Facebook reportedly blocked Russia Today (RT), the English and Russian language media outlet funded by the Russian government, from posting links or videos on its platform due to a case of copyright infringement.

Word of the ban comes from RT’s Facebook account, which claims the temporary ban was handed down to the news network for broadcasting a live stream of President Barack Obama’s final press conference held on Wednesday.

According to RT’s post, the Kremlin-run news organization is prevented from sharing anything other than text-only posts until 10:25pm MSK on Saturday, Jan. 21. The ban would cover the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of United States, set to take place on Friday.

A Facebook spokesperson told International Business Times on Thursday, “All the features for this page owner have now been restored. We are looking into the reasons behind the temporary block.”

RT’s account of the event that led to its banning, as explained in a “frequently asked questions” post on its Facebook page, claims, “We were blocked while livestreaming Obama’s final press-conference. Such things happen because (for ex.) some other news media livestreams carry the same shots and feed, and Facebook considers this a copyright violation.

During the press conference, the live stream hosted by RT was reportedly interrupted by an automated Facebook notification indicating a local Russian channel, Current Time TV, had claimed rights to the footage.

According to Gizmodo, RT was reportedly sent a statement from Current Time TV stating, “the channel has not sent any complaints regarding RT or any other organizations in connection with the live feed.”

Facebook’s community operations team is reviewing the reasons behind the temporary block, but the company holds that it is inaccurate to suggest the ban was in any way linked to outside factors.

RT was reportedly part of Russia’s propaganda efforts during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election in an attempt to help Donald Trump and undermine faith in American democracy, according to U.S. intelligence agencies.

Earlier this month, an uproar occurred when RT was briefly broadcast on an online stream of C-SPAN. While some initially believed the incident to be a hack, C-SPAN reported it was a technical error attributed to an internal routing issue.

RELATED STORIES
Facebook