GIFs and the Law: Navigating Copyright and Celebrity Rights
Can You Lawyer Up a GIF?
Legal Issues
GIFs have taken over the Internet, and savvy lawyers understand that video and images are essential for social media marketing. Twitter recently rolled out a new GIF button, making it even easier to use these popular moving images on Twitter. However, are these images legal to share?
Using copyrighted material to create new memes can be problematic from an intellectual property standpoint. According to Harris, creating and sharing a meme from copyrighted content can constitute infringement if it is not used in a transformative manner. However, “if you take someone else’s copyrighted work and change it a little bit to make it into your own meme, that’s generally considered fair use because you’re not competing in the same market,” he says.
This issue becomes more complicated when the subject of a meme is a celebrity. In that situation, individuals may have rights to the image that is being used, which can be a violation of their right of publicity, according to Adweek.
Legal Information
In a world that is as much visual as it is textual, savvy lawyers understand the value of video and images. But GIFs are a new frontier that raises questions about intellectual property and the proper use of copyrighted material. Generally, the doctrine of fair use allows for the remixing of copyrighted content as long as the new work is not commercial in nature and does not compete with or create economic harm for the original author. But, if a GIF features celebrities, it may be necessary to obtain releases from the copyright holders and actors who appear in the clip.
Legal Tips
GIFs are short looping video clips that have become a new form of online communication. They frequently borrow from copyrighted works such as television shows, movies and music videos. The vast majority of these are considered “fair use” under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act due to their short duration and satirical nature, but individuals like celebrities have the option to claim misappropriation of name or likeness when they appear in GIFs. If a business wants to post a GIF on its website, it is best to get written permission from all the actors and copyright holders involved in order to avoid legal trouble.