https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ ... 234980939/A New York judge has just dismissed a privacy lawsuit against him over the retweeting of a meme. In what appears to be a first, the judge finds the meme to be “newsworthy.”
The meme in question comes from Logan Cook, who goes by the internet handle “CarpeDonktum.”
Cook found a video of a white toddler running after a black toddler and stuck a chyron reading “breaking news” over it. The captions read, “Terrified Todler [sic] Runs From Racist Baby” and “Racist Baby Probably A Trump Voter.”
The video then fades to black, and reads, “What actually happened.” The toddlers run at each other and embrace. A new caption: “AMERICA IS NOT THE PROBLEM…FAKE NEWS IS. IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING. ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT FAKE NEWS DUMPSTER FIRES.”
After Trump tweeted the video, which led Twitter to add a “manipulated video” message, the parents of the toddlers filed suit against both Trump and Cook and alleged that the exploitation of the childrens’ image had violated New York privacy and publicity rights law (N.Y. Civil Rights Law §§50 and 51) and was both an intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress.
So here's my initial reaction - this guy Logan used a video that parents uploaded without his permission. How come the lawyer here didn't bring a copyright claim? If you make a video and upload it, you automatically have a copyright. Someone else can't take your video and alter it and repost it without your permission. It would be a simple matter to sue for copyright violation, here, but the lawyer failed to do that. This sound like bad lawyering to me.
Also, how despicable are you to take videos of someone else's kid and make this kind of parody with it? It's pretty disgusting, and even moreso that Trump retweeted it. But hey, the first amendment protects ugly speech. It does not, however, protect copyright infringement.
Upon further reflection, isn't it strange and sad that we protect property rights to information even against first amendment rights, but we don't protect images of our children with the same degree of legal sanction?