How "Freedom of Speech" Led to Racist Children's Book Insanity

People scream "Freedom of Speech" over plagiarism, stealing and copying, and just about anything you can do on the Internet. The Internet has become the brat heaven for "BECAUSE WE CAN!" Nyaaa nyaaaa.

People who wouldn't dare attempt their stunts in front of actual Blacks or Jews, and wouldn't dare admit to Brian Wilson they are giving away every Beach Boys album on a blog, and wouldn't ask Emma Watson to sign a gangbang Photoshop job they are giggling over on 4Chan or selling on eBay, are happy with their anonymous pranks on the Internet.

Here's another recent example of how low it can go (as if leaking some woman's nude selfies or putting a camcorder into the peephole of a female celebrity's hotel room isn't low enough). It involves a frog named Pepe.

Frankly, and frogly, I haven't delved into the whole story of Pepe, but you can find it elsewhere. Basically, unlike the usual humor of parodying a famous character via rude words or Photoshop antics, Eric Hauser swiped the frog character created by Matt Furie and used it for alt-right racism. As reported at the Huffity-Puffity Post, which is much more clever about plagiarizing news articles and regurgitating them as commentary:

Yes, it's nice that a copyright owner can get justice. What's NOT nice, is that copyright owners have to go through a lot of legal expense, or a tedious amount of hours of hoops to get anyone to cease and desist on the Internet. Google, Paypal and most file-sharing services will insist you fill out THEIR forms, give up all privacy (to prove you are a rights owner), and then wait till they're good and ready to remove the illegal content. They might, additionally, float your takedown request onto the Internet so all can see who "ruined the fun," and give your contact information to the anonymous asshole who was abusing your work.

Key words in this piece include 4CHAN and INSTAGRAM and REDDIT. To say nothing of even more insidious and obnoxious outfits operating from the safety of Croatia, Ukraine, Russia and other Communist countries that love to give away American products for free. The "BECAUSE WE CAN" bunch thrive because of insanely weak laws regarding the Internet. It isn't just "irksome" that some assholes want to give away every album, TV show, movie or book. It's destroying the economy (like climate change, only morons would insist that bookstores and record stores haven't gone under and that artists haven't seen piss poor royalty checks). The bullies of the world, including Google, YouTube, Paypal, Ebay, Reddit, Instagram and Facebook have relied on "they're trying to regulate the Internet, they're trying to TAKE AWAY YOUR FREEDOM" as an excuse for blatantly illegal, racist and vicious activity. And all they're bitching about is having to enforce DMCA Takedown requests, not actually patrol and take preemptive measures.

What's needed is much more direct "red flag" and "report item" and "report abuse" prompts on websites, that websites take the reports seriously (and not say "we don't see a violation" or "tell the copyright owner to file"). If somebody is doing something obviously illegal, like bragging about using Zippysharee to give away every Neil Young album, demand proof that this person has an agreement with Neil Young to do it, don't expect Neil Young to file a report and give his name address and phone number to verify who he is. In other words, have a human brain, not a frog's.