailbreak it, the first time you download content, you’re committing a crime.

John: Is that true?

Sheriff: Think about that. 

Regina: It depends on the content. 

Sheriff: She’s probably one of the more technologically savvy of the group. 

Billy: This woman is 71 years old.

Adrianne: I’m impressed.

Sheriff: But being the all purpose service kind of lady she is, if you take her your legal firestick, she’ll jailbreak it for $50. But she would also coaching council. You know, she recommends that you get a VPN so that the internet provider can’t see just how much traffic you have and how much theft you’re conducting.

Adrianne: Oh, my gosh, I love this lady.

Billy: Again, not to overly nerds playing everything to the sheriff here, but that is another objectively incorrect detail. A VPN does not prevent your internet service provider from seeing “how much traffic you have. ” A statement doesn’t even make sense. Even if he was trying to say how much traffic you’re doing on the internet, that’s also not true. If you’re using a VPN that can still tell the amount of traffic you’re doing.

John: Yeah.

Adrianne: But they can’t see what content and sites.

Billy: Just further obscures it. Anyway, back to Sheriff Judd.

Sheriff: She has storefront candles and more.

Adrianne: And more.

Sheriff: And more is the firesticks. I would say that her candle business and more kind of went up in smoke on Saturday.

John: Oh my god!

Adrianne: Dude.

Sheriff: And then there’s- he’s 34. He also jailbreaks his own fire sticks and he shows you how to load and do this over the internet. He’s the only one with a criminal history. Then there’s-

Billy: This last person is 88 years old. 

John: Oh my god!

Billy: This is an 88 year old man.

Adrianne: That’s amazing!

Billy: Right! This 88 year old, like the others, was arrested, taken to jail. And now the sheriff, sheriff Grady Judd in this press conference is showing their mugshots, he’s mocking them, he’s making fun of their signs..and he’s saying that they all committed a felony offense.

Sheriff: So we charged him as we did the others with one count of unauthorized reception of communications, which is a felony of the third degree.

Adrianne: One count of unauthorized communications receptions.

Billy: Yes. So the law that they claim these individuals violated is a Florida law. And this section is titled Unauthorized Reception Of Communication Services; Penalties. We’ll dive into the exact text of it but, in general, here’s what I want to find out.

There’s sort of this cloud of mystery surrounding this story because the local news in Florida, they basically just paraphrase the sheriff.

They covered it one way.

Local News: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And in this case, it’s also a crime.

Billy: And then as you can imagine, Reddit and other parts of the internet, once they caught onto this story, they reacted in a completely different way.

And hearing what that sheriff had to say, it’s like nothing, nothing he said made sense.

What I want to unpack is, is it illegal to use a “jailbroke firestick”? And also, what prompted these arrests? Like what’s the deal with sheriff Grady Judd? 

Regina: Oh, man, I like that.

John: Love to talk flirty and sheriffs.

Sheriff: I have a Christmas tip, just don’t violate the law this next year, and you’ll have a lot less complicated life. You see, we won’t bother you at all. But the investigation’s not over. It’s just beginning. That’s another Christmas present from me to you.

Regina: This man doesn’t understand Christmas presents.

Adrianne: These are not good Christmas presents.

John: After the break, Billy tries to figure out what’s actually broken here.

Adrianne: Hi listeners! This is Adrianne. Underunderstood is an independent podcast that we do in our spare time and we support it through Patreon. Patreon lets listeners like you, contribute a small amount of money per month, $5 in our case, that helps keep the show going. We give our Patreons access to our second show called Overunderstood. It’s a little bit of loser format and sometimes we do things like, more of an interview that we have to cut short for the episode. That’s what we did last week, with my interview with Ana Maria Quintana, the script supervisor for Jurassic Park. She had a bunch of cool stories about Steven Spielberg and just about being an insider in Hollywood. What it’s like to work behind the scenes of these major blockbuster. She’s done a ton of them. And we also talked a little bit more about the tattoo mystery. We had all these extra materials so we did a lately edited version and released it as a bonus episode. These episodes happen every week even when Underunderstood is on break. $5 a month, Patreon.com/underunderstood. It’s easy and you can support the show. Thank you so much. 

