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		</div><p>Conspiracy-promoting website Infowars will pay 15,000 US dollars to resolve a copyright infringement lawsuit over its sales of a poster featuring an image of Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character that was hijacked by far-right extremists and racist internet trolls.</p>
<p>Infowars show host Alex Jones has signed a settlement agreement on behalf of his companies with Pepe’s creator, Matt Furie.</p>
<p>he California-based artist said he did not authorise Infowars to sell a “MAGA” poster that depicts Pepe alongside images of Mr Jones, US president Donald Trump, far-right agitator Milo Yiannopoulos and other right-wing figures.</p>
<p>Louis Tompros, one of Mr Furie’s lawyers, said the settlement amount is more than the 14,000 dollars that Infowars made from sales of the poster.</p>
<p>He said his client plans to donate the extra 1,000 dollars to Save the Frogs!, a California-based conservation organisation.</p>
<p>Mr Tompros said: <em>“This was more than we would have gotten at trial, and it saves the expense of a trial.”</em></p>
<p>An article posted on Infowars’ website called the settlement a “strategic victory” for Mr Jones.</p>
<p>One of his attorneys, Marc Randazza, said Mr Furie’s lawyers had sought more than one million dollars from Mr Jones, but ultimately settled for a fraction of that after a costly legal fight.</p>
<p><em>“That ought to be a message to anyone who wants to file a politically motivated, anti-free speech lawsuit against him (Mr Jones),”</em> Mr Randazza said.</p>
<p>The settlement agreement comes less than a month after a judge’s ruling drastically limited the amount of money that Mr Furie could recover from Infowars.</p>
<p>US district judge Michael Fitzgerald decided that Mr Furie was precluded from seeking statutory damages and attorneys’ fees.</p>
<p>That ruled out the possibility of a six- or seven-figure judgment.</p>
<p>Mr Tompros said plaintiffs’ lawyers expected to ask a jury to award roughly 14,000 dollars, which represents Infowars’ profits from its sale of the poster.</p>
<p>The judge also refused to throw out the case last month.</p>
<p>Infowars’ lawyers argued the poster’s depiction of Pepe was “fair use”, but judge Fitzgerald ruled a jury must decide that question.</p>
<p>A jury trial for Mr Furie’s lawsuit was scheduled to begin July 16 in Los Angeles.</p>
<p>The settlement agreement calls for Infowars to destroy any copies of the poster in its possession and bars the site from selling any more copies.</p>
<p>Infowars also agreed not to sell anything else with Pepe’s likeness without a licence to do so.</p>
<p>Infowars lawyer Robert Barnes said the settlement has no confidentiality clause because Mr Jones “wanted to tell the world” how little he is paying.</p>
<p><em>“This is an amount we would have been willing to pay from the very beginning,”</em> Mr Barnes added.</p>
<p>Mr Furie’s “chill frog-dude” character made its debut in a 2006 comic book called Boy’s Club, and became a popular canvas for benevolent internet memes.</p>
<p>However, internet user-generated mutations grew increasingly hateful and ubiquitous more than a year before the 2016 presidential election, when Mr Furie’s creation become an online mascot for white nationalists, neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists.</p>
<p>The Anti-Defamation League branded Pepe as a hate symbol in September 2016 and promoted Mr Furie’s efforts to reclaim the character.</p>
<p>Last year, Mr Furie resolved a separate copyright infringement lawsuit that accused a Missouri woman of misusing the character to sell hate-promoting oil paintings.</p>
<p>Mr Tompros said he hopes the settlement agreement deters others from misappropriating Mr Furie’s creation.</p>
<p><em>“If anyone thinks they’re going to make money off Pepe, they’re wrong,”</em> he said.</p>
<p>Mr Jones livestreams his show on Infowars’ website, but he has lost access to other platforms. Twitter and Facebook have permanently banned him.</p>
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