Hours before The Odyssey opens in theaters, NBCUniversal has started firing DMCA takedown notices at memes.
Not leaked footage. Not pirated screeners. Reaction memes on X, and X is letting the takedowns go through.
If that sounds familiar, it should. It’s the exact playbook Warner Bros. Discovery ran on Lanterns coverage last week, including against Cosmic Book News.
Two studios, two franchises, six days apart, one strategy: when the backlash gets loud, reach for copyright law.
NBCUniversal Comes For The Memes
Thursday morning, the X account Oilfield Rando posted a frame from the film with the caption “Ma’am would you mind using headphones to play your phone audio?” A throwaway joke. It pulled in more than 106,000 views.
By the afternoon, the account was flagged. X’s notice says it received a “compliant” DMCA takedown and helpfully reminds the user that repeat strikes can end in suspension.
The notice itself, shared publicly by the account, was filed by an NBCUniversal analyst named John Blaha through the studio’s [email protected] address at 10 Universal City Plaza. The work being protected: “NBCUniversal original title ‘The Odyssey.’”
And it’s not one meme.
The visible portion of the notice lists at least seven posts across six more accounts, including Zoek1990K, who got hit twice in the same filing, and the commentary account MorgothsReview.
NBCUniversal is sweeping X for Odyssey jokes on release eve.
Rando’s response, declaring himself to be, in his words, “HOWLING” at an NBC analyst demanding X take down every Odyssey meme, was sitting at 166,000 views by Thursday afternoon and climbing. The takedowns are now a bigger story than the memes.
The “Original Work” Is An IMDb Page
Now look at what the notice cites as the copyrighted work.
In the field asking for links to the original work, NBCUniversal’s filing points to the movie’s IMDb page.
IMDb. A third-party database. Owned by Amazon. Asked to link the original work it’s enforcing, NBCUniversal pointed at another company’s website, because the movie doesn’t come out until Friday.
There is no released work to link. And Elon Musk’s X let the takedown happen.
The struck post is a single blurry frame used as a reaction gag. Parody and commentary sit at the heart of fair use, and the law is not vague here: DMCA filers must have a good-faith belief the use is unauthorized, and the Ninth Circuit ruled in the “dancing baby” case, Lenz v. Universal (a different Universal, as it happens), that rights holders have to consider fair use before they file.
A joke caption on one frame of a three-hour epic, with zero chance of substituting for a ticket, is exactly the territory fair use exists to protect.
X processed it as compliant and locked the accounts anyway.
Sound Familiar? The Lanterns Playbook
Six days ago it was Warner Bros. Discovery doing this over Lanterns.
After the Hal Jordan Episode 1 leak hit Reddit, a DMCA strike locked the Cosmic Book News X account over coverage of the rumor. The notice came from HBO Max’s own brand social team, which described the infringement as “people discussing the spoilers.” WBD also struck a fan’s meme, which fans immediately read as confirmation the leak was real. Then came a vendor strike on our YouTube and a Facebook takedown, followed by a second X strike claiming a “spoiler” as copyrighted text.
The result for this outlet: two X strikes, a YouTube strike, a pulled Facebook video, and our Facebook page with 666,000 followers restricted through August 11, straight through Comic-Con.
Every takedown has been contested via counter-notification, and attorneys have been contacted.
Note the rhyme. WBD’s second notice claimed a plot description, literal text, as protected content.
NBCUniversal’s notice cites an IMDb page as the original work.
Neither filing looks anything like anti-piracy enforcement. Both look like brand management with a legal letterhead.
Two Studios, One Playbook
Here’s the context NBCUniversal would rather you not connect. The Odyssey memes are not random.
They’re the latest expression of a backlash the studio has been unable to put down for months, the same energy that pushed the countdown trailer past 700,000 dislikes, the most disliked trailer of Christopher Nolan’s career, even as critics debuted the film at 98% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The memes are the audience talking. You cannot DMCA a ratio. Striking jokes on release eve doesn’t make the jokes disappear. It mints new ones with your analyst’s name in them, at 166,000 views and counting.
And X keeps rubber-stamping it.
The platform that brands itself as the free speech app processed a takedown of an obvious parody, locked the accounts, and attached suspension warnings, exactly as it did to a credentialed news outlet last week.
Somewhere along the way, “content protection” at these studios stopped meaning stopping piracy and started meaning stopping embarrassment.
Two conglomerates in six days is not a coincidence. It’s a playbook.
The Odyssey opens Friday, with previews Thursday night. Our Lanterns counter-notifications remain pending, with every restoration window landing during Comic-Con week.
If the meme sweep continues into the weekend, we’ll update. The studios keep telling on themselves. We keep writing it down.