Who knew that 1, 2,or 3 seconds of video, taken out of context, could cause such an issue? Certainly the House Judiciary Committee didn’t. The Committee’s recent press release has caused quite a stir on the Internet given its use of ten animated GIFs.

A GIF (or Graphics Interchange Format), as defined by Webster, is “a computer file format for the compression and storage of digital video images.” Make sense? Most people can probably recognize a GIF better than they can define what it means. To most people, a GIF is a short video clip (usually from a movie or TV show), that has been taken out of context, and used to make a joke.

Until recently, you’ve probably not given a second thought to GIFs, finding the floating cats in space quite humorous, but now the House Judiciary Committee is under fire for using 10 different GIFs from movies and TV shows in their newest press release.

The problem? All of the TV shows and movies are copyrighted by other people (not the House Judiciary Committee). [Read more…]