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And Finally Artist News
REM get Trump’s ‘Everybody Hurts’ video taken down
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 18 February 2019
REM have seemingly got a Donald Trump video that used their track ‘Everybody Hurts’ taken off the Twitters on copyright grounds.
Trump posted the video as his big border wall soap opera dragged on last week. It featured snippets of his recent State Of The Union speech intercut with leading Democrats looking despondent. Hence, you see, ‘Everybody Hurts’.
Name-checking a more appropriate REM track, the band’s official Twitter feed responded: “World Leader PRETEND!!! Congress, Media – ghost this faker!!! Love, REM”. Meanwhile REMer Mike Mills mused that the President’s use of their song in his video might constitute ‘fair use’ under US copyright law.
He tweeted: “So the meme’s fair use. I LOVE the 1st Amendment! Meme away, folks. But that takes nothing away from what a fraudulent con man @realDonaldTrump is”.
But, according to CNBC, the band’s publisher did manage to have the video removed from Twitter on the basis that the song wasn’t cleared for use. Responding to a tweet noting this development, and how it had led to cries of censorship among Trump’s supporters, Mills observed “Winning?”
Well, you got take the wins where you can these days I reckon.
