He followed me closely, staring at me-
-of a chilled and laid back frog became a hate symbol
hacked online by far right groups.
The internet is a place where people believe in expansive freedom of expression.
This is not a fight over a cartoon frog, this is a fight about political speech.
Is this cartoon frog a symbol of free speech or artwork high jacked by racist hate groups?
Pepe as he's known has been labelled a Nazi,
condemned by a presidential candidate
and now is at the center of an important legal battle over the first amendment
in this era of unlimited replication, imitation and mutation.
It's a fight that involves the Alt-Right, Trump voters,
one of Washington DC's most powerful law firms,
and the website 4chan, AKA 'the asshole of the internet.'
Pepe the frog is the creation of a 38 year old cartoonist from Ohio named Matt Furie,
who declined to be interviewed for this story.
The anthropomorphic frog first appeared 12 years ago in Furie's webcomic 'Boy's Club'
In the series' most famous sequence,
Pepe is caught standing at a toilet with his pants around his ankles.
As he later explains, 'feels good man.'
It wasn't until a few years later,
when someone posted his image to the anonymous online image board 4chan
that Pepe became a global phenomenon.
The feels bad man Pepe emerged, followed by sad frog and so on.
Pepe was tweeted out by Katy Perry and instagramed by Nicki Minaj
and Matt Furie defended the anonymous people on the internet
who had turned his creation into an unstoppable meme.
But then Pepe became something else entirely.
Pepe is a white nationalist symbol-
It has one of the things that the racist right has adopted-
The anti-defamation league's database of hate symbols.
It's been a nightmare for Matt Furie.
Intellectual property attorney Lewis Tompros says Matt Furie contacted his firm WilmerHale
after Pepe appeared in what he describes as an Islamophobic children's book,
in which Pepe does battle with a bearded alligator
and what appear to be his burka clad minions.
But that was just the beginning.
Pepe's recent evolution into a right wing symbol most likely started on 4chan's /pol/ page,
a board devoted to facilitating politically incorrect conversation
that became a haven for Donald Trump supporters in 2016.
Images of Pepe wearing red MAGA hats proliferated,
and Donald Trump, Jr. even posted an image
that included a Trumpified version of Pepe to social media.
The Clinton campaign responded by branding Pepe
a "symbol associated with White Supremacy."
The emerging racist ideology known as the Alt-right-
Enter Mike Cernovich,
whether it's exposing Congressman John Conyers ' sexual harassment scandal
or publicly threatening to publish the 'shitty men in media' list,
Cernovich has a knack for leveraging his large social media presence
to catapult himself into the news cycle.
Most people in the fake news media who get to the high level are pedophiles.
We're not Alt-right and we're not old school National Review,
take the high road boring right,
We're very aggressive.
We've taken over, for example, the microphones at left wing rallies.
We're in a meme world, we're in a world where you have to be catchy, punchy,
that's how you're actually influencing voters,
that's how you're actually persuading people to accept your ideas as true.
So we're a bunch of, kind of merry meme makers.
Cernovich posted a fan made video on his YouTube channel
that incorporates Hillary Clinton's audio book description
of what it felt like sharing the debate stage with Trump.
There's an excerpt where she goes 'and he was stalking me, breathing down my neck
I felt so creeped out' referring to Trump,
and then you have Pepe kind of stalking Hillary Clinton.
No matter where I walked, he followed me closely, staring at me, making faces,
it was incredibly uncomfortable.
And I thought that this is art.
Furie's attorney sent Cernovich a take down notice,
he complied but also hired free speech lawyer Marc Randazza to draft a response.
The way I try to explain fair use to people is that
you can take a whole bunch of already created works
and when you take them all together and then you blow new life into that,
a new thought is expressed in that,
you probably have engaged in what's called fair use.
You can't copy other people's ideas and claim free speech,
that's now how the first amendment works, that's not how copyright law works.
They're absolutely free to spout hate in some other form
we just don't want them using Pepe the frog to do it.
On a human level I have tremendous empathy for Furie.
I think he made a tremendous mistake by not getting ahead of the Pepe usage,
I think he, Matt Furie, could be a world wide name, a world wide brand
and that he could have actually beat the people who are using Pepe in ways he doesn't like
by spreading more Pepe images.
Furei's attorneys have gone a step further
in the case of a Kansas City based artist named Jessica Logsdon,
who refused to take down the Pepe themed paintings she sells on Ebay
for 99 cents plus 37 dollars shipping.
They've filed a lawsuit against Logsdon who declined to appear in this video,
but responded via email that, while she may appear confident,
she's 'rational enough to be scared because WilmerHale is a titan of law.'
She also attached a picture of a new painting she calls 'WilburFail'
We're not trying to do this because she's some kind of a small fish,
had she simply complied with the DMCA notice and our request,
there's no question we would not have brought a lawsuit.
I had a brief conversation with her and she sent me as a gift
I think if you can see it over my shoulder, what is now one of my favorite works of art.
If I were still teaching copyright law classes, I would bring this in
as an example of classic fair use.
I believe that things can be memed into the public domain.
You have the picture of the little kid with his fist like that, you know,
I don't know who originally took that picture,
whoever did, if they were to try to lasso control of that picture at this point,
I think they would fail miserably.
But I think the result would be a thousand times more people reusing it.
Because the internet is a place where people believe in expansive freedom of expression
and sometimes the greatest way to set a fire on the internet
is to try and blow out one candle.
Furie is demanding Logsdon cease her display and sale of any Pepe imagery
and that the court award damages and unlawful profits.
4channers have responded by projecting images of Pepe on the WilmerHale office building.
The case has yet to go to trial, but it could set a legal precedent
better defining the blurry line between the free speech rights of internet meme makers
and the copyright claims of artists.
This is a fight about a big, multi-national multi-billion dollar corporation
going after not me, because I'm a big name, but going after very small people,
who don't have the resources it takes, this is lawfare.
This is not a David versus Goliath case, this is a situation where, if anything,
the little guy here is Matt Furie,
who's an artist trying to make sure that his work is protected.
Copyright is not just there to incentivize you to create,
but it's also there to create a larger marketplace of ideas.
It is not there so that you can say 'I'm upset about how my work has being portrayed,
about how my work's being talked about,
how my work is now being used in a trans-formative manner,
and I'm gonna put a lock down on that.'
You don't get to do that Matt Furie, the frog is on the loose.