JibJab This Land

2004

Date: 9 July 2004 · Place: jibjab.com, Brooklyn, New York · Figures: Gregg Spiridellis, co-founder · Evan Spiridellis, co-founder · Woody Guthrie, original songwriter (1940) · Tags: Flash, Politics, Forward 01. Bush and Kerry Sing Woody Guthrie The Spiridellis brothers release This Land on jibjab.com on 9 July 2004. Cutout-puppet caricatures of George W. Bush and John Kerry trade insults to the tune of Woody Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land. The animation runs two and a half minutes. The jokes are gentle, the rendering is craft-fair charming. It is the first Flash piece to be passed around by every American demographic at once: red, blue, parents, teenagers, news anchors. ABC airs it on World News Tonight. 02. The Election Goes Viral JibJab's servers crash and recover. The Guthrie estate sues for copyright infringement, then settles after the Electronic Frontier Foundation establishes fair-use parody. By election day This Land has been viewed over 80 million times, an unimaginable number for a single Flash file in 2004. JibJab proves that political satire can travel through email faster than through television. The 2008 cycle treats viral animation as table stakes. Every subsequent campaign cycle has its own JibJab equivalent, some made by JibJab itself. Sources • ABC News, 'JibJab brothers' (July 2004) • EFF, 'This Land' fair-use settlement filings (August 2004) • KnowYourMeme, JibJab