4chan shakes it's bottle of Adderall at him
Posted on 09/19/2017 2:18:02 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Pepe the Frog’s creator, Matt Furie, is taking aggressive action to defend his intellectual property. The popular caricature — a green frog— was a popular meme on the Internet before becoming a figure endorsed by millennial Trump supporters during the 2016 U.S. election.
Due to its popularity among the right, Hillary Clinton’s campaign condemned the character as a “white supremacist” symbol. It was a claim backed by the Anti-Defamation League and countless liberal publications. Disheartened by his character’s newfound infamy, Furie “killed” Pepe by giving it a funeral, only to resurrect it months later in a Kickstarter project for a new comic book.
Furie is now on the warpath by taking legal action against anyone and everyone who used Pepe the Frog as a political meme to support President Donald Trump through the services of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLC, which agreed to perform legal services for the artist pro-bono.
His first order of business was to send out multiple DMCAs to Reddit and Amazon over copyright infringement for hosting Pepe as an “alt-right” symbol. His lawyers also served cease and desist orders to Mike Cernovich, Tim “Baked Alaska” Treadstone and the r/the_donald subreddit. Richard Spencer, who wore a Pepe the Frog pin when he was punched on camera in January, was also served.
“[Furie] was very serious when he said that we wanted to make clear that Pepe was not the property of the alt-right and couldn’t be used by the alt-right,” said Louis Tompros, who’s part of Furie’s legal team to Motherboard. “But actions speak louder than words and we wanted to make sure we were backing up that statement against entities that were misappropriating the Pepe character and image. That’s what we’ve been doing over the past few weeks.”
Tompros said that they served a cease and desist to Spencer’s website, which they claim hosts Pepe in violation of Furie’s copyright. The team has also gone after Baked Alaska by sending DMCA notices to take down his images of Pepe on Amazon, Twitter, and elsewhere. Baked Alaska’s book, Meme Magic Secrets Revealed, was pulled for using an image of Pepe on the cover.
The lawyer, who also issued a cease and desist against vocal Trump supporter Mike Cernovich, claims that he “had a number of different uses of Pepe but most notably had a video he was publicizing through his Facebook and YouTube that was a 3D version of Pepe dancing with Hillary Clinton reading aloud sections of hew new book,” which he calls an “unauthorized use of Pepe.”
Likewise, the team has served a cease and desist to Google to stop selling “Build the Wall: The Game” for using a likeness of Pepe, where the character would appear as an achievement.
Furie’s lawyers, who sent DMCAs to Reddit to take down links to images of Pepe the Frog, told Motherboard that they believe Reddit will comply with their request instead of contesting it.
“If necessary, we expect to bring a lawsuit for copyright infringement,” Tompros said. “I want to make sure that people have enough time to comply. The goal here is not to initiate lawsuits. The goal is to get the misuse of Pepe to stop. I’d rather do that through people complying with the cease and desist notices. But we’re certainly ready, willing, and able to bring suits to follow up for the folks who do not comply.”
It is unclear how much of a legal case Furie has in forcing people who post Pepe memes to comply to his demands. The artist allowed his trademark for Pepe the Frog, which was filed in 2015, to lapse last year. The status of the trademark is listed as “Abandoned-Failure To Respond Or Late Response” under Justia. While this does not invalidate Furie’s copyright claim (trademarks and copyrights are not the same thing), modifications of Pepe may be covered under fair use.
DMCA takedowns are legally enforceable cease and desist notices that allow creators to remove content they own from being misused by others. Established under the Clinton administration in 1998, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was heavily backed by the recording industry to stifle the rise of piracy through Napster and BitTorrent.
More recently, DMCA has been used to silence free speech and wielded as a scepter in personal and political grudges. Race baiter and black supremacist ideologue Tariq Nasheed used DMCA to silence a detractor on YouTube, effectively suspending his channel. Popular YouTuber PewDiePie was also hit with copyright strikes by progressive game developers who virtue signaled in the wake of his accidental utterance of a racial slur on a livestream.
Does Hillary think you are deplorable? You are alt-right.
Nice birdie!
The libs that run Reddit will probably use this as an excuse to shut down TheDonald.
4chan shakes it's bottle of Adderall at him
Seems he has questionable justification. Hope he get charged with filing a nuisance case.
Do an image search on “Pepe Boys Club”, and see some of the material that Furie created involving Pepe.
You will find the most boring childish bathroom humor that you can imagine. I won’t post any of it here for obvious reasons.
This is the sort of “intellectual property” that Furie is suddenly interested in protecting.
If he never asserted his rights over other users, he would appear to have lost his assertion rights against the so-called "alt-right".
It is unclear how much of a legal case Furie has in forcing people who post Pepe memes to comply to his demands. The artist allowed his trademark for Pepe the Frog, which was filed in 2015, to lapse last year. The status of the trademark is listed as “Abandoned-Failure To Respond Or Late Response” under Justia. While this does not invalidate Furie’s copyright claim (trademarks and copyrights are not the same thing), modifications of Pepe may be covered under fair use.
So, it's typical bluster - punishment by process. As nclaurel noted, this seems ripe for being labeled a nuisance suit.
For the record, I am not a lawyer, and therefore could be wildly incorrect.
If it weren’t for the “alt-right” nobody ever would have heard of his frog.
Here’s a taste of the people the idiot is trying to intimidate.
Some of them found some jihadiscum websites, decided that just wasn’t right and that “somebody should do something”. So they did.
When 4chan Bombed ISIS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTiryQUcIWk
What obvious reason would prevent you from posting examples...copyright infringement?
PEPE THE FROG - Trademark Details Status: 602 - Abandoned-Failure To Respond Or Late Response
Game over?
Legally, I have no clue.
But, working up the media to play on the feelz! of the idiots and SJW whiners?
Probably not over.
OMG. The left has gone insane.
ping
Hmmm. When someone says white supremacist symbol I think Bobby “Sheets” Byrd. Go figure.
“Shouldn’t they be suing Hillary for calling the frog a symbol of White Supremacy?”
Yep. Just what I was thinking!
Nope. That was Kermit. Who is still in Copyright, and as I recall, the Muppets are now owned by The Mouse, who has legions of Attack Lawyers for every single one of their properties. . .
Some libertarian legal defense group needs to take this on and argue that the trademark and any intellectual property was abandoned (which it was, he shut down publication with no indication of any intent to continue). Also, the image of the frog as well as the name Pepe have become household names like Kleenex did, therefore further diluting any claim he might have had. Too bad, Mr. Furie, you didn’t maintain your rights to this property therefore you’ve lost control of it. That’s trademark law for you. Be more vigilant next time rather than running away in a snit.
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