If you were looking for a range of Baby Yoda GIFs yesterday, you’d struggle.
This is due to the fact they were all removed from the popular GIF platform, Giphy, following Disney copyright issues.
The character, made popular by Disney+ original Star Wars show, The Mandalorian, has been made into all kinds of memes and GIFs as people just can’t get enough of the little green cutie. I mean, come on. He’s adorable.
A TV reviewer, Kathryn VanArendonk, was the first to realise that they’d gone. She’s a reviewer for popular website Vulture, and was not happy about it. She Tweeted:
“wanna know something *very* dumb? all of vulture’s baby yoda gifs have been removed from giphy for copyright reasons.”
In fact, she managed to source a Forbes article which specifically states that GIFs are fair game. The article says: “According to Jeff John Roberts of Fortune, GIFs can be considered ‘transformative’ under copyright law because they do not undermine the market for the original work.”
She added: “No one, for instance, is going to watch a Star Wars GIF instead of the original movie”.
Her followers began making their own fan art for Baby Yoda, which can’t be taken down for copyright issues. Yes, team!
As a result, the GIFs were reinstated onto Giphy.
She celebrated, saying: “hey guess what! @giphy and Star Wars said vulture could have Baby Yoda gifs back!!!!!”.
It just goes to show that a single Tweet can make a massive difference. Well done to Kathryn and everyone else involved in getting our Baby Yoda GIFs back!
Here’s a GIF to celebrate…
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Featured image credit: Disney+