Summaries and Surveys

To end this journey I sent out a small survey to help apply my findings.

In summary, copyrights applied to art are normally pointless, especially at a small scale. It isn’t until an artist has money for people to take that they should be weary. However, at that point they have the money to fight off an allegations, so it comes full circle.

Put the more “fine” art aside and circling back to memes, it is in my opinion that memes are fair use because of their nature. They are transformative from the original work because they normally show satire and have little to do with the original context. Or as one survey answer said “Memes are for the people.”

Looking further into my survey answers, most of which came from the Houston, Texas region, 50% said copyrighting memes would “destroy to many key elements of memes” followed by the 25% who said “yes, but that it is nearly impossible”. Interestingly enough from my forty responses it is split 50/50 whether people think memes are actually art or not. Obviously, this is a small survey, but for my circle of people who were willing to participate, it is inconclusive whether memes are art.

Everyone who took the survey said they used memes, and of those 40 people 36 said they never cited their meme source –I’m pretty surprised 4 people actually acknowledge where they got their meme from, and no one makes there own, because I asked that too.

The future of meme copyrights is up in the air, there is a possibility that the new law Britain passed (the “meme ban”) will change the internet forever, but most likely not. The internet was created to share information, and memes are a way of sharing the information pertaining to one’s culture. Copyrighting a culture is something I doubt any government members want to partake.

My last note is a comment someone left on my survey, they said: “Have you ever wondered if studying memes makes them more serious or less serious? One day there will be a degree about meme history and by making this survey you are contributing to that future ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°).” Which is heartwarming as the creator of this project, and a profound sentiment someone could use as a springboard for more research in the future.