FunnyJunk Sues the Oatmeal Over TM and "Incitement To Cyber-Vandalism"

eldavojohn writes "You may recall from last week the news item concerning FunnyJunk's extortion ... er ... threat of defamation lawsuit against The Oatmeal highlighting a fairly pervasive problem of rehosting content — in this case web comics. Instead of expediting a payment of $20,000 to FunnyJunk, Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal decided to crowd source the money (with 8 days left he has only garnered 900% of his goal) and donate it to charity after sending a picture of it to FunnyJunk. Charles Carreon (the man who has FunnyJunk) has made statements of Inman saying 'I really did not expect that he would marshal an army of people who would besiege my website and send me a string of obscene emails.' In an interview Carreon says 'So someone takes one of my letters and takes it apart. That doesn't mean you can just declare netwar, that doesn't mean you can encourage people to hack my website, to brute force my WordPress installation so I have to change my password. You can't encourage people to violate my trademark and violate my twitter name and associate me with incompetence with stupidity, and douchebaggery. And if that's where the world is going I will fight with every ounce of force in this 5'11 180 pound frame against it. I've got the energy, and I've got the time.' Well it appears that Carreon has filed suit over these matters alleging 'trademark infringement and incitement to cyber-vandalism.' Speaking of douchebaggery, Charles Carreon curiously fails to mention that he first incited all of his users to harass The Oatmeal anyway they can which they dutifully did. One last juicy detail is that Carreon is also suing the National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society to which Inman's crowd sourced money is going. Luckily, Inman's lawyer appears to be fully competent and able to address Carreon's complaints."

Comments

Obligatory

[suso]

"Carreon is also suing the National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society"

That can't be good for business

Re:Obligatory

[telekon]

Neither can being an "Internet lawyer" with absolutely no understanding of the Streisand Effect.

Re:Obligatory

[Mitchell314]

Yeah, at this point it's just a publicity stunt. The cynic in me doesn't believe Carreon is dumb; look at all the extra attention and internet traffic this little affair has started.

Re:Obligatory

[durrr]

He's a run of the mill moron that have an overinflated ego and sense of competence. The Dunning-Kruger effect in play more or less.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a run of the mill moron that have an overinflated ego and sense of competence. The Dunning-Kruger effect in play more or less.

I was thinking more along the lines of the Peter Principle.

(Get it? Peter, FunkyJunk? Oh, never mind...)

Re:Obligatory

[BenJury]

And if that's where the world is going I will fight with every ounce of force in this 5'11 180 pound frame against it.

It maybe anecdotal, but I've often found the people who feel the need to mention this sort of metric in an argument like this are actually pretty dumb.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

or even common law. oatmeal's work is easily verifiable

Re:Obligatory

[gl4ss]

yeah, if it was something like 12 feet and 500 pounds.. now that would be impressive.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming even scaling - a human that, at approximately 6 feet tall weighed 180 pounds would not be 500 pounds. He would be 1,440 pounds (again approximately). Don't forget that the size (and hence the mass / weight) doubles in each of the three dimensions (what we could call height, width, and thickness). This is why we have the cube square law that shows how that impressive 12 foot, 1,440 pound human would be unable to walk.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

12 feet and 500 pounds

That would indeed be "funny junk".

Re:Obligatory

[Saint Fnordius]

Well, from what we know of this guy, it seems he really is the internet version of an ambulance chaser. He got a lucky break in the sex.com brouhaha, and now like a gambler that won a lottery jackpot he's scratching every card he can buy, desperate for the next big win. After all, look at this line from the Comic Riffs blog report:

Carreon tells Comic Riffs one of his goals is to become the go-to attorney for people who feel they have been cyber-vandalized or similarly wronged on the Internet.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/comic-riffs/post/funnyjunk-lawyer-suing-the-oatmeal-cartoonist-inman-over-indiegogo-charity-drive/2012/06/18/gJQAbZhDlV_blog.html

We can only hope that his hubris will soon make him the disgraced pariah that he needs to be.