Billy: Hello!

John: Hey!

Adrianne: Hey, Billy!

Billy: Welcome back. 

Adrianne: Thanks!

Billy: We have a lot to get through, so I’m just going to jump right in.

Adrianne: Amazing!

Billy: So, the first thing I want to do is contextualize everything that we’re navigating here. So I called the first person that I can think of. 

Hi, Nilay!

Nilay: Hey, Billy!

Adrianne: Oh my gosh. 

Nilay: I’m very excited to be on the show. Do you need to know a lot about something very obscure to, to really make an impact on the show? And I’m happy that I finally, finally have that corner of my brain of value to you.

Regina: He’s the perfect crossover.

Billy: Nilay Patel is editor in chief of The Verge where we all used to work and he’s also hosted the podcast Decoder. And one thing that I learned from Nilay is to overly disclose everything when reporting. So I feel like I should disclose that we all worked under Nilay in some capacity at some point.

But Nilay has a deep and sort of personal understanding of how copyright law works on the internet. And that’s why I wanted to talk to him.

Nilay: I went to college to be a doctor like every good Indian kid does. And about midway through college, I was deeply radicalized by Napster. 

Reporter: Most of us head out to a music store to buy CDs, but not Mike Chester. “I’ve been using Napster for about a year.” He goes to napster.com to get all the music he wants and he doesn’t pay for it.

Nilay: My college campus actually blocked access to Napster, and this made me very much want to become a lawyer and not only a lawyer, but specifically a copyright lawyer.

Billy: And so Nilay does what I think is a very funny form of rebellion. He says, I’m not going to be a doctor. I’m going to be a lawyer.

Nilay: So I ran off to law school, became a lawyer. I had, I would say like a two year brief unremarkable career as a copyright attorney, I worked for a tiny firm in Chicago and a big part of the practice that the woman who started the firm set up was defending kids who have been sued by the record industry for using Kazaa.

Reporter: Many Americans use programs like Kazaa to download music and the recording industry claims this cost them millions in lost revenue.

Adrianne: I can’t believe this happened.

Billy: You can’t believe that Nilay, I was like this, a punk rock Kazaa attorney?

Adrianne: No, that I can believe. I can’t believe record companies sued kids for using Kazaa.

Billy: Oh, okay. So anyway, that is who Nilay would represent. He would go to the federal courthouse in Chicago. Their client would be there. There’d be a lawyer from the record industry.

Nilay: And we would just lose, like they, all those cases settled because at the end of the day they had done it and they had used Kazaa, and copyright infringement is illegal. And there wasn’t really a way around it unless one of these kids had a million dollars in 10 years to fight some novel theory of the law to the Supreme court. So they were all gonna lose.

Billy: So Nilay gets a bit disillusioned with the day-to-day realities of being a lawyer.

Nilay: Fast forward, I’m now I’m the editor-in-chief of The Verge where I feel like all we talk about- the bottom of every story is a copyright. Well a story because everything that happens on the internet requires a copy of something. 

Billy: So I sent Nilay the video of sheriff Grady Judd, this press conference, to get this tick. 

Had you seen this by the way?

Nilay: I had not, and I watched this video and I, I can’t- I laughed so hard. These, these dudes-  are the police they’re in so far over their head. This is like the silliest podunk-police-force-doesn’t-understand-what-they’re-talking-about situation I’ve ever seen in regards to the internet.

John: And he’s seen a lot.

Adrianne Nice. 

Billy: It’s important to point out here that all of the cases of internet piracy, that Nilay dealt with back when he was a lawyer, none of those people were being arrested or taken to jail by the cops. But that doesn’t mean that criminal copyright infringement doesn’t exist.

