Twitter is forced to remove President Trump’s 2020 campaign video due to copyright issue

In recent times, US President Donald Trump has had a video removed from Trump’s Twitter page due to the unlawful use of music. The video was removed from the social media platform only several hours after it was posted yet it was estimated that over a million people had seen the video prior to it being taken down. The two minute video, which was created for the promotional use to assist his 2020 political campaign contained the music track ‘Why Do We Fall?’ by Hans Zimmer from the film The Dark Knight Rises, yet there was no request for copyright from Warner Bros Pictures.

The use of the music from ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ which was featured in the video was not authorised, Warner Bros Pictures confirmed, before Twitter was forced to remove the video, stating ‘we are working through the appropriate legal channels to have it removed’. After the video was taken down, a message replaced the file saying ‘this media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner’.

However, this was not the first time that President Trump has been challenged over his use of other artists’ music. Pharrell Williams and Prince demanded that Trump stopped using the singer’s music at his political events. This was followed by Rihanna sending a letter to the President requesting he stopped using her ‘Don’t Stop The Music’ song at political events as well as Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler complaining over Trump playing song ‘Living On The Edge’.