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On May 16, 2014, The Ottawa Citizen published a prominent commentary piece written by Blayne Haggart on our op-ed page that David Bowie was responsible for the removal from YouTube of astronaut Chris Hadfield’s video version of “Space Oddity” which was viewed over 22 million times.

The commentary erroneously claimed that Mr. Bowie refused to renew a one-year licence previously granted to Commander Hadfield, ultimately forcing the video to be removed from worldwide distribution.

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That was incorrect. Subsequent to running this piece, we were informed by Mr. Bowie of the following facts: In April of 2013, while Commander Hadfield was still in space, his people contacted Mr. Bowie to seek permission to make the video.

Photo by HO / CP

They were informed that while Mr. Bowie would give his full support to the use of the song by Commander Hadfield, Space Oddity was the only one of more than 300 songs he has written and recorded for which he did not own or control the copyright. Mr. Bowie offered to have his people call the publisher and convey his strong support, but he had no ability to personally dictate any of the terms of the licence or even require the publishers to issue one.