Nilay: Criminal copyright infringement is a real thing that happens. And if you are running a factory to pirate DVDs, it is possible that you will get arrested for that. And you’ll be subject to criminal copyright violation. The guy on the streets selling the bootleg DVDs rarely gets prosecuted. And there’s a really important reason for that. That is squarely at the heart of this situation, which is copyright law is a federal law.

 The federal copyright law supersedes overcomes, replaces any state level copyright law. So it is wholly a federal offense. So criminal copyright infringement is investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by the department of justice, not by the local cops and not prosecuted by the state level or local level authorities.

John: Huh?

Billy: So this all just set the scene, regardless, local authorities don’t enforce copyright law as Nilay was saying, and they certainly can’t arrest you for it or take you to jail for it.

John: Wait. So why did the county sheriff arrest these people in Florida then?

Billy: What they’re doing here in Polk County is referencing a state law. It’s Florida statute 812.15.

John: Why is this a Florida law, if federal law in copyright matters, always supersedes state law?  

Adrianne: Yeah. 

John: Like why would you write the law in Florida at all? If you know that it’s going to be superseded by- or is it if the federal one goes away?

Billy: It’s because it’s not copyright law.

John: Oh. Oh, right! Because you said this is about unauthorized for exception of communications.

Billy: Which is an important point.

John: So if you’re ripping off the cable company, basically.

Adrianne: This is just a law to protect cable companies.

Billy: Yeah.

Nilay: You will note that they are not alleging copyright infringement anywhere. This statute in Florida was written so that if you hijack, like the cable system, the local police can come and get you because that’s a very local crime. There’s no copyright law in here.

Billy: We can actually tell pretty precisely what the devices in question do, because the police department posted the undercover footage from the flea market. 

And in it, the individuals arrested, demonstrate the features. 

So I went through the footage and here is every app they show as far as I can tell. Mobdro Sofa TV, Cinema HDV2, Free Flicks TV, Watched, Strix and the media center app Cody with the plugins numbers and Exodus Redux.

John: Definitely sounded like the types of things you would download too, like, jailbreak your phone in 2010.

Billy: Or like bands that would perform at a NASCAR race.

John: Sure! 

Billy: Strix, Mobdro, Exodus Redux, all of these apps essentially do the same thing. They aggregate links to stream unauthorized copies of movies and TV shows, or in some cases like with the Mobdro app, Live TV channels. They let you watch live TV channels

So essentially all of these apps, what they do is they just make low level piracy, a little more user friendly, and that seems to be a completely different offense than what is outlined in the law cited in the official press release.

Nilay: The law that they are charging these people under the sheriff, the local sheriff in Florida is charging these people under, is a law about a cable service or another communications service provider, who is that cable operator? Who is that communication service provider?

Billy: So to answer that question, we have to dive a little deeper into the law and we have to dive a little deeper into the police records. So, Nilay emphasized to me that he is not a practicing attorney and that he’s not super familiar with Florida law. I couldn’t get any of the lawyers representing the accused individuals in this case to talk to me, the cases are ongoing, so I talked to a lawyer in Florida who normally defends users, accused of sharing copyrighted material on BitTorrent.

Adrianne: Nice.

Cynthia: My name is Cynthia Conlon and I am an attorney in Orlando, Florida.

Billy: Now again, Cynthia is only dealing with civil cases in her work, but here’s what interested me. In addition to the BitTorrent stuff, she also represents clients who receive Dish network channels without proper authorization, which is something like, I think it sounds a lot closer to what is described in the Florida law than what we talked about happening on these firesticks.

Cynthia: Typically an end user will purchase a box or some sort of hardware and they will buy what’s called an IKS passcode to be able to access a service that is intercepting Dish network satellite service.

Billy: And Cynthia even said that a lot of this activity, like what the firesticks is initiated by sales at flea markets. But despite the similarities here, Cynthia had never personally encountered this particular law in Florida with any of her cases before.

