You’ve probably laughed at Banana Cat. You’ve likely used the “Gugu Gaga” sound in a group chat. You and millions of others spent hours remixing, dubbing, and sharing these viral sensations, turning them into the cultural currency of the internet. Now, ByteDance is quietly cashing the check.
The tech giant has been批量 registering copyrights for these massively popular memes. On the surface, it looks like standard corporate greed—slapping a trademark on something that belongs to everyone. But the reality is much darker, and it has everything to do with the AI arms race.
When millions of people build a sandcastle together, don’t be surprised when the guy with the bulldozer claims the beach.
Here is the twist you didn’t see coming: ByteDance isn’t just trying to sell official Banana Cat plushies. They are building a legal shield for their AI models.
Think about it. ByteDance relies on AI tools like Doubao and the Seedance video model to generate short videos and effects. To train these models, they have to scrape millions of images and memes from the internet every single day. Most of these memes were spontaneously created by anonymous users. If ByteDance’s AI generates a video using a meme that actually belongs to some random creator, they could face a massive lawsuit.
So, they found a loophole. By drawing their own slightly altered 2D and 3D versions of these viral images and registering the copyright, they create a bulletproof legal defense. They can now claim ownership, feed it to their AI, and commercialize it without fear of being sued by the original creators.
Memes are born from the chaotic, unowned wilderness of the internet. The moment you put a fence around them, you kill the very thing that made them valuable.
How are they getting away with this? Because the copyright system is fundamentally broken when it comes to internet culture. In China, copyright registration operates on a “voluntary registration, formal review” basis. The copyright office doesn’t investigate whether you are the actual, original creator. They just check if your paperwork is in order.
Because memes are collaborative—created through endless remixes by thousands of users—they are treated as “orphan works” with no clear parent. ByteDance simply steps in, files the paperwork, and becomes the legal guardian.
The law doesn’t care who planted the seed; it only cares who built the fence around the orchard.
This isn’t just a ByteDance problem; it’s a preview of the platform capitalism of the future. If ByteDance didn’t register these memes, a competitor like Kuaishou or Xiaohongshu might have done it first, forcing ByteDance to pay licensing fees to use the very memes their users popularized.
But the cost of this corporate maneuvering is catastrophic for digital creativity. The entire lifeblood of a meme is its unowned, public nature. It thrives precisely because anyone can alter it, parody it, and make it their own. When a platform privatizes a collective cultural asset, they aren’t just stealing a joke; they are shrinking the space where internet culture can breathe.
We are the ones who plant the trees. We water them with our attention. And when the fruit is finally ripe, the platforms harvest it, package it, and sell it back to us. If this precedent stands, the internet will no longer be a playground. It will be a rent-seeking monoculture.
FAQ
Q: Is what ByteDance doing actually illegal?
A: No, and that's the most infuriating part. The copyright registration system only performs a formal review of the paperwork, not an investigation into true original authorship. ByteDance is legally exploiting a loophole designed for a pre-internet era.
Q: How does this affect regular internet users?
A: If you're just sharing a meme in a chat, you're probably safe under fair use. But if you try to sell merchandise, create a paid short video, or run an ad using these images, ByteDance now has the legal right to send you a cease and desist or demand licensing fees.
Q: Why can't the original creators just sue ByteDance?
A: Because most viral memes don't have a single 'original creator.' They are the result of thousands of users remixing and altering an initial concept over time. This collective authorship makes it nearly impossible to prove ownership in court, leaving the door wide open for platforms to claim them.