FILE PHOTO: The President of the United States, Donald Trump, touches the screen of a mobile phone at the approximate moment when a tweet was launched from his Twitter account, during a round table on the reopening of small businesses in the dining room White House State Building in Washington, USA, June 18, 2020. REUTERS / Leah Millis
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Twitter Inc disabled a campaign-style video that President Donald Trump retweeted on Saturday, citing a copyright complaint.
The video, which included music by the Linkin Park group, disappeared from the president’s Twitter feed on Saturday night with the notification: “This media has been deactivated in response to a report by the copyright owner.”
Twitter removed the video, which Trump had retweeted from White House director of social media Dan Scavino, after receiving a notice of the Machine Shop Entertainment Digital Millennium Copyright Act, according to a notice posted in the Database. Lumen that collects requests for removal of materials online.
Machine Shop is a management company owned by rock band Linkin Park, according to their LinkedIn page.
“We respond to valid copyright complaints that were sent to us by a copyright owner or their authorized representatives,” a Twitter representative said in an email statement.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Twitter began challenging Trump’s tweets in May and has since repeatedly clashed with him. The social media company has repeatedly disabled or commented on the president’s tweets because of what he said were copyright claims or violations of a policy against threatening violence.
Twitter removed an image the president tweeted on June 30, which included a photo of Trump, due to a complaint by the New York Times, whose photographer had filmed the image.
The company also put a tweet from the president behind a warning tag in late May, saying it had violated its “glorification of violence” rules when it called for Minneapolis authorities to be tough in responding to protests by the George Floyd’s death.
Report by Diane Bartz; Editing by William Mallard
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