Recently, a subsidiary of ByteDance registered with the China Copyright Protection Center the copyright of artistic works for many popular meme images that are widely spread on online platforms, such as "Cuckoo Gaga", "Old Cat", "Sword and Shield Dog", "Banana Cat" and "Why Cat". As soon as the news came out, it quickly triggered a heated discussion on the Internet, and related topics were searched on major platforms.
Take the most representative "Gugu Gaga" as an example. This image is not original to ByteDance. Its origins can be traced back to the overseas meme of using "goo goo gaga" to simulate a baby's voice. It was further spread in the comedy "Key and Peele" in 2012, and has since continued to be reinvented and fermented in overseas game communities. In 2025, netizens compared this sound effect with "BanG Dream!" "The penguin-loving character Takamatsu Deng is bound to form the collective recognition of the two-dimensional circle.
In other words, hot memes ranging from "Cuckoo Gaga" to "Knife Shield Dog" and "Banana Cat" are essentially Internet public cultural products that are spontaneously co-created and iteratively disseminated by netizens, and are not the original works of a certain company.
Faced with the question that the public is most concerned about, "Can I still play jokes in the future?", many lawyers gave clear responses. Han Xiao, a lawyer at Beijing Kangda Law Firm, said that non-profit and non-commercial non-profit and non-commercial memes in ordinary netizens’ interactions in comment areas, sharing in Moments, and daily creation of personal short videos do not constitute infringement.
However, if the hot meme image is used in commercial profit-making scenarios, such as self-media promotion of goods, merchant brand promotion, commercial short video production, advertising traffic, etc., it may constitute copyright infringement without authorization.
Some netizens believe that the most direct motivation for Byte's move is the compliance of AI training. Byte is promoting products such as the AI video generation model Seedance, which requires massive amounts of materials for training and commercial use. Completing copyright registration in advance can avoid potential copyright risks. In addition, after the copyright ownership is determined, commercial operations such as authorization, peripheral development, and advertising co-branding can also be carried out.
As of press time, ByteDance has not announced the commercial and non-commercial use rules for these registered images. What do you think about this? Do you think the operation of bytes is appropriate? Welcome to discuss in the comment area.
