I remember being a pre-teen when a website called funnyjunk and albinoblacksheep launched on the internet, providing all of its audience a plethora of hilarious photos, gifs, and short animated videos. A lot of the content was submitted by random users/creators and other things were submitted or leeched from consistent content creators. If you frequented these sites I imagine you are familiar with a piece of work created by someone recognizable and that you have seen their work on these sites countless times with or without permission from the creator themselves. This idea of finding something cute or funny and saving it to your computer seemed like this innocent act of being able to archive good content for personal use. Then there are people who then take that content and upload it onto sites where people can view, share, and save that same content. Eventually a picture becomes so recycled and shared that not only is it a famous image but the majority of the community has no idea who created it or where it was originally sourced from.

There has always been a huge issue with creators being credited for their work when it comes to fans sharing the content. Images and videos are shared so rapidly that to sit down and try and track down each person who has stolen, distributed, or altered the image in some way would probably require more time and money than it might be worth. Of course, that's debatable depending on your success and how much people are leeching from you.

I think a big case worth mentioning was the lawsuit between The Oatmeal and FunnyJunk. I'm not going to go into extreme detail on the matter but basically, a variety of The Oatmeal's comics made their way onto the website without his permission. I'm not sure if the site themselves uploaded the images or if it was the users. But like most people, myself included, we tend to disregard the feelings and values of the artist at hand and all we are thinking about is "omg this is funny, I want other people to see it." That in itself isn't a bad thing, because it gives the artist more exposure. However, if the artist is not credited or linked back to an original source... then that image floating in the internet space has only fulfilled part of its purpose. It fulfilled the purpose of being enjoyed by many but at what cost?

This issue has been very damaging to creators and owners of content. It's such a huge disturbance that new artists, myself included, almost have to surrender to the idea that as soon as you reveal a piece of artwork, someone out there is going to save, replicate, distribute, edit, alter, etc... and some people might have the decency to credit you or recognize that the piece is yours but the majority of the world will just see the content.

This is a digital epidemic that has been addressed many times. Of course content creators have the ability to copyright their content and list parameters of what users can and cannot do with the content. From there if they find people infringing copyright claims, then they can follow through with getting that user to remove the content or adjust the sourcing/licensing rights etc... but with so many people being on the internet and so many things being shared and replicated or altered, it seems like an impossible cause - like a giant flame that refuses to ever completely burn out.

I think a more recent popular form of this are youtube videos and vines. Someone sees a video that is successfully or already viral and remixes it to something else that already exists. To me, in that sense...that is fine because they are taking the original and adding content to it to create a meme that everyone can enjoy but once again... they usually don't credit the sources, and that's where the problem stems. From there, tons of people leech these videos and adjust the resolutions or sizes of the videos. Maybe they add some text and emojis to it to grab your attention to watch it. You'll see these ALL the time and it bothers me when I know who made the video and instead of people sharing the video that the creator themselves posted, they're sharing this random re-creations and alterations of the same exact video - the only difference is that it has emojis, hash tags and worse... wait for it... their usernames on social media.

I can't stand it when I see a video created by a youtuber and instead of the youtubers watermark being featured in the video there's some shitty MS paint text looking stuff to @kittenbabexoxo113.

Can you not. Is it THAT hard that you can't find a video you like by the creator and share THAT video. All of the views can accumulate on THAT video. No... everyone has to download the video and edit it and adjust it so that they can leech off of the success for their own personal gain. Like it's bad enough if you don't create your own content and you share other peoples content just to gain some traffic from that but to re-distribute the video in an altered form and link it back to yourself is so cheap in my opinion.

I've made it a personal goal that when I see this videos, I let my friends know who the original creator was along with the original video or social media page etc... that way if they like the content, they can visit the creator directly instead of watching more of these BS wannabes.

While I don't think this problem will ever go away, I think that the community can combat this toxic issue by following through with what I do. If you see something you like, please share the creators content before sharing a re-creation. It's one thing to make a remix or a meme and another to duplicate a video and pretend its your own. It's not that they are saying "hey I made this video" but they want the views to accumulate on their version of the video rather than the official video that the creator themselves promoted.

The results of The Oatmeal Vs Funnyjunk case were hilarious and satisfying. The Oatmeal has such a large following and if you're smart, you won't screw with him. I have mad respect for him as a creator and I hope that if you respect the creators you look up to, that you will do them a service of justice by sharing THEIR content posted by THEM and not random users. If you see people misusing their content just paste the original source in the comments so that people who see it can find the original creator. These small things that we can do, can educate people and promote the people that love to entertain us.

I am hesitant to start uploading/selling my art because of this very issue. I don't want to go onto deviant art or something and find my work being praised on sites that I have never even heard of and letting these sites or users get the praise for my work without my knowing.

Please don't be a douchebag and share those horrible looking re-creations anymore. I used to share many of them all the time but it's become an active choice of mine to consistently find the original source so that the creator gets the proper recognition.

This has been a PSA from Kyrae Jenkins. Have a good weekend.