Twitter removed the video from one of the president's tweets after it got a copyright complaint from Eddy Grant, the musician behind the '80s hit song "Electric Avenue"
Donald Trump's video taken down by Twitter
Twitter removed a video from one of President Donald Trump’s tweets Tuesday after it got a copyright complaint from Eddy Grant, the musician whose hit song “Electric Avenue” appears in the video. Twitter spokesperson Nick Pacilio confirmed to NBC News that the video had been taken down in response to a copyright complaint, per company policy.
It is at least the third time in as many months that Twitter has been forced to remove media content from the president’s Twitter account because of violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA.
Grant sued Trump and his campaign Tuesday, accusing them of “willfully and wrongfully” infringing on his copyrights. Grant’s attorney issued a cease-and-desist letter to the campaign two weeks ago.
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The video features an animation in which a “Trump/Pence” train barrels through a vacant town, followed by Joe Biden on a pump trolley. Over Grant’s hit song from 1982, the audio features remark Biden made in 2017 referring to kids’ rubbing his leg hair and jumping on his lap.
The video, which Trump tweeted Aug. 12, had been viewed nearly 14 million times before Twitter took it down Tuesday night.
Twitter has been playing whack-a-mole with the president’s tweets in recent months. In July, it removed a picture from a Trump tweet after it got a DMCA complaint from The New York Times. Trump had used the photo, which was taken by a Times photographer, to promote his campaign.
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In June, Twitter and Facebook removed a manipulated video from Trump’s accounts that showed a Black toddler running away from a white toddler and a fake CNN chyron suggesting that the baby was racist. In that instance, it was one of the children’s parents who filed the copyright claim.
