Deranged Leftist Woman Issues Legal Threats Toward Congressman Steve King for Using a Meme
Shane Trejo
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A deranged leftist woman has sent a cease-and-desist threat to Rep. Steve King (R-IA) claiming she owns a popular meme that he used in a fundraising request.
Laney Griner, whose son has been used in a fist-bumping meme that has become popular over the last decade, is using lawfare in an attempt to malign Rep. King, whose pro-Western beliefs have made him into a pariah to the liberal media.
“I recently learned that Iowa Representative Steve King is using my copyrighted photograph of my minor son Samuel known as ‘Success Kid’ to raise money in a ‘Fund our Memes’ online campaign, also implying that he has some kind of ownership in it,” Griner wrote in a Tweet.
“Representative King and his campaign staff appropriated ‘Success Kid’ without my permission. ‘Success Kid’s’ is about positivity and celebrates achievement. Neither I, my son, nor ‘Success Kid’ have any affiliation with Representative King,” she added. “Representative King should remove ‘Success Kid’ from his webpages immediately, issue a statement to acknowledge that the image was taken without our permission and endorsement, and refund the money his campaign received from misusing ‘Success Kid’.”
Griner is part of a growing movement of money-grubbing hucksters who claim ownership over a meme and then punish and extract money from people who use it.
This was previously done with Pepe the Frog in order to stop the viral spread of the popular right-wing meme by forcing high-profile people who shared it to pay cash settlements:
The creator of Pepe the Frog, the cartoon character co-opted by the alt-right for Nazi and pro-Trump memes, has sued the the right-wing conspiracy theory site InfoWars for copyright infringement.
In a lawsuit filed in California federal court, Pepe’s creator, Matt Furie, alleges that InfoWars unlawfully used the character in a poster that features the frog, InfoWars host Alex Jones, former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos, Donald Trump, the slogan “MAGA,” Kellyanne Conway, Roger Stone, and others. Furie alleges that the poster promotes “a message of hate.”
Furie is seeking unspecified damages, attorneys’ fees, and a permanent injunction against InfoWars to prevent the site from ever using Pepe again. Furie’s attorney, Louis Tompros, said InfoWars has not yet formally been served with the lawsuit, but that he had sent the site a copy…
Furie’s attorneys sent cease-and-desist letters to some of the most prominent players in the alt-right and pro-Trump sphere in September. Tompros called the letters “very successful” and said that all but one of the recipients had complied.
“Our goal is to make sure no one feels like they can associate Pepe with images of hate and think they’ll profit from that,” Tompros said. “That’s what we’re trying to stop. Ideally, it would stop right away.”
The meme police are out to destroy the 1st Amendment and digital freedom of expression through lawfare, and Rep. King is the latest victim of this sinister leftist conspiracy.
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