Jukin Media found Pizza Rat at about 3:30 p.m. on Sept. 21, about an hour and a half after the video appeared online. Jukin Media has a couple of different branches of its business, but is best known for quickly buying the rights to potentially viral videos and then licensing them out for a fee. Jukin`s deals vary from creator to creator: Sometimes they`re paying a few hundred bucks to buy a video outright, and sometimes it negotiates revenue splits - Little has indicated his deal falls into the latter category.
Once the deal is made, whatever that deal is, Jukin`s employees find ways to monetize that content - and to protect it with DMCA takedown notices thrown at anyone who might have uploaded the video to YouTube on their own, without permission. (If you`re interested, DigiDay has a good read on Jukin and its business model).
As Pizza Rat demonstrated, Jukin`s copyright claims are very thorough.
Although The Washington Post has a licensed video of Pizza Rat, a gif we used to illustrate a story on the subject has since disappeared.
These deals protect the interests of people like Little, who accidentally stumbled onto something - in his case, a pizza-loving rat - that has substantial viral currency.
"The video has obviously struck a chord and kind of taken on a life of its own," Mike Skogmo, a spokesman for Jukin, told WIRED in an interview last month. "But at the same time, that doesn`t change the fact that there`s an owner who`s entitled to benefit from the video, and control the fate of the video somehow."
Why your Pizza Rat gifs are disappearing off social media
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The YouTube version of the short clip - it`s 14 seconds - now has more than 7 million views. And at the bottom of Little`s description on that video is a reminder that no matter how many Halloween costumes or gifs the determined rat may inspire.
