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On the eve of his New York mayoral election victory, Zohran Kwame Mamdani posted an ad on social media soundtracked by Bob Dylan<\/a>\u2019s \u201cThe Times They Are a-Changin\u2019.\u201d The video, like much of Mamdani\u2019s campaign, went viral, as its \u201cNew York is a-changin\u2019\u201d slogan rapidly spread across social media. By the following morning, however, it had been removed from X with a takedown notice: \u201cThis media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright holder.\u201d Unsurprisingly, this was not a snub by Dylan himself but an apparent decision by Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), The New York Times<\/em><\/a> reports. In a statement, UMPG, which acquired<\/a> Dylan\u2019s songwriting catalog in 2020, said, \u201cAs a longstanding policy, we do not license Bob Dylan compositions for projects involving political figures.\u201d<\/p>\n The publishing company has previously denied a request by the Mamdani campaign to license the song, The Times<\/em> reports, citing two anonymous sources briefed on the matter. UMPG did not explicitly say it had ordered the ad\u2019s removal; copyright violations are sometimes detected electronically, prompting automatic takedowns. As of Thursday morning (November 6), the video is still available on Instagram<\/a> and TikTok<\/a>.<\/p>\n