A FINE GAEL TD’s popular election campaign video, paying homage to the Back to the Future trilogy, has been removed from YouTube over a copyright dispute.
Martin Heydon said he will now seek legal advice after the Universal film studio objected to his use of music which is similar to that featured in the popular 80s films.
The Kildare South TD produced one of the slickest videos to emerge during last month’s election in which he and ’Doc Brown’, played by local Fine Gael councillor Darren Scully, travel around the constituency seeking votes.
The video, entitled ‘Secure Your Future’, attempted to highlight Heydon’s work around his Kildare South constituency over the last five years.
The video proved to be immensely popular with some 30,000 hits on YouTube before it was taken down and over 47,000 views on Facebook.
Heydon estimates that with stories being written about it on various news sites, both in Ireland and internationally, the video was viewed over 100,000 times.
“Someone who works in advertising had been in touch to say that if you were to buy that kind of coverage it would cost around €60,000, whereas the video cost around €345,” Heydon, who was re-elected last month, claimed.
However, Heydon was informed in an email from YouTube ten days ago that the video has been blocked in some countries, including Ireland, because it contains copyrighted content.
Universal Motion Pictures International asserted that the video contains a musical composition that it owns the copyright to.
“Universal claim that I am in breach, but we actually changed the music. We went to great lengths to make sure it was different… we purposely didn’t go with the original soundtrack,” he said.
Heydon insisted he does not believe he is in breach of copyright and said he intends to seek legal advice before deciding whether to put the video back up on YouTube.
Thankfully for fans of Back to the Future and bad acting, the video is still available to watch on Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/martinheydonfg/videos/1114289211954632/
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