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

Actually you can

[rsilvergun]

you're thinking of Trademark, this is copyright. He can grant license to and take license from pretty much anyone he damn well pleases. The rules are a little hazy for music because of radio, but print media's pretty cut & dry.

Re: Actually you can

[that this is not und]

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

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.

Re: Actually you can

[ELCouz]

He raised around $34,757 to save pepe! https://www.kickstarter.com/pr...

Re: Actually you can

[John Meacham]

It doesn't take funding to send a copyright infringement letter and his case is pretty clear cut. He just doesn't want his character being appropriated by those groups. He has already said as much several times. No need for a conspiracy.

Re: Actually you can

[OrangeTide]

... are not digital copies but instead new artwork.

Copyright law is based on protecting Mickey Mouse. Drawing any likeness of Mickey and trying to display it publicly can get the attention of Disney's lawyers and in most cases they'd have a very real stance with copyright laws to defend their case.

Re:Actually you can

[ravenshrike]

The relevant portion.

Thoughts on Pepe becoming the mascot for 4chan?

        Pepe offers you complete support, attention, and embraces how capable you are of birthing your own Pepe. As your God, my hope is to enhance your Pepe birthing experience by empowering you through it. Obey Pepe. Obey Me. Bow down to your leader. Worship me. Give me genital love or non-genital love. Both are wonderful.

But 4chan went crazy for Pepe, yes?

        I believe that the most important thing I can do as an artist is to protect the voices of anonymous people on the Internet and help ensure that that those voices are honored. It is my job to help 4chan have the experience that they want without judgment or criticism. In the end, I want 4chan to feel they were supported by being heard, respected, and part of the decision-making process. Instead of promoting my own agenda, it is my goal to promote 4chan. Different things work for different people. Let me support you in the way you choose to draw Pepe.

What about people profiting off of Pepe?

        I believe in supporting people’s decisions to profit off of Pepe in order to provide them with the most positive business experience possible. I strive to be an advocate for Pepe in both love and enterprise and hope to help business people to have an empowering and joyful experience while making an ocean of profits as limitless as the universe.

While he still has control over his original Pepe works the idea that he maintains control over anything else after those statements is ludicrous.

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.

Re: Actually you can

[Pseudonym]

It's fairly well-established that parody is only a valid defence if the thing itself is being parodied. If you're not making a parody of Boy's Club or Pepe, then you can't validly claim fair-use parody.

What you're talking about is "satire" (i.e. using the work to criticise something else), which is on shakier grounds, legally, and an active topic of discussion.

Re: As a content creator

[John Meacham]

Again, that is trademark. Copyright has no such requirement.

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:That still doesn't matter

[Pfhorrest]

We don't call them Nazis just because of their repugnant political opinions, we call them Nazis because they wear swastikas, give Nazi salutes, and chant Nazi slogans. You know, like Nazis.

Re:That still doesn't matter

[AmiMoJo]

This is how they gaslight you. They claim the Kekistan flag isn't related to the Nazi swastika flag at all, but they know that it really is and use it as a signal to each other. If you point this out they accuse you of wild conspiracy theories and of calling everyone a Nazi.

Won't someone PLEASE think of the Kekistanis?

[elrous0]

Haven't those poor people been through enough already without you taking their memes away too?!?

That didn't work for Penny Arcade

[rsilvergun]

when they tried it with "American McGee's Strawberry Shortcake" and it won't work here. The thing is you can Parody Pepe the Frog all day long if you want. But that's not what you're doing. You're parodying the Anti-Fa movement _using_ Pepe.

Parody is only fair use when the thing you're using is what you're making fun of. Otherwise you're just borrowing other folks work/art/ideas because you couldn't get your point across with your own. Either try harder or come to terms with the thought that your ideas don't have a strong enough foundation to stand on their own.

Re:Parody

[Theaetetus]

Also, in nearly all of the renditions I've seen, it's been used in a satirical sense, mostly to poke fun at anti-fascists, and, even more hilariously, at fascists themselves.

Ironically, your post includes the answer to why this is irrelevant. Notice how your subject line was "parody", but in the body, you say "satire" (well, "satirical")? Those are different things under copyright law.

The short version is that:
(i) parody makes fun of the thing it's copying. Think Weird Al's "Smells like Nirvana", which explicitly makes fun of Nirvana and Smells Like Teen Spirit, or his "Perform That Way" which makes fun of Lady Gaga and Born that Way. Parody falls under fair use because, since you're making fun of the thing you're copying, there's no way to do so without copying it.
(ii) satire makes fun of something else.Think Weird Al's "Eat it" or "I'm fat", which make fun of obesity, but do not make fun of Michael Jackson or those songs, except stylistically. He could have made fun of obesity with countless other songs, so the copyright on those songs do not limit his expressive rights. That's why satire does not fall under fair use.

So, if those renditions you've seen are making fun of, say anti-fascists or Hillary Clinton or what not, they're satires. They are not parodies of Pepe the Frog, and therefore are not protected by fair use, unlike if they had actually been parodies.

As an aside, Weird Al always gets permission from artists before he copies their songs, and while it's primarily because he's such a nice guy, the above satire/parody divide is another significant reason.

Disclaimer: I am an IP lawyer. I am not your IP lawyer, and this is not legal advice.