Bea Beltran Tech 01.27.2023 22:Jan PM EST

Unknown Persons are Asking Google to Remove Links to Protect Elon Musk’s Memes

We all know well enough that Elon Musk is very much active on Twitter supplying his followers with meme content. Since they're such a hit, people are creating merchandise with it, and someone isn't happy about it and asked Google to take the merch links down.

No Meme Merch for You

It seems like someone is pretending to be Elon Musk and claiming that the products created with Musk's memes violate copyright laws. They requested for the search engine to take the item links down as it is supposedly owned by Elon Musk.

The products in question are said to be t-shirts and other types of merchandise with Elon Musk's Twitter content printed on them. Most requests had descriptions saying that the websites stole "my" copyright and they have no right to sell them.

The requests also contain links that lead to the original post where the content was taken from. Some of the original posts from Musk that were linked had meme images generated by Musk himself, and some were just plain tweets.

Accompanied by the original post's link were several others that lead to the merchandise or t-shirt being sold. According to Gizmodo, there were 15 complaints that used this kind of format, with most containing dozens of product links.

It's also unlikely that Musk himself was the one to file the copyright claims or even authorized them. It might be another merchandise seller who is just trying to get rid of the competition, or they're just Musk fanatics.

Too bad for the complainant since Google rejected the requests. Although as TorrentFreak pointed out, the possibility of Musk behind the requests should not be dismissed too quickly. He does, after all, think that the DMCA is a "plague on humanity."

Meme Copyright

In terms of the law, memes are kind of a hard subject. Meme content circulates around the Internet like oxygen, and its blank templates are used by many to add their own flair to it with different subjects to convey a point.

Musk is no exception, seeing as he uses these blank templates himself. For one, the "it's dangerous to believe in anything blindly" meme was made using the Lego Doctor meme, which has been around since April 2020 from @Legolize_official on Instagram.

The added context to the meme that the tech billionaire posted belongs to him as it was his idea, but the photo used to present the joke or message certainly is not. The law might get foggy on this since the image is somewhat Musk's and the original poster's.

There is also the meme that originated from Grant Gustin's photo from the set of "The Flash" where he posed beside a tombstone with the name "Oliver Queen." Musk edited his face onto Gustin's and typed "BOTS" on the tombstone.

And then there's the screenshot from a scene in "Brokeback Mountain" where he added his head in place of Jake Gyllenhaal's and indicated that Heath Ledger was CBS News. There was a text saying "WHY CAN'T I QUIT YOU" appearing like CBS was saying it to Musk.