Trump Accuses China Of Intellectual Property Theft... While He Applauds His Own Campaign's Intellectual Property Theft

Politicians on both sides of the aisle beat up China for stealing American intellectual property-- in other words, using it without paying for it. Trump has been particularly vocal about it. Trump, however, has consistently been stealing intellectual property, getting caught and reprimanded and then doing it again, and again, and again. The ominous-sounding Trump campaign video is anything but uplifting. There's an underlying ugliness to it-- primarily an invocation of danger and fear through the prominent music track in the background. It's very a very effective use of the music from a Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises. Trump loved it. He tweeted it out to his followers. Unfortunately, his campaign didn't bother asking permission to use it, let alone pay to use it.

Warner Brothers issued a cease and desist order and the Trump campaign had to withdraw the ad.

I spoke to one of my old colleagues from Warners who told me that politicians generally have no respect for copyrights and no respect for musicians' rights. "They think they can use our music for free and that no one will care or notice. Both sides do it," she told me. "The complaints that come in are about 99% about Republican theft though... maybe a little more than 99%... Zimmer's 'Why Do We Fail' composition was a smart choice by Trump's campaign folks. They should have paid just like everyone else does."

This one, using music and footage from Bollywood smash Bajirao Mastani, is still up on YouTube but is no longer embeddable. This is what you get when you try to watch it on a non-YouTube site, as we found when we went to watch it again on a Sunday night DWT post. Watch it full screen.