In response to the extremely negative reputation that this meme has gained, the original artist of Pepe the Frog, Matt Furie, has publicly denied his association with the "weird racist version"of Pepe and has joined forces with the Anti Defamation League to attempt legal action, releasing the statement below:

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“As the creator of Pepe, I condemn the illegal and repulsive appropriations of the character by racist and fringe groups. The true nature of Pepe, as featured in my comic book, ‘Boys Club,’ celebrates peace, togetherness and fun. I aim to reclaim the rascally frog from the forces of hate and ask that you join me in making millions of new, joyful Pepe memes that share the light hearted spirit of the original chilled-out champion.” -- Matt Furie (ADL)

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We can see a similar situation in Jim Ridolfo and Martine Courant Rife's article "Rhetorical Velocity and Copyright: A Case Study on Strategies of Rhetorical Delivery," in which a protest image of a Michigan State University student was unknowingly taken and remixed, or recomposed, by the University as a promotional image. As he explains in the video in Figure 17, Furie knew about the meme (the original remix and its common variations), he did not anticipate the recomposition of his image as an anti-semitic symbol, and now wishes to take legal action, citing his copyright of the original Pepe design. However, like Maggie's example in Ridolfo and Rife's article, due to the murky nature of copyright laws and how they would apply to a widely used and edited meme may make it impossible for any real repercussions to occur.  This is in part because it calls to question creative license and intellectual property. In the case of a meme that is constantly reproduced and remixed, a strong argument could be made that the individual designs are unique, unrelated to Pepe (especially if they were posted without "Pepe" in their titles) and property of the creators, therefore not subject to copyright.  

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As of March 7, 2018, creator Matt Furie has attempted to take legal action against those profiting off of Pepe's image in an attempt to establish a precedence of intellectual property and copyright law, in order to conduct future lawsuits against those creating and distributing Anti-Semitic and racist depictions of his character. According to reporter Don Reisinger, "Furie has sued radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' Infowars website over selling a poster depicting the frog without Furie's consent. According to the Associated Press, which earlier reported on the lawsuit, Furie is alleging copyright infringement in a lawsuit filed on Monday in Los Angeles" (Reisinger). 

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We can see a similar situation in Jim Ridolfo and Martine Courant Rife's article "Rhetorical Velocity and Copyright: A Case Study on Strategies of Rhetorical Delivery," in which a protest image of a Michigan State University student was unknowingly taken and remixed, or recomposed, by the University as a promotional image. Although Furie knew about the meme (the original remix and its common variations), he did not anticipate the recomposition of his image as an anti-semitic symbol, and now wishes to take legal action, citing his copyright of the original Pepe design. However, like Maggie's example in Ridolfo and Rife's article, due to the murky nature of copyright laws and how they would apply to a widely used and edited meme may make it impossible for any real repercussions to occur.  This is in part because it calls to question creative license and intellectual property. In the case of a meme that is constantly reproduced and remixed, a strong argument could be made that the individual designs are unique, unrelated to Pepe (especially if they were posted without "Pepe" in their titles) and property of the creators, therefore not subject to copyright.  

 

However, despite Furie's attempts at recomposing Pepe the Frog as a positive symbol in his #SavePepe movement, even passively associating with the image of Pepe, regardless of intent, can cause public backlash. For example, even before the Charlottesville riot in 2017, Zara, a clothing chain with previous issues promoting arguably anti-semitic clothing, was forced to pull a skirt from their website due to a cartoon character on it bearing a resemblance to Pepe (Roy). The skirt, which you can see in Figure  compared to Pepe, does bear enough resemblance to the appropriated alt-right symbol to cause public backlash. 

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