User:Scaryszary/Internet meme

Checklist

• Evaluate an article: Go back to your article evaluation and pull out the list of things you said you could improve on the existing article. Put that list here in the talk page and cross things off as you do them (you can also edit what I have said below and cross things off as you complete them).
• Copyedits: Move those to this sandbox, and when you do so publish each with explicit notes on what you changed from the original Wikipedia article. That way when you migrate your work to live Wikipedia you will be able to publish and explain each change as you go. Doing so is a required part of the Week 13 Wikipedia assignment.
• Bibliography: This is a good start, but now you should start summarizing and adding content to your sandbox that utilizes these sources. That way you can see if you need to do more research. There are several callouts for "citation needed" in the existing Wikipedia article, and you should see if you have sources you can cite for those.
• Citing sources: What you added from Shifman is good, but the sentence on Pepe (from the existing article) could use a citation.
• Adding media/hyperlinks: Good hyperlinks, and you should go through and see if there are things that should be hyperlinks in whatever you add and the existing article. The image you added was taken down, and as we discussed, that is a danger in posting meme images (unless it was just a photo of Pepe? Which is on the Pepe page so it would seem weird if you couldn't post it). Technically, image macros are/should be covered by fair use. You don't have to worry about this though, as posting media isn't required for the final assignment. You can keep working to see if you can find a way to post and example that will not get flagged, as that would be an interesting challenge. But, again, not required(that is, you had to do it for this assignment, but in your final Wikipedia contributions don't add it just to add it).
• Overall: You seem to be doing things week by week, but now you really need to focus on the bigger picture of what you plan to add/edit here. Is there more in the existing article that needs copyediting? More citations you can use to expand on the sections you said needed to be developed more? The more planning you can do now the easier it will be for you to chip away at those edits between now and November 22 when you need to move your final edits to live Wikipedia.

Internet Meme Lead

An internet meme, is a type of meme (/miːm/ MEEM), that is spread via the Internet through two mechanisms: mimicry and remix. Mimicry is a recreation of a meme, using another individual's interpretation/specific text. . This type of meme can spread from person to person via social networks, blogs, direct email, or news sources. The results in the study of Online Memes, Affinities, and Cultural Production, show that the internet directly adds some longevity in a meme's lifespan. Furthermore, Internet Memes may relate to various existing Internet cultures or subcultures, often created or spread on various websites. One hallmark of internet memes is the appropriation of a part of a broader culture, for instance by giving words and phrases intentional misspellings (such as lolcats) or using incorrect grammar (such as doge). In particular, many memes utilize popular culture within marketing and politics (especially in image macros of other media), although this can lead to issues with copyright. Instant communication on the internet facilitates word of mouth transmission, resulting in fads and sensations that tend to grow rapidly. An example of such a fad is that of planking, the act of posting a photo of people lying down in public places; putting the photo online brings attention to the fad and allows it to reach a high number of people in a short amount of time.

Background

The word meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene as an attempt to explain how ideas replicate, mutate, and evolve (memetics).

Pepe memes

Main article: Pepe the Frog

Matt Furie's cartoon character Pepe the Frog became an Internet meme when its popularity steadily grew across Myspace, Gaia Online and 4chan in 2008.

Within politics

As internet memes become a common means of online expression, they become quickly used by those seeking to express political opinions or to actively campaign for (or against) a political entity.

Election Memes

Another internet meme was created from the 2012 US presidential debate surrounding United States politician Mitt Romney's usage of the phrase "binders full of women". Internet meme creators quickly created "My Binders Full of Women Exploded", referencing the Korean pop song "Gangnam style" by overlaying the politician's quote onto a frame from Psy's music video where paper blows around him. This internet meme specifically indexes the central attribute of intertextuality by blending together pop culture with politics.

However, there has further been academic research that provides evidence that the use of memes during elections has a role to play in informing the public. In a study of 378 internet memes posted across Facebook during the 2017 general election, McLoughlin and Southern found memes were a widely shared conduit for basic political information to audiences who often did not seek it out. Indeed, a fifth of all political memes posted during the election referenced a political policy which was part of a political party's mandate, while messages promoting people to vote were shared more than 160,000 times, suggesting memes have a small role to play in increasing voter turnout. Satirical memes that express political opinions are effective in not only informing others but also driving political debate and engagement with politics by offering an easy and even fun way to talk about important issues.

