The poster contains the frog’s likeness alongside President Donald Trump and other conservative political allies, including Infowars’ founder, Alex Jones.
The lawsuit, which was filed Monday in federal court in Los Angeles, claims that Infowars and its parent company, Free Speech Systems LLC, are in violation of Furie's copyright for Pepe.
In recent months Furie has been battling white supremacists and their allies who have co-opted his "peaceful frog-dude" into what the Anti-Defamation League has dubbed a "hate symbol." The California-based artist originally created the character back in 2005 as part of a comic called Boy's Club.
Last fall, Furie sued a Texas man who used the image to create an Islamophobic children’s book—and ended up settling the case. The cartoonist has also sent legal demand letters to other notable figures in the white-supremacist movements who have also trafficked in the symbol.
Furie has a similar copyright lawsuit pending against a Kansas City-based artist named Jessica Logsdon, who has sold work using the Pepe character.
In response to the new Infowars lawsuit, Jones released a short audio statement on Tuesday saying that he had received requests for comment from the "collaborator press," adding that "this is a concerted effort to create the perspective, to create the consensus that Infowars is enemy number one and is being destroyed."Jones continued, adding that, while his website did not "create the poster," he argued that Pepe's use here is "protected speech," as it is "transformative" of the original copyrighted work. He claimed that this image was protected under fair use.
"Pepe is only a small part of the overall work of art, and it’s completely and totally protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution," he said.
It’s not clear whether a federal court would find any art using Pepe imagery transformative enough, allowing it to exist under the fair use doctrine.
Listing image by Fibonacci Blue
.jpg){kind=link}
reader comments
268