Yesterday New Japan Pro-Wrestling got on the bad side of some makers of NJPW GIFs by claiming copyright of the posts. This resulted in one popular Twitter account getting suspended due to receiving too many copyright complaints in a short timespan. As I noted in yesterday’s post, both WWE and UFC had gone after GIF makers in the past, but have largely let up on the copyright claims as of late since the internet is impossible to patrol fully and they’re a good source of free publicity.
According to Voices of Wrestling, New Japan is already looking at changing how they handle GIFs in the future. The site revealed on Twitter than an office source at the company told them that they are looking into the issue. It’s reportedly being “reevaluated,” so expect to learn more about it in the near future.
Check out the report below:
The show is recorded but we never got to this topic.
Long story short, according to an office source, they are looking into the issue and it is being reevaluated. https://t.co/6IoWNd7s9c
— Voices of Wrestling (@voiceswrestling) October 19, 2018
One popular GIF maker that wasn’t targeted was the @TotalDivasEps, and they explained the situation on Reddit:
I didn’t get in trouble with NJPW this morning simply because I slept in instead of getting up at 4:30 in the morning to watch the show live. Friday was going to be my Road to Power Struggle catch up day since there’s a ton of stuff this week with the usual mountain of WWE content, plus the addition of NXT UK, Bound For Glory this past Sunday, two new Tokyo Joshi Pro shows added to DDTU, the ongoing Stardom tag league tournament and so on.
I’m sorry to see folks like Lariato caught up in the crackdown. I think his gifs really helped put New Japan on the map in the west. Just think of all the eyes that were first exposed to the product through the gifs of the Ospreay/Ricochet match that took over the Internet after BOSJ 2016. It’s ultimately NJPW and TV Asahi’s content, but I hope the high sheriffs at NJPW can at least be persuaded to do something like WWN’s GIF policy going forward.
We’ll have more on this story as it develops, but it’s good to see NJPW reevaluating considering how many North American fans have been introduced to the product through GIF makers.
