Trump Campaign Video Pulled From Social Media for Photo Copyright Infringement

Trump Campaign Video Pulled From Social Media for Photo Copyright Infringement

A Donald Trump campaign video has been pulled from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram following copyright infringement claims, despite the President’s claims that the removal was politically motivated.

The video featured a series of photographs of George Floyd, the man killed by a police officer in Minneapolis two weeks ago, sparking a series of protests in the U.S.A and around the world.

Trump complained on Twitter that the platform had removed his video because it was aligned with the “Radical Left Democrats.” Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO, immediately observed that this was not true and the removal was prompted following a DMCA complaint from the copyright holder of one of the images.

Twitter has been strongly criticized by Trump in recent weeks for identifying one of the President’s tweets as factually inaccurate. Meanwhile, Facebook is facing criticism from its own employees and various scientists whose research its funds for failing to take similar measures to flag Trump’s misinformation. 140 scientists — including 60 professors at U.S. research institutes — wrote to Mark Zuckerberg to ask that he “consider stricter policies on misinformation and incendiary language.”

A version of the video remains on YouTube, presumably because it doesn't contain the contended photograph or because a complaint has not been received.

As noted by the New York Times, Twitter has previously removed Trump campaign videos because they featured music from movie soundtracks that were used without permission.

Lead photo uses an image by lexferreira89 and used under Creative Commons.

Andy Day's picture

Andy Day is a British photographer and writer living in France. He began photographing parkour in 2003 and has been doing weird things in the city and elsewhere ever since. He's addicted to climbing and owns a fairly useless dog. He has an MA in Sociology & Photography which often makes him ponder what all of this really means.

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18 Comments

Perhaps next time they will contact the owner and license the intellectual property.

trump's entire history is lies, theft, and fraud. There are thousands of cases of him not paying people he contracted . . . you really think the thief will change now?

I have a bridge you might be interested in buying . . . ;-)

IP infringement is a legitimate point and it's funny that he thinks he's special for getting a slap on the wrist over it. The facebook situation - not so much. Facebook is censoring literally everyone and it's a real problem - mentioning it in this context seems like a cheap shot.

How is Facebook censoring everyone? I don't use the platform and curious about what's going on there.

They're going after foreign news sources and doing what they can to discredit them (while ignoring American ones), and there was a recent Fstoppers article on how they banned the account of a colorist who was posting photos of communists and nazis during WW2.

There's a whole heap of other stuff that I can't remember off the top of my head.

Exactly whats wrong with colorizing historical photographs? Those who forget History are doomed to repeat it.

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He has been a celebrity for about 40 years, a politician for 3.

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The nature of those stories is almost "celeb sued for posting a picture of themselves."

Without knowing what copyright he violated, your analogy makes no sense. Maybe he used copyrighted music or an image captured by a photojournalist of a protestor. if that's the case it completely invalidates the thing you are whining about --

...because its not about being punished for using a picture 👏of 👏himself 👏.

I suspect this post is just driven by some knee jerk reaction to defend your politician of choice against some perceived bias. everyone is victimizing you and your political team so you have to cry about it here.

Just focus on photography; no one cares about your political views; you are not an expert and, no, you are not informed.

If I need political commentary, I sure as hell am not going to get it from some hack with a canon 6D on fstoppers

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Yes, plese explain.

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Why is Fstoppers posting all this political crap. I thought this site was about photography. Another site going down the tubes.

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Criminal in Chief.

Did any of you watch a video? And if you did, did you get the message? Who cares if one of the photos was used without permission? It is very easy to say that Trump is bad. It has been a message promoted for 3.5 years already. I'm kind of sick and tired hearing it day in and day out. Don't like him - you have your chance to get rid of him 5 month from now. But don't discard a message in a very powerful video. Think of the man who got killed for trying to pass fake $20. Think of the man who got killed by looters trying to protect his friend's business. Think of the war zone in our major cities. Is it America you want to see or should we all try to have justice and peace in our country.

I imagine African Americans are sick of it too