Pepe the Frog's Creator Is Sending Takedown Notices To Far-Right Sites (vice.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Pepe the Frog creator Matt Furie has made good on his threat to "aggressively enforce his intellectual property." The artist's lawyers have taken legal action against the alt-right. They have served cease and desist orders to several alt-right personalities and websites including Richard Spencer, Mike Cernovich, and the r/the_Donald subreddit. In addition, they have issued Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown requests to Reddit and Amazon, notifying them that use of Pepe by the alt-right on their platforms is copyright infringement. The message is to the alt-right is clear -- stop using Pepe the Frog or prepare for legal consequences. Furie originally created Pepe as a non-political character for his Boy's Club comic, but Pepe later became an internet meme and during the 2016 U.S. presidential election the alt-right movement appropriated the frog in various grotesque and hateful memes.

Comments

That still doesn't matter

[rsilvergun]

if I freehand copy an X-Men comic book that doesn't give me copyright to it.

As for the funding, thanks to the DMCA it's trivial to send take down notices. And yes, the artist probably does have an Ax to grind. His character's been made into a symbol for a group of at best Nazi sympathizers and at worst actual Swastika flag flying Nazi's. A character he intended for childrend's books. Any sane person would be furious.

If they'd done it to the Coca-Cola polar bear or Mickey mouse what do you think the reaction would be? Would you still be writing the phrase "an axe to grind" or questioning the artist's motives?

Re: Actually you can

[American AC in Paris]

I would wager pretty good money that most of the far-right renditions of pepe are not digital copies but instead new artwork.

It doesn't matter if someone is making their own copy of Pepe the Frog. It's still Pepe the Frog and is not theirs to copy. This is why you don't see Tony the Tiger on your local store brand of frosted cornflakes; you might see a generic cartoon tiger, if that store brand is particularly small and feeling exceptionally lucky.

Who is providing the funding behind this legal action? Pepe was never a particularly successful commercial endeavor. The artist musst have backing from somebody with a political axe to grind.

Pepe is Matt Furie's creation. It doesn't matter if he hasn't earned a single penny from it; it's still his creation do do with as he pleases.

Matt Furie is getting pro bono legal support from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP. Pro bono means "for free".

As it turns out, there are lots of people who believe very strongly that the alt right is an active threat to civil society and antithetical to American values. Many of these people will happily donate their time, energy and money to shutting the alt-right down through legal action, political advocacy, and public outreach. There's nothing nefarious, illegal, or immoral about that in America. It's a free country.