Ars Technica: Matt Furie created the cartoon character Pepe the Frog in 2005 as a kind of peaceful stoner animal for his comic "Boys Club." By 2008, the frog had become a meme at 4chan. In the 2016 election cycle, though, Pepe became something completely different—an ever-meme of the alt-right. The Anti-Defamation League characterizes Pepe as a hate symbol and has catalogued some of the most viciously racist and anti-semitic examples.
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Copyright has been a bigger problem as it has become easier to share copyrighted material. This article peaked my interest because in it, "the image of Pepe qualifies as fair use, because it's 'political commentary and satire.'" I had never heard about that before, so I looked it up. Sure enough. commentary and parody constitute as "fair use," but Pepe the frog started as an original comic. The article doesn't say enough about the legal rights of original comics and such, but I think the spread of Pepe could have been stopped sooner had the creator, Matt Furie, fought the use of Pepe by the public earlier. SInce the public has already taken over Pepe, I feel it may be too late for people to not associate Pepe with alt-right images, but Matt Furie can definitely try and fight it. Needless to say, I am interested to see what happens with this case.
This is a little bit infuriating but the truth is that as Hannah points out in the comment above that copyright law absolutely allows for the use of an image for satire or commentary. Copyright law protects any work that is is created in a fixed form or recorded from the time it is created through the author (or creator's) death plus and additional 70 years. Fair-use is designated as anything for teaching, scholarship, research, criticism, comment or for news reporting it also has to be non- for-profit, and cannot be an entire work or effect the market for that work. In a world full of memes and the internet the ability to have control over ones intellectual property is much more complicated than what it perhaps used to be. However, the artist might be able to find a case in that although the image is being used in commentary and parody that it is negatively effecting the market for his comic and therefore could be in violation of copyright because of that.
This is hilarious. Pepe the frog is one of the most trash-based memes ever invented. ok, I understand that the original image and the name of Pepe Belongs to Matt Furie. However, he drew the "Boys Club" comics way back in 2005. In twelve years Pepe the Frog has spread far and wide across the internet, and Furie has said nothing. Furie has allowed Pepe to be associated with the /b/ page of 4chan. Posts on this page range from innocent dog pictures to the most depraved, violent, and, sexual images known to mankind. Pepe pictures are plastered all over these posts for more than a decade. Now, suddenly, Furie is concerned about the alt-right using his cartoon on their rally posters. I'm not really seeing the issue here. Please, do not think that I acknowledge ANY of the alt-right's policies as viable or even decent. But, Pepe has been associated with much much worse than the alt-right (believe it or not), and I don't agree with Furie's lawsuit fighting back after all this time of Pepe usage.
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