We reported this afternoon that the Christie campaign had seemingly violated copyrights by using stock footage from a licensing company, Pond5, and put up a Web video that still contained the anti-theft watermarks. Well, the campaign now appears to have fixed the problem on the legal end, and reposted the video — but it still has the watermarks.
Pond5 CEO Tom Bennett told us that someone associated with the Christie campaign had bought permission for the videos at 3:43 p.m. ET. The video, which was briefly taken down from the Christie campaign’s YouTube page, was put back some time in the last hour. It does not appear that there was enough time to make a new version using the correct, watermark-free videos, so the old has simply been put back with the watermarks intact.
“So it looks like they’re doing damage control,” said Bennett.
Late Update: Christie spokesperson Maria Comella gives us this comment: “A staffer made a mistake and neglected to pay for some of the footage in the video. As soon as this came to our attention, it was immediately corrected.”
