Crazy little thing called copyright.
Adam B. Vary BuzzFeed News ReporterThe publisher of rock legends Queen forced President Trump to take down a campaign video that used “We Will Rock You” as its soundtrack.
The video, featuring Trump speaking to supporters at rallies, was posted on Oct. 9, and it used the song in its entirety. At that time, a representative for the band told BuzzFeed News that the song’s use was unauthorized.
The band had “already entered into a process to call for non use of Queen song copyrights by the Trump campaign. This is ongoing,” the representative said within hours of the video going up.
By Sunday, the video was no longer available on Twitter, and a band representative told BuzzFeed News the takedown was handled by Queen’s music publisher. But by that time, it had been viewed more than 1.7 million times.
“This media has been disabled in response to a report by copyright owner,” Trump’s tweet said Sunday.
The Trump campaign has been getting into trouble lately for using music against the artists’ wishes. A video featuring “Photograph” by Nickelback was earlier this month over copyright issues. And last week, the estate of Prince for playing “Purple Rain” at a rally in Minneapolis.
“The Prince Estate will never give permission to President Trump to use Prince’s songs,” a statement on Twitter said.