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.

Comments

Re:For the two people who don't already know

[mcgrew]

Did I miss a memo? When did charitable giving become a bad thing?

Charitable giving has always been a bad thing to the people who worship money. Unfortunately, that seems to be most Americans (don't know about the rest of the world).