Adrianne: Oh, I assumed that’s what she was talking about this whole time.

Billy: No. And beyond that, she had never heard of anyone being arrested for any kind of offense like this whatsoever.

Cynthia: I’ve never seen it before, not before this incident.

Billy: So like any good lawyer, Cynthia starts going through the text of the law.

Cynthia: When I printed out the statute, it takes up five pages. It’s kind of long.

Billy: And she ended up sending me all of these detailed notes. She notices that the law had been tweaked over time, the language has changed, she sends me a PDF where I can see what texts has been added and what texts has been removed. And we could get into all of those specifics, but Cynthia noticed something else that is super important that the police didn’t include in their public analysis of the statute, that sort of reshapes how we need to look at the entire thing.

Cynthia: I dug a little bit deeper into the statute. So sub section 12, which is the last section, second to last section deals with multipurpose devices, which would be a firestick. And it says specifically a person that manufacturers, produces, designs, sells, distributes licenses or develops a multi-purpose device, shall not be in violation of the section, unless that person X knowingly, and with an intent to defraud the communication service provider.

But then it adds- also the multipurpose device, either  A. Is manufactured developed, assembled, produced, designed, distributed, sold, or licensed for the primary purpose of committing a violation, or it would have only unlimited commercially significant purpose, or use other than the commission of violation of the section, or if it is marketed by that person with that person’s knowledge for the purpose of committing any violation of this section.

Billy: What this basically leaves us with are the questions of, one, are these devices successfully defrauding a cable operator or communication service? Are they actually doing that? And not, or, and are they being sold explicitly for that purpose? Are the sellers advertising them as being able to defraud a cable operator? And do they understand that that’s what they’re doing?

Adrianne: I think it goes back to Nilay’s question, who’s the operator?

Billy: Exactly.

Cynthia: It looks like from reviewing the police reports and the files that they’re being accused of intercepting the Spectrum Charter Communications Cable service. 

John: Oh!

Cynthia: That’s what the police reports refer to.

Billy: So I have copies of the police affidavits. They’re all basically the same, but right now I’m looking at the one for the 88 year old man. I should mention, by the way that I reached out to request an audio interview from sheriff Grady Judd, and they told me because the cases are ongoing, that I just have to go off of what is already publicly available. So that’s what we’re going to do. 

It’s worth noting that the written part of this document is riddled with errors. They spell the word statute and incorrectly. They wrote it as “statue.”

Anyway, in the affidavit, it says, “each individual firestick was taken to a secure location within the Polk County Sheriff’s office and was analyzed, confirming access to these cable channels such as Fox news without a monthly or annual subscription fee. The cable channels being accessed on the firestick, are cable channels that are not over the air cable channels.” 

John: Those aren’t a thing. 

Billy: Right! Exactly. That’s not even a thing. 

Then it says, “contact was made with Bruce Asbury, who is a director of enterprise communications with Spectrum Charter Communications. Asbury provided a sworn recorded statement, detailing how the jailbroken firesticks are unlawful.

Bruce Asbury advised cable channels being received on devices are typically negotiated with a telecommunications conglomerate. Any reception of these channels without negotiation is consider- I believe he meant to say considered, unlawful in reference to the below listed state statue. Spelled STATUE.

Yeah. I don’t know what a Florida state statue would be, like Dan Marino? I don’t know. And then they list the statute that we talked about. But there are a few things that are interesting about this.

First, I looked up the guy from Spectrum Bruce Asbury because I wanted to interview him. And I wasn’t able to reach him for comment, but check out his LinkedIn page, scroll down and let me know if you notice anything that stands out.

Regina: Deputy sheriff Polk County Sheriff’s office-

John: No way!

Adrianne: What?

Regina: Florida May, 1996 to May, 2001.

Billy: Yeah! So..

Regina: Five years and one month. 

Billy: Alumnus of the Polk County Sheriff’s office. 

Regina: Ahuh!

