COPYRIGHT INFRINGMENT:STEAM TAKES DOWN PEPE THE FROG IMAGES FOLLOWING LEGAL ACTION

Photo credit: comicbook.com

Pepe the Frog is a popular Internet meme. A green anthropomorphic frog with a humanoid body, Pepe originated in a comic by Matt Furie called Boy's Club. It became an Internet meme when its popularity steadily grew across Myspace, Gaia Online and 4chan in 2008. By 2015, it had become one of the most popular memes used on 4chan and Tumblr. Pepe originally appeared in any way that espouses racism, white supremacy, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Nazism, or any other form of hate. By 2016, the character's image had been appropriated as a symbol of the controversial alt-right movement. The Anti-Defamation League added certain incarnations of Pepe the Frog to their database of hate symbols in 2016, adding that not all Pepe memes are racist. Since then, Pepe's creator has publicly expressed his dismay at Pepe being used as a hate symbol- Wikipedia

Further to this, Furie has pledged to stop anyone from misappropriating Pepe and as part of an aggressive approach to protect its intellectual property rights, Furie has commenced the following;

·        Sent legal notices to many companies, including Reddit, Amazon, and more.

·    Initiated efforts to ensure a takedown of Pepe images from Steam’s (popular PC gaming client) website and the platform has recently removed icons featuring the cartoon frog Pepe from its platform. As reported by Kotaku(video game website and blog), users began complaining yesterday that Pepe and Pepe-like emoticons had disappeared from their inventory.The developer of a game called Make America Great Again: The Trump Presidency wrote that they’d removed their emoticons after Steam received a legal order.

·      Filed a successful complaint against the author of a children’s book that used Pepe’s likeness in a veiled anti-Islam allegory.

Furie’s lawyer August Louis Tompros told Kotaku that he didn’t proactively single out Steam. “A Steam user let us know that there were Pepe images being sold on the site and that they were being used on that site by people in connection with hateful speech. We asked Steam to take those down, and it appears that it has done that.”

News Credit: THE VERGE