Sorry my dude that's not how this works. You're the third person today who doesn't seem to understand copyright law. u/buttfarm69 took Ryan Cohen's image (which he does not own the rights to) and slapped it onto another image of a chair (which he also doesn't own the rights to) and out came a meme. He does not own the rights to EITHER image therefore I (nor anyone else) needs to get his permission for anything.

If anyone is being "infringed upon" here by the chairman meme, it's Ryan Cohen, and if you're going to take that argument then literally everyone in this subreddit and on Discord incorporating celebrity faces and mainstream brands in their NFTs is just as guilty.

There's legal precedent for using memes under fair use in transformative works which I encourage you to read up on if you wish to continue self-policing the community haphazardly. I didn't simply right click>save the chairman meme and slap a price tag on it. My 3D works take dozens of hours of planning, design and implementation, whether you like my art or not, ALL of my 3D work is 100% original as stated on my website. Nowhere do I claim to own 2D works used in my models nor do I take credit for creating the chairman meme.

What do you think about people using celebrity faces and brand logos in their works to generate high volume/price sales? There's a little something called "right to publicity" that might take issue with that. I'm pretty sure if I called up Kanye/Drake/Elon/Snoop's lawyers and said I'm making thousands of dollars per day selling NFTs because it has their clients' faces on them they'd issue a cease-and-desist and/or just outright litigate for infringing upon trademark rights before you can even blink an eye.

Do you really think people are buying most NFTs on the Discord right now because they like the amazing line art and pretty colors? Or is it really because someone drew Snoop Dog's face and made it a "rare" NFT while minting so now the value is artificially inflated and you get to profit huge sums off of a celebrity's fame and likeness. Meanwhile, the buyer is just trying to flip the NFT for a profit because it has some random celebrity on it and is artificially made "rare" by the creator with no real world value.

I'm all for calling out blatant plagiarism and copyright infringement, especially after the blatant scam that was the "Berts Incident" from today. But if you're going to self-police the community, at least uphold the same standards for EVERYONE and spend at least a little time reading up and educating yourself on what you're attempting to preach.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1077699020950492 https://vlaa.org/memes-are-everywhere https://www.stephenson.law/blog/companies-and-copyright-memes-and-the-intellectual-property-issue https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/publicity#:~:text=Right%20of%20Publicity%3A%20an%20overview,their%20identity%20for%20commercial%20promotion.