Billy: And there appears to be no proof that channels available in Mobdro, which was the app capable of playing live TV streams, even originate from Spectrum or Charter Communications. 

On Mobdro’s official website, it says that Mobdro “is a tool that constantly looks for free video streams available on the web and makes them accessible.”

So, a seller can’t even reasonably guarantee that any specific channel from any specific source will be available on Mobdro at any given time. But even if you could twist these circumstances into claiming that these individuals defrauded Spectrum, which is sort of attempted in the police affidavit, it would actually also be reasonable to conclude that the sellers didn’t see themselves as deliberately defrauding anything.

So, if you’ll remember sheriff Grady Judd, basically, he basically admits that his office is projecting the specific element of intent onto the people that they arrested.

Sheriff: They all admitted that this is how you avoid paying communication services fees. They weren’t that technical. They said, this is how you get free TV.

Billy: So, it’s possible that these accused individuals simply just saw this as a way to get free TV. They probably realized like, “yeah, this is in some kind of gray area,” but they didn’t see themselves as defrauding Spectrum. And the 88 year old man at his booth, he also appears to be selling TV antennas, which, you know, of course are a free alternative to cable TV.

John: Love ‘em.

Billy: So, you know, are they knowingly willingly defrauding Spectrum? It seems like perhaps they are not.

Cynthia: So you have to have intent to defraud. That’s one reason that it would probably be more difficult for them to be found liable in a criminal arena.

Billy: And keep in mind, the intent to defraud is not enough on its own to qualify as a violation. The device has to actually be capable of defrauding Charter Spectrum.

Nilay:  When you stream something, you’re making a copy of it on your local device. And there’s actually an enormous amount of case law about those what they’re order called a femoral copies. And eventually the copyright law was amended to say a femoral copies are legit, but when he screamed something, you make a copy onto your, onto your computer or your computing device.

You copy it into the RAM of whatever your fire stick. Okay. Well, under a pretty narrow reading of the law, you put the button, you play it, there it is. There’s copyright infringement. You were not allowed to make that copy. And now you’re fully in the realm of federal law enforcement. So they’re all moralizing, all of the vocabulary about jailbroke all that is to kind of hide the fact that the state level law that they’re relying on here, doesn’t really apply to anyone’s conduct.

Adrianne: We’ve phrased that the central question of this podcast as was this activity technically illegal, but my question would be who cares?

Billy: Well, right! 

Adrianne: This is a five-page statute that does one thing, which is protect cable providers’ business.

Billy:  Right.

Adrianne: So my interpretation of this is cable providers did a really good job of getting local police departments to spend public resources, to protect their profits and bust senior citizens for making little amounts of dollars at the flea market. And it just seems like a giant waste of time. And I think it’s bullshit. 

Regina: Yeah. 

John: Yeah. 

Adrianne: They were able to turn to this cookie cutter, protecting the cable providers law. And then they were able to write this like sloppy report and pat themselves on the back. And meanwhile, like what have they done to benefit the community that they’re supposed to serve?

John: But why did it happen in the first place? It sounds like they were looking for what? A press moment?

Adrianne: The sheriff is definitely looking for a press moment. This is a 100% Twitter sheriff here that we’re working with.

John: Was that the motivation behind the whole thing?

Adrianne: I think their motivation is to do easy stuff that they can do press conferences about. Whether it’s, you know, people selling what seems to be an illegal device that you can use a scary word, like jailbreak to describe, or if it’s, I just checked, they’re busting people for violating provisions of the cares act for like collecting too much welfare, basically, booked a bunch of people who were supposedly fraudulently getting food stamps. Like that’s the business they’re in. They’re like, who’s like absolutely clean to the edge of the cliff and we can stomp on their fingers so that they fall off.

