Over the past decade, institutional communications discarded traditional press releases in favor of algorithm-driven shitposting. Pentagon recruiting drives openly published clips of Dragon Ball Z and Naruto to reach Generation Z prospects on Instagram and X. During intense electoral cycles, political operatives spliced Pokémon characters alongside candidates while adapting viral templates like the "Wait, it's all Ohio? Always has been" astronaut motif, often compressed into localized "it's us" slogans, to mock partisan rivals.
The strategy generated millions of impressions. It also generated an enormous footprint of unlicensed, commercial media assets repurposed without attribution, permission, or licensing fees. Communications aides operated on the assumption that non-commercial public service or First Amendment political commentary created an airtight fair use defense.
That assumption was flatly wrong. The creators behind these visual assets, from independent photographers to Tokyo-based media conglomerates, never ceded their core intellectual property rights to the public domain simply because an image went viral on Reddit or TikTok.
