When you stumble across a good meme, it can really make your day. I know it does for me. (All of my blog posts will contain memes this week 😄😄😄)
But, when you share a meme are you doing so illegally?
I read several articles (including law discussions-EWWW) about the usage and redistribution for memes. For lack of a better term, the laws are extremely murky. In the article below, I think it sums up a very important point. If someone tries to use a meme for profit, it can cause some interesting legal issues including copyright infringement.
"If a person or entity wants to use the underlying content from a meme to generate revenue, even use of a modified version of such content risks a copyright infringement claim. The copyright owner may not care much about people using the copyrighted content to make and share memes through social media, but any effort to monetize the content is much more likely to be noticed." (LaLonde 2021)
One article mentions that even the person in the meme is given legal protections. Most of the laws talk about gaining permission of the creator or subject of the meme prior to using it for profit. I've always wondered about this.
I love memes! This was a fun read, thank you! It is interesting to consider if you are legally sharing memes. Some social media websites and the iPhone memes that have aa library to choose from, I would assume are safe to share, but if you get them from google or another source, I wonder too if they are legally allowed to be shared? We all know that memes become shirts and mugs (which would be considered generating revenue). I have never asked the creator of a meme for permission, because like you mention, how does one go about doing that? I assume it takes time and research to find the right person to ask.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to be honest, I did not use meme's until this semester (this is embarrassing now that I admit it), but I really enjoy using them now. I'm trying to get some volunteers motivated to perform certain tasks in a certain way and I used a meme which got a lot of LOLs but now I need to find out if it went further and actually changed their behavior.
ReplyDeleteI too thoroughly enjoyed this blog, it was fun AND informative! I put Bernie in a single scull (boat) but failed to ask him if it was ok . . .
Hi That will show them,
DeleteThat is not embarrassing at all, I wasn't using memes until this course either! That is a great example of how memes can be used to get learners' attention and motivate! While you can't ask Bernie, maybe you can find out if it has a creative common license?