Both Sides!
So there’s room in this world for disagreement about what policies should be implemented, what ideas are best, and everybody agrees that all viewpoints are equally valid, right?
Yeah, no. There’s stuff out there with only one side that has anything resembling rational reality attached to it, and any other sides filled with arrant bullshit.
Case in point: on the one hand, you have the collection of white supremacists, would-be fascists, bigots, small-minded turdmongers, intellectually inbred CHUDs, and sterling examples of human evolution that make up the so-called alt-right. They’re wrong. Whatever it is they’re talking about, they’re wrong. On the off chance that they are, in some particular case, in a narrow technical sense, not wrong, it is certain that they are using that momentary blip of not-wrongness to argue something worthy of contempt in bad faith, with the sole goal of moving the Overton Window.
On the other hand, you have Matt Furie, creator of Pepe the Frog.
Furie’s run afoul of dipshit brigade’s re-appropriation of Pepe to stand in for their hateful message for some time. He tried to disavow them, he tried to ignore them, he killed off Pepe to prevent his misuse, he did his best to reclaim Pepe’s innocence. Finally, out of fucks to give, he struck back at their monetization of Pepe in service to their hateful message and got himself a lawyer.
The first to fall was a onetime public school principal self-publishing an anti-Muslim children’s book with a knockoff Pepe. C&Ds went out to a purported studly guy who rambles incoherently from his in-law’s pool house/basement when not running from his own words on NPR, a very punchable Nazi, and various online vendors of infringing t-shirts.
Now he’s taking on the Big Gun, the sine qua non of batshittery and conspiracy theory shouting:
The lawsuit pinpoints one poster in particular as a source of copyright infringement. The poster features Pepe alongside InfoWars founder Alex Jones, President Donald Trump, Milo Yiannopoulos, Ann Coulter, Matt Drudge, Roger Stone and others with the text “MAGA,” short for Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”
Furie, represented by attorney Rebecca Girolamo at Wilmer Cutler, says he didn’t authorize such use of Pepe. He alleges the poster is being sold by InfoWars in its online store.
Requisite disclaimer that I am not a lawyer, but this seems to be a fairly clear cut case of copyright infringement; there’s no transformation of Pepe in the image (seen here, at The AV Club), no use of him in a satirical fashion, or to comment on broader matters — he’s simply included because the MAGA crowd likes him. Given his less than successful record in the legal sphere, I’d think that Jones would not want to set himself up for another loss, but he doesn’t seem to have that degree of self-awareness. Jones responds here, but it’s not written and I don’t like you enough to watch an Alex Jones video.
Fleen wishes Furie the best of luck, and holds every confidence that if this does go to trial, Jones will find a way to disgrace himself again in spectacular fashion. Here’s hoping that any compensation Furie is owed will be paid in actual money, and not in leftover stock of overpriced, overhyped, weird-ass snake-oil.
Spam of the day:
2017 Solar Program Now Available in Your Area
Okay, 1) I received this on the 27th of February, so you’re a bit late for 2017, and 2) stay the hell out of my “area”.
O Lord no – I don’t know anyone on any spectrum of the right who argues that all viewpoints are equally valid. Having an equal right to be expressed under protection of the 1st Amendment, sure. But one look at the current case in Iran where some young woman has been sentenced to two years in prison for.the horrific crime of making a point of publicly removing her hijab in public tells you they are not equally valid.
I do hope that the creator of Pepe w8ns his case!
By RonF on 03.09.18 6:14 pm
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