Nilay: This is where like you run into just the real equity and justice problems of our criminal justice system. Who are we talking about here? We’re talking a bunch of older people. Some of them appear to be immigrants. There’s a reason I’m picking on these folks. Like there, their marks, they’re probably not making a lot of money. Like if you look at the signs, he shy off of the videos. They’re not like beautifully designed. It’s a bunch of sharpies on, on cardboard, right?

Billy: Nilay is obviously- it’s not off base with these remarks here. The Polk County Sheriff’s office has a history of being selective and opportunistic with their targets. In 2017, during hurricane Irma, sheriff Grady Judd tweeted that his department would be patrolling the county hurricane shelters, looking for people with outstanding warrants and he would bring them to jail.

Cynthia: I’m trying to choose my words wisely. Polk County has had certain reputations in their law enforcement of marginalized groups.

Nilay: It comes right back to why our criminal justice system does not often lead to equitable outcomes. And here’s one where it’s like, why do you spend all this time doing stings on firesticks? Like, aren’t there other crimes in Florida?

Billy: No, I don’t think so. Not in Florida. 

As I said earlier, the Polk County Sheriff’s office denied my request for an interview. So I couldn’t ask sheriff Grady Judd if there are other crimes in Florida. But of course there are, and those crimes also allegedly include one’s coming from inside his own department.

Television anchor: Breaking news now in Polk County, deputy in big trouble tonight, sheriff Grady Judd just wrapped up a press conference, explaining that he had to arrest one of his own for threats related to the violence in Washington, DC, our Polk County Bureau…

Regina: Of course he did.

Billy: Sheriff Grady Judd strongly denounced this, of course. But, critics of the sheriff, it’s not exactly surprising to hear that one of his deputies advocated for swift violent action against a perceived threat. The sheriff regularly defends proactive use of deadly force, not only among his deputies, but among the citizens of Polk County as well.

Sheriff: If you’re not afraid of a gun, get one.

Local News: The message from Polk county’s top cop, crystal clear.

Sheriff: Become proficient, get a concealed firearms license and carry it. And if you need to shoot somebody, shoot them a lot.

Adrianne: What is he talking about? What prompted these comments?

Billy: This was just in general. It was in response to general threats, active shooters and stuff they said, but this next clip is what he said during the black lives matter protests in the summer of 2020.

Sheriff: But we have received information in social media that some of the criminals were going to take their criminal conduct into the neighborhood. I would tell them if you value your life, you probably shouldn’t do that in Polk County, because of the people of Polk County like guns, they have guns. I encourage them to own guns and they’re going to be in their homes tonight with their guns loaded. And if you try to break into their homes to steal, to set fires, I’m highly recommending they blow you back out of the house with their guns.

Billy: Sheriff Grady Judd seems to think that the world is pretty black and white, that the law is easy to understand.

Sheriff: I have a Christmas tip, just don’t violate the law this next year, and you’ll have a lot less complicated life. You see, we won’t bother you at all.

Billy: He thinks that there’s good people and bad people. 

Sheriff: I truly believe that the only thing that stops a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun.

Billy: And he believes that, you know, he’s the good guy in charge of the good guy squad.

Sheriff: Let me make one thing abundantly clear, you can’t police the society if you don’t first police yourself. 

Billy: And he, you know, he believes that his good guy squad should have a zero tolerance policy for crime. Whether it’s something that’s within their jurisdiction or not.

Sheriff: Ladies and gentlemen, the bottom line is whether it’s stealing from a store, stealing from your neighbor, or stealing from a internet provider, when you are stealing intellectual property, you are violating the law.

Billy: And that got me to wondering. He has such a hard stance on this stuff. Has sheriff Grady Judd ever done anything? That is a clear violation of intellectual property law?

So, I went through his YouTube page with Nilay. 

You’re seeing this now?

Nilay: Yeah!

Billy: Let’s see, where is it? Okay. So, he did around towards the beginning of the pandemic, started reading children’s books on YouTube?

Nilay: Yeah!

Billy: We could just watch a little.

Sheriff: Hello. I’m sheriff Grady Judd and I’m excited to be with you today to read one of my favorite books. 

