Meme and Law: New Forms of Expression in the Era of Digital Culture

Within the boundless ecosystem of the Internet, memes transcend their function as mere entertainment to present themselves as “units of cultural information,” essential for the formation of collective identity and participation in public discourse. Taking a sociological perspective, this chapter goes beyond analyzing memes as violations of intellectual property rights, examining them instead as complex semantic practices that define the new grammar of contemporary communication. However, the derivative and intertextual nature of memetic culture, which today finds its most advanced frontier in the synthetic generation of deepfakes, collides with the traditional legal principles of copyright, conceived for an analog era of static authorship. The study focuses on investigating this socio-legal friction, highlighting how current copyright regulations risk challenging the forms of expression of the new social community, ignoring the social value of remixing and algorithmic manipulation as a creative and transformative act. In addition to analyzing regulatory issues, the contribution proposes a theoretical reinterpretation from an evolutionary perspective: the law itself can be interpreted as a meme, i.e., a system of rules that must adapt and replicate itself to maintain its effectiveness in regulating society. Through this interdisciplinary approach, the chapter argues for the need to update legal paradigms to recognize the sociological specificity of memes and synthetic realities, ensuring that property protection does not stifle the vitality of new digital public spheres.