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FunnyJunk v. the Oatmeal: Copyright Infringement Complaints As Defamation
An anonymous reader writes "Funny as it might sound, FunnyJunk's threat of litigation against The Oatmeal raises a very important issue: the extent to which artists can complain in public about perceived or actual infringement of their works by user-generated content websites. Does it matter if the content creator accused the website of condoning or participating in the infringement?" The short story is this: Numerous Oatmeal comics were posted without permission to FunnyJunk; Oatmeal creator Matthew Inman lambasted FunnyJunk in the form of a blog post. FunnyJunk responded with a suit (or rather the threat of a suit) accusing Inman of willful defamation, unless he ponies up $20,000, which he doesn't plan to do.
I've never been to Funnyjunk before, but after this blew up, I decided I'd test out their claim about how easy it was to take down infringing images.
Naturally, these sites make it wicked easy to upload any image, taking down an obvious one would be just as simple, no? Well, in 5 minutes I found a Cyanide & Happiness comic (explosm.net). I hit the flag button and found "copyright infringement" very simple to find. "Great!" I thought, "So simple to fix this problem." Nope, that takes me to a DMCA page where I have to type in a real name, e-mail address, phone number and supporting information.
Wow.
If it's so easy to upload an image, shouldn't there be a responsibility to make it just as easy to take one down? Of course, there would be a manual review process and some countermeasures to prevent someone from flagging the whole site (which may be mostly original content, that's a separate discussion), but it should be a whole lot easier.
IANAL or anything; but one would think that hasty, trivially-verifiable, scrubbing of that offending content that you oh-so-just-couldn't-keep-up-with-the-burden-of-policing-it-was-all-the-users'-fault right up until you send a '20k or a lawsuit' letter worded in outright extortionate tones seems like a bad strategy.
Given the DMCA safe-harbor provisions(much as team MPAA loaths them), it is entirely possible that the offending links did not subject funnyjunk to liability(since Oatmeal apparently didn't feel like playing DMCA whack-a-mole, so they hadn't necessarily received a takedown notice); but axing them after issuing a legal threat alleging that assertions of copyright infringement were defamatory sure smells like destruction of evidence... And courts tend to take a very dim view of destruction of evidence...
IANAL, but as far as I recall the DMCA safe harbour only applies if you're not aware of the infringing content. Since Funnyjunk couldn't plausibly claim not to be aware of it once they'd sent a letter threatening to sue for libel over The Oatmeal's discussion of it, they basically had to take it down.
I strongly suspect that the Admin of Funnyjunk would know that he'd get a harsh reaction from fans of the oatmeal. I haven't been on funnyjunk in about 6 years but I visited out of curiosity and now I'm wondering how many people will be doing the same. How many more hits has FJ got because of this?
The admin must have known that the oatmeal would never give into blackmail.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
A Dallas photographer found his photo illegally being used on a bunch of websites. He filed the thousand-or-so DMCA notices to ask the photo be removed. Virtually all the websites complied except for ONE owned by Candice Schwanger, who is now suing the photographer.
Why do people like Candice/Funnyjoke think they have the right to sue people they are copying from? It's hilarious. I have the judge pounds these people into the dirt, punishes them of 50,000 dollars, and hands it to the Victim whose photos/comics were infringed upon.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
What the hell is wrong with Slashdot? "People should keep the money, not give to charity!"
Did I miss a memo? When did charitable giving become a bad thing?
Check out my world simulator thingy.
Well, "poorly managed" is an unproven claim. Some are, it is true, but those that I have dealt with have less overhead than most businesses. Take women's health care: The Susan J. Komen turned out to be a vanity charity, but Planned Parenthood actually delivers a surprisingly efficient operation with much less going into bureaucratic and fundraising efforts.
So relax, just consider it giving Matt the money to blow on bears and cancer cures. You're just giving it to him to do with as he pleases, and it pleases him to give it to a couple of charities.
It's an interesting claim.
If we swap out FunnyJunk and Oatmeal for YouTube and RIAA, most of the details stay the same.
Could YouTube sue the RIAA for saying that YouTube encourages piracy?
At what point is a site operator responsible for the content their users upload?
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
"Cyanide"|"Happiness Cyanide" returns results with Cyanide and Happiness. "Cyanide and happiness"|"Cyanide happiness" returns nothing.
"Calvin" returns results with Calvin and Hobbes. Anything with "hobbes" in the search returns nothing.
"Side far"|"Far" returns Far Side Comics. |"Far side"|"Farside" returns nothing.
They are lazy.
"How middle/upper class white men convince themselves that doing anything for other people is morally wrong."
Atlas Shrugged also provides an excuse as to why they're not more successful; because those terrible statist parasites are dragging them down, not their own incompetence.
If we swap out FunnyJunk and Oatmeal for YouTube and RIAA, most of the details stay the same.
Remind me again when it was that The Oatmeal, even once, instigated legal action over media it did not actually hold copyright to.
Remind me again when it was that The Oatmeal, even once, demanded ruinous damages (eg. > US$10,000) against private individuals it accused of infringement.
Remind me again when it was that The Oatmeal alleged infringement in cases which were clearly protected fair use.
Remind me again when it was that The Oatmeal, even once, threatened to instigate legal action against anyone, ever.
The Susan J. Komen turned out to be a vanity charity, but Planned Parenthood actually delivers a surprisingly efficient operation
Aaaand here is evidence of someone who lets their political view color every aspect of their lives. The only reason you like Planned Parenthood and not Susan J Komen is because you chose the side that matches your political view when the two got in a fight. In reality, Susan J Komen does fine, and Planned Parenthood does well also.
The sad thing is, if you were Republican, you would have written the exact same comment, but switched the names of the two charities.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."