Occupy Wall Street Movement

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protest movement saw a rise in internet memes after gaining attention on social media. All internet memes that were created and shared during the movement were very important in mediated discussions surrounding the OWS. Typical phrases such as "We Are the 99%" and "This is what democracy looks like", were remixed into memes and subsequently posted in the discussion board of OWS on popular social media sites such as Reddit, Tumblr, and 4Chan. Those who actively participated in the movement conversed through these visuals.

Copyright

The eligibility of any memes to get copyright protection depends on the copyright law of the country in which such protection is sought. Copyright protection for internet memes gives the copyright owner(s) of the internet meme (s) several exclusive rights - the rights to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies, and to display the copyrighted work .

This does not mean that all memes made from movie still or photographs are infringing copyright. There are defenses available for such use in various jurisdictions that could exempt the meme from attracting liability for the infringement.

United States

Main article: Copyright § Obtaining protection

Under United States copyright law, a creation receives copyright protection if it satisfies four conditions under 17 U.S.C. § 102. For a meme to get copyright protection, it would have to satisfy four conditions:

1. It falls under one of the categories of work which is protected under the law
2. It is an "expression"
3. It has a modest amount of creativity
4. It is "fixed".

Memes can be considered pictorial, graphical or motion picture, and so are subject to copyright law As such, memes are protected under copyright under the same conditions as these mediums, including concepts such as the low threshold of originality for what constitutes creativity (as demonstrated by Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co). Since a meme is essentially a comment, satire, ridicule or expression of an emotion it constitutes the expression of an idea. Memes are contained in the medium of the Internet and so are fixed expressions by 17 U.S.C. § 101.

Copyright Act of 1976

Main article: Copyright Act of 1976

Under 17 U.S.C § 102(a), the requirements of copyright still apply for internet memes just as for any copyrightable work would. This section provides that if there are originality and fixation it would be subject to copyright protection. Thus, Internet memes can be become copyrightable work if they fit these two requirements.

Fair use in the United States

Main article: Fair use

Fair use is a defense under 17 U.S.C. § 107 of the US Copyright Law which protects work that has been made using other copyrighted works. The section provides that if a copyrighted work is reproduced "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching [...] , scholarship or research", it would not amount to infringement. Notably, for memes, the use of the term "such as" in the section denotes that the list is not exhaustive but merely illustrative. Furthermore, the factors mentioned in the section are subjective in nature and the weight of each factor varies on a case to case basis. All the factors have to be weighed together and an overall assessment is made whether the infringing work would qualify as fair use.

The four factors are:

1. The purpose or character of use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. The nature of the copyrighted work;
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. Effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The purpose and character of the use involve how the original copyrighted work's purpose differs from the meme's purpose, as well as commercial uses of products that use copyrighted material. In Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. the court introduced the concept of transformation which goes into the inquiry whether the infringing work altered the original with a new expression, meaning or expression or merely superseded or supplanted the original work. Memes are transformative in nature as they have no relation to the original work and the motive behind the communication of the meme is personal, in terms of disseminating humor to the public. Such memes being transformative would be covered by fair use. However, copying memes that are made for the sole purpose of being memes would not enjoy this protection as there is no transformation- the copying has the same purpose as the original meme which is to communicate humorous anecdotes.

Purpose and character of use weigh in against memes which have been used for commercial purposes because then the work has not been created for the communication of humor but for economic gain. For example, Grumpy Cat won $710,001 in a copyright lawsuit against the beverage company Grenade which used the Grumpy Cat image on its roasted coffee line and t-shirts.

The amount and substantiality of the portion used tests not only the quantity of the work copied but the quality that is copied as well. Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises clarified this position. For cinematography, only a small portion of the entire film is copied whereas for rage comics and personal photographs, the entire portion has been used to create the meme. Despite this, all categories of memes would be considered to be falling under fair use because the text that is added to those images adds value, without which it would just be pictures. Moreover, the heart of the work is not affected because the still/picture is taken out of context and portrays something entirely different from what the image originally wanted to depict.

Lastly, the effect on the market offers court analysis on whether the meme would cause harm to the actual market of the original copyright work and also the harm it could cause to the potential market. The target audience for the original work and meme is entirely different as the latter is taken out of the context of the original and created for use and dissemination on social media. Rage comics and memes created for the purpose of being memes are an exception to this because the target audience for both is the same and copied work could infringe on the potential market of the original.