GIPHY Explains Missing Baby Yoda GIFs

UPDATE: Giphy has released a statement citing confusion around the missing Baby Yoda GIFs following Vulture’s initial report of Disney removing the images due to copyright concerns. Their statement follows below:

“Last week, there was some confusion around certain content uploaded to GIPHY and we temporarily removed these GIFs while we reviewed the situation. We apologize to both Disney and Vulture for any inconvenience, and we are happy to report that the GIFs are once again live on GIPHY.”

Original story below:

Star Wars: The Mandalorian finally premiered this month and it’s united the Star Wars fandom in a way nothing has in a long time. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone on the Internet who hasn’t fallen in love with the show’s breakout character, “Baby Yoda.” In the show’s pilot, the Mandalorian encounters his newest bounty, which turns out to be a baby who is the same unknown species as Yoda, hence the nickname. The love for the new character has sparked tons of online content, so naturally, gifs have been made of the little dude. Many fans and websites create gifs out of their favorite content, including Vulture. The online publication often makes lists of gif-able moments, but Kathryn VanArendonk, a reviewer of the site, just revealed that their Baby Yoda gifs were removed from Giphy for copyright reasons.

VanArendonk included a follow-up tweet explaining why this should not have happened.

The highlighted part from the shared Forbes article includes the following:

“According to Jeff John Roberts of Fortune, GIFs can be considered ‘transformative’ under copyright law because they do not undermine the market for the original work: ‘No one, for instance, is going to watch a Star Wars GIF instead of the original movie.’”

ComicBook has reached out to both Disney & GIPHY about the removal of the gifs and have yet to hear back.

The Mandalorian stars Pedro Pascal as the titular bounty hunter, who travels the outer reaches of the lawless galaxy, surviving as a mercenary-for-hire. The series is set shortly after the events of the original trilogy of films and is expected to have a unique approach to the franchise. The cast also includes Gina Carano, Carl Weathers, Giancarlo Esposito, Nick Nolte, Omid Abtahi, Emily Swallow, Werner Herzog, and Taika Waititi as the voice of IG-11.

In addition to The Mandalorian, other upcoming Star Wars series will include a show that stars Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi and a prequel to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story which is set to feature the return of Diego Luna as Cassian Andor and Alan Tudyk as K-2SO.

The first three episodes of Star Wars: The Mandalorian are now available to stream on Disney+.