The guest speaker, Anne Lennox, spoke to us about copyright. One of the things she said that got me (and quite a fair few other students) laughing was ‘there’s not much we can do about memes’, in reference to copyrighting laws. She made a good point though – starting initially by explaining that the gif feature in Facebook messenger is breaching laws. When we got onto the internet phenomenon that is ‘memes’, I couldn’t help but relate it to my own life. I admit it – I’m not ashamed – I love memes. All kinds. From Pepe the frog to personal inside jokes with my friends. And it’s actually pretty funny to think of something so, well, kind of stupid and ridiculous in a context so official and serious such as copyrighting laws.
I was actually a meme once, technically still am – when I posted a photo of myself last year that my dad had taken years ago, on my 9th birthday surrounding a barbie laptop with my 4 other best friends. I had always found the photo kind of funny, because our expressions were ridiculously uh – bitchy, I guess is the word. The picture went pretty viral – currently it has over 260,000 notes on the website I originally posted it on and countless other hits and likes and comments on Facebook, Instagram and the iFunny app (I only know this because people kept sending me links with the photo edited with different hilarious captions), reposted endlessly to the point that I can’t even keep up.
But the funniest part of it, and what relates back to what Anne Lennox was telling us about copyright, is that my dad is a professional photographer and now one of his works was an internet sensation. He was a little confused by it (memes aren’t exactly his generation’s thing) and especially frustrated with how quickly people repost and re-blog a photo without crediting the artist (even if it was a private at home photo rather than one of his official works). That’s the thing with the internet and copyright, sources are very easily lost in the feed.