Pirates ♡ Memes!
Meme culture is great! Pirates love memes. Memes help people share ideas and jokes. But some greedy corporate content creators attack those who create memes. They sue individuals who create memes with no profit intention whatsoever. We must fight back against this!
One clear case happened in Germany: https://www.welt.de/vermischtes/article256383242/internetphaenomen-carlsen-verlag-verbietet-conni-memes-und-verschickt-abmahnungen.html
Fans made memes of the children´s book character Conni. The publisher sent cease and desist letters. They threatened an Instagram account. And, they succeeded. They closed the account. They limited free expression. They destroyed their own creation. While the memes would have allowed Conni to survive. Conni will die. Save Conni!
While Germany has an especially strict amount of copyright infringement, this issue is a global one and these problems are not isolated to just memes.
These cases happen in the art world. Disney has sent legal notices for fan art:
These cases happen in the game industry. Nintendo shuts down games derived from their content:
They happen in the music industry. Musicians sue other musicians for remixing their tracks.
They happen in the social media sphere. Fans of global events in South Korea were warned over martial law memes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/callumbooth/2024/12/04/the-south-korea-martial-law-memes-explained
Memes are great! Game revisions are great! Remixes are great! Social media protests are great! This is how society develops and creates new forms of expression. Knowledge is derivative. We learn from history and create new versions that are slightly different but better.
Let´s demand protection of memes! No material should be frozen by copyright!