Oh, the places you’ll go.. I enjoy it.  

Nilay: Okay, I’m gonna go to the exact second he commits copyright infringement. You’re ready?

Billy: Okay, I’m ready.

Sheriff: Congratulations today! 

Nilay: Here it is! He committed copyright infringement. The end. 

It’s super obvious. Yeah! You are not allowed to publicly perform copyrighted works without a license.

There’s no way that he went to the publisher of this book or the Seuss’ Estate and got a license to publicly perform this work.

Billy: He goes through the whole book and has had the, has the scans of the pages up on the screen and stuff like it’s very-

John: Incredible! 

Adrianne: That’s very funny. Wait, this is on his YouTube channel?

Billy: Yeah. I mean, he’s a prolific poster. 

So, I emailed the Polk County Sheriff’s office about this. I said, “hi, quick question, did the Polk County Sheriff’s office receive a license to perform, Oh, The Places You’ll Go on YouTube?”

Adrianne: You are such a brat.

Billy: So I asked them if they received a license to perform it. And Scott Wilder, their director of communications responded.

Adrianne: I can’t believe they responded to you.

Billy: He said, “Billy. No, we did not receive a license to read the book.”

That was the whole email. 

Regina: Entire email. No, thank you. 

Billy: So then I responded, “was this an oversight or does the Polk County Sheriff’s office believe it has a justifiable exemption from the relevant federal copyright law that prohibits this behavior?”

Adrianne: Did they respond?

Billy: Yes. 

So he’s claiming that what they’re doing qualifies as fair use, which is a limitation on exclusive rights. But when I had talked to Nilay about this previously, he said there are plenty of fair use arguments for performing a reading of a book that’s protected under copyright. But this, a sheriff doing it on YouTube and full with full scans on the screen, is it one that would hold up particularly well against a motivated copyright holder?

Nilay: If you’re a teacher in a library, there’s some case law that says, okay, this is fine. You’re the local sheriff, just reading a book on YouTube? Yeah, you’re definitely performing the work to the public without a license. Like this is straight up direct copyright infringement. And the reason that Dr. Seuss’s worst target is that Dr. Seuss’s publishers are notoriously litigious.

In December, they just won a major lawsuit about it, a book called Oh, The Places You’ll Boldly Go, which is a mashup of, Oh, The Places You’ll Go in Star Trek.

Billy: Did they try to claim that there was parody or something like that?

Nilay: They said it was fair use. I can send you this link. It’s a New York Times article. The creators — this is the judge Margaret McCoon. The creators thought their Star Trek Primary would be pretty well-protected by parody, but acknowledged that “people in black robes may disagree.” The judge wrote in the opinion, “Indeed, we do.”

They just got snapped. So yeah, I mean, you are not allowed to just pick up a copyrighted book and read it on YouTube without a license, like absolutely not and the Seuss estate is not shy. This is hilarious to me.

Billy: My point here is that issues of intellectual property are complicated, that things are not so black and white. Do I personally care that sheriff Grady Judd read this book on YouTube? No, I do not. Of course not. I think it’s fine. In fact, I had someone read, Oh, The Places You’ll Go at my wedding. So, technically we should both live in constant fear of Seuss Enterprises.

Adrianne: Underunderstood is John Lagomarsino, Regina Dellea, Billy Disney, and me, Adrianne Jeffries.

Billy: We are an independent show. So if you like the show, please share it with your friends or give us a review on Apple podcast. We’ve been seeing a lot of people recommending the show on Reddit lately, so if that was you, we see you and we appreciate you.

Regina: You can support us directly on Patreon. You’ll also get access to our weekly bonus show, Overunderstood. You can find it at patreon.com/underunderstood or by clicking on the link at the bottom of the show notes.

John: If you have the mystery that the internet can’t solve, we want to hear about it. Send us an email at hello@underunderstood.com.

Adrianne: Thanks for listening!