Twitter, Facebook disable Trump's video tribute to Floyd over copyright complaint
06 June, 2020
Twitter Inc, Facebook Inc and Instagram disabled President Donald Trump’s campaign tribute video to George Floyd on their platforms on Friday, citing copyright complaints.
The clip, which ultimately shows photos and videos of protest marches and cases of violence in the aftermath of the death of Floyd while in police custody in Minnesota, has Trump speaking in the backdrop.
It was not yet determined what copyright image prompted the complaint, but California attorney Sam Koolaq told Politico his firm submitted copyright complaints to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Koolaq did not immediately react to a request for comment from Reuters.
Floyd’s death last week after a fatal encounter with a police officer has resulted in nationwide protests.
Late Friday, Trump criticized the removal by Twitter. “They are fighting hard for the Radical Left Democrats. A one sided battle. Illegal,” he wrote on Twitter.
Twitter LEADER Jack Dorsey responded in a tweet, “Not true and not illegal”
“This is pulled because we got a DMCA complaint from copyright holder,” Dorsey added.
The social media site said it responds “to valid copyright complaints delivered to us by a copyright owner or their authorized representatives.”
Facebook, which owns photo and video-sharing network Instagram, said it removed the post after acquiring the creator’s copyright complaint under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
“Organizations that use original art shared on Instagram are anticipated to have the to do so,” Facebook said in a statement.
The three-minute, 45-second video was tweeted by Trump’s campaign on Wednesday. It was also uploaded on Trump’s YouTube channel and his campaign’s Facebook page. The clip has garnered more than 1.4 million views on YouTube and Facebook combined.
YouTube’s parent, Alphabet Inc, said the video the Trump campaign uploaded was not identical to the one uploaded to Twitter. This content discovered in the copyright complaint was not present and the site did not remove the video, YouTube said.
Twitter has been under fierce scrutiny from the Trump administration since it fact-checked Trump’s tweets about unsubstantiated claims of mail-in voting fraud. In addition, it labeled a Trump tweet about protests in Minneapolis as “glorifying violence.”
Trump has pledged to introduce legislation that may scrap or weaken a law that shields social media companies from liability for content posted by their users.
During the past, Twitter has removed at least two of Trump’s videos that had music from the soundtrack of the Batman movie “The Dark Knight Rises” and Nickelback’s “Photograph.”
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