Brief #6: Copyright and Fair Use

The National RifleAssociation, or NRA (@NRA), faces a charge of copyright infringement for using a GIF of Amy Poehler from the widely known television series Parks and Recreation. The GIF was used in a tweet as a hasty response to what Slate is calling a "heavy opposition" from CNN's town hall on the unfortunate events at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. However, as nice as it was for the organization to pay respects to their representatives, Parks and Recreation creator, Michael Schur (@KenTremendous), felt otherwise…

A GIF is defined as a lossless format for image files that supports both static but mainly animated images. A lot of GIFs are small grabs of video that usually don't exceed 5 seconds. They are more commonly silent and can be captioned something other than the original context. A well known contributor to these files is a site called GIPHY that has billions of pre-formulated files for its users' pleasure. GIPHY has several partners in which they feature as an option to incorporate GIFs while texting or posting on social media. GIPHY also abides by the DMCA Copyright Policy; they provide a link to the policy's full text and states the procedures for reporting copyright infringement as well as a counter-notice. GIPHY is not the only legal GIF manufacturer, and it is safe to assume that others are employing some sort of copyright policy as well.

Tiffany Li, a student of Yale's Law School's Information Society Project that is studying intellectual property issues reviewed the circumstances of the case and concluded that “when I look at the use of this GIF, I think it’s pretty clear that there’s no copyright infringement. It’s fair use.” Generally, fair use refers to any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and “transformative” purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work in the opinion of Stanford University Libraries. It is not clear on the true source of the GIF that the NRA used, but it definitely was obtained through Twitter's "Add a GIF" option while creating the tweet. According to Slate, "It doesn’t appear that anyone has threatened the NRA with copyright infringement for using the GIF. But it’s worth asking the question: Could Schur and Poehler actually do anything to stop the NRA from using the GIF?"