Blogs like Deadspin and SB Nation often turn professional gaming highlights into GIFs for their own websites. Bloggers and meme fans alike will admit that very few things can convey emotions like an animated GIF, and with nearly 23 million GIFs posted on Tumblr every day, it goes without saying that the internet has become obsessed with the file format. Giphy, the most important GIF database and search engine on the web, offers more than 1 billion GIFs per day to more than 100 million daily active users. The gray area, when it comes to protection, is whether GIFs that are compilations of different scenes or that have editing and special effects qualify as original or transformative works.
Last year, the House Judiciary Committee released a list (or “gift item”) of President Obama's immigration policies, with GIFs from movies like Pitch Perfect and The Little Mermaid. But the lawyer for the article states that it would be better for brands to stick to the widely used GIFs that are available on platforms such as Facebook or GIPHY. The stance on whether GIFs are infringing works derived from the longer original versions of the fragments is still being reflected on. It can be seen that corporate entities dealing with content creation and GIFs are raising millions of dollars to expand their businesses.
GIFs have gained popularity over the past 5 years, as numerous content creation companies used GIFs as a marketing strategy to establish an online presence. Both bloggers and meme fans will admit that very few things can convey emotions like animated GIFs. GIFs are completely taken from an existing work, with a certain amount of editing in terms of adding subtitles, filters, etc., which could involve a certain amount of editing in terms of adding subtitles, filters, etc. With almost 23 million GIFs posted on Tumblr every day, it goes without saying that the Internet has been obsessed with the file format.
I bet you're wondering what all this means for brands looking to use GIFs as part of their content strategy. Last year, the House Judiciary Committee released a list (or gift item) of President Obama's immigration policies, with GIFs from movies like Pitch Perfect and The Little Mermaid.
