More restrictions,Less creators
https://goo.gl/images/cywym5
I am not sure that Millennials are characterized by a nihilist approach of death,as implies the above photograph, but I am sure that one of the most important impacts of Internet on contemporary civilisation is the fact that people develop constantly new and various ways to express themselves and to communicate with each other. Millennials is the first generation in the core of a cyber culture development .This culture includes ,among other elements, new forms of humor,criticism and creativity, which can be seen as the new tools of interaction between users into the global community.
Lately ,a new trend emerged mostly in social networks,the Internet memes.Internet memes share a lot of commons with the original memes,but the main purpose of them is mockery.Users create memes satirizing situation of all realms of life, such as current political facts,showbiz happenings,movies ,even athletic events. The more widely comprehensive a meme is , the more widespread in the global community will be.Their usage is so ubiquitous that we could say that some memes reflect social trends and dominant social ideas about specific issues.
Most memes are based on someone’s else original work, probably protected by copyrights.The legal question raised is ,whether memes should fall under any exception of the copyright protection and if they should, which should be the legal approach to this.
Internet memes constitute a social creation that serve multiple purposes.Users are able to express their ideas by summarizing them in a simple joke as well as present some news in more pleasant ways.It is a new vehicle of expression [i] and therefore constitutes a fundamental right of the users.On the other hand,a meme usually cannot serve its functional purpose without relying on a pre-existing original work ,resulting in a potential violation of copyright holder’s rights.The freedom of expression in combination with the nature of memes tilts the balance in favor of memes creators,but the commercial and economic aspects of them that are starting to emerge will might trigger a further discussion about this.
In US the fair use exceptions lie in a flexible ground.In the United States Code lawmakers preferred the phrase “for purposes such as” than an exhaustive list of exceptions in order to boost the law with flexibility.On the contrary,in EU an unharmonised legal environment in the “fair use” field can be observed because the a.5 of Infosoc Directive provides a list of specific and mainly not obligatory category of exceptions.In the US a meme will probably pass the fair-use test, whereas In EU a meme could fit in the parody exception(5 p3k InfoSoc Directive) .The advantage of this category is that “parody” is regarded as autonomous concept of EU law after the Deckym case and therefore parody must be conceived ,as CJ noticed ,in the EU as a work with two main characteristics:it evokes existing work,while being noticeably different from it and it constitutes an expression of humour or mockery.At the majority of cases, the above-mentioned description can be justified in memes category and therefore, law should protect memes’ creators and not stifle their creativity.
[i] Ronak Patel,First World Problems :A Fair use Analysis of Internet Memes,p 25
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