Lawsuit against Carpe Donktum over pro-Trump meme is dismissed

PM:
It was nearly a year ago that meme artist Carpe Donktum suffered a permanent Twitter ban over a meme allegedly for copyright infringement. Those who felt they had been infringed upon lawyered up, but once the case hit the courts, it was thrown out.

The plaintiffs in the case brought suit before the Supreme Court of the State of New York, but the defendants, Donald J. Trump and Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., asked for the charges to be dismissed. And they were.

The court documents detail what happened, and what the charges were.

What was Donktum accused of doing? He used a meme to create another meme. Donktum’s meme used footage of two toddler boys running down the street, a black boy is running in front of the white boy.

Court documents detail that it was in September 2019 that the plaintiffs “recorded video of their two year old sons… respectively, hugging each other on a New York City sidewalk.” The video of the children, one of whom is black and the other who is white, “went viral as a  symbol of racial unity.”

Meme-maker Carpe Donktum “shared the  video with Trump, who was then President of the United States, as well as Trump’s campaign.” The court documents state that they are alleged to have “misappropriated the video by altering it and intentionally using it out of context to  create ‘an extremely distorted and false message.'”

Donktum “added a simulated CNN chyron reading ‘breaking news’ to the footage, changed it to show… the  white child, running after… the black child, and added captions reading ‘Terrified Todler  [sic] Runs From Racist Baby’ and ‘Racist Baby Probably A Trump Voter.’ The shot then fades to a black screen with text stating ‘what actually happened’, and then shows” the two boys running towards each other and then embracing. The shot then fades to a black  screen with the following message in all capital letters:  AMERICA IS NOT THE PROBLEM . . . FAKE NEWS IS. IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING. ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT FAKE NEWS DUMPSTER FIRES.” Keep reading