Re:Obligatory

[MitchDev]

This guy is just asking for the beatings now...

Re:Obligatory

[mjwx]

Yeah, at this point it's just a publicity stunt. The cynic in me doesn't believe Carreon is dumb; look at all the extra attention and internet traffic this little affair has started.

Which is why you need a loser pays system. Right now he can hire 1 shmuck lawyer for $100 and tie up (potentially) good companies in the defence of a frivolous suit who have to pay $500 p/h lawyers to debunk the 1 shmuck. Under a loser pays system, FunnyJunk would be liable for the court costs of the people he sues if he didn't have a water tight case (Read: Just doing this for publicity).

Personally I've never heard of FunnyJunk before a few days ago, but I've just added it to the blacklist of my routers DNS relay, just in case I accidentally visit it.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Carreon is filing "attorney pro se", that is, he's filing as an attorney on behalf of himself. He didn't hire "one schmuck lawyer" as he already is one. (Lawyer. Schmuck-ness to be determined.)

Re:Obligatory

[telekon]

While the Dunning-Kruger effect may be thought of as related to the Peter Principle, I think Dunning-Kruger is more apt in describing this case.

While the Peter Principle is the observation that in hierarchical organizations, individuals tend to be promoted to the level of their own incompetence, Dunning-Kruger relates more broadly to the pattern that the less competent one is, the more likely one is to over-assess one's own level of knowledge or skill.

Sounds like Carreon to me.

Not that I would ever nitpick on /.

Re:Obligatory

[TheSpoom]

The best part is that according to TFA, Carreon (fitting name) is representing himself.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

http://willusingtheprefixcybermakemelooklikeanidiot.com/

Re:Obligatory

[TheSpoom]

Never mind, misread that bit, Carreon is the lawyer.

Re:Obligatory

[Vintermann]

Probably, he lives by the idea that all publicity is good publicity. Hey, it worked for SA founder Richard Kyanka, no? Clearly, Commander Taco's unwillingness to engage in such antics are responsible for slashdot's decline in importance.

Re:Obligatory

[NevarMore]

So in a loser pays system, what happens if you're on the wrong end of a lawsuit from one of those $500/hr lawyer teams and you can only pony up for a $150/hour lawyer and you lose?

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

The NWF did no such thing. The Oatmeal started a campaign on their own to donate to the NWF without explicitly getting their endorsement.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

The Dunning-Kruger effect in play more or less.

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." -- Bertrand Russell

Re:Obligatory

[Medievalist]

...a human that, at approximately 6 feet tall weighed 180 pounds would not be 500 pounds. He would be 1,440 pounds (again approximately). Don't forget that the size (and hence the mass / weight) doubles in each of the three dimensions (what we could call height, width, and thickness). This is why we have the cube square law that shows how that impressive 12 foot, 1,440 pound human would be unable to walk.

Unless such a human were made of delicious lemon meringue! There, I've run rings around you logically. And now the penguin on top of your television set will explode.

You have to admit this post makes at least as much a sense as Funnyjunk's lawyer's claims.

Re:Obligatory

[jythie]

Yeah, looking at the guy's interview he really comes across as not being all that in-touch with the internet. He might know the letter of the law but he is really out of his depth putting any of it into context and seems to lack even basic mechanical knowledge of what he is dealing with.

Which kinda makes sense, from what I gather he usually represents 'businessmen' who are trying to get IP, so outsiders trying to push their way in to a community that is rubbed the wrong way by them... I doubt he has actually done any cases between knowledgeable parties.

Re:Obligatory

[MacGyver2210]

As your client should know, the internet does not like censorship, and does not react kindly to it. Bringing a lawsuit against The Oatmeal is ill advised. Not only are FunnyJunk's claims meritless, FunnyJunk will surely lose in the court of public opinion and cause itself reputational harm. We are also deeply skeptical that a nameless, faceless, business that hosts third party content will be able to demonstrate much if anything by way of damages as a result of The
Oatmeal’s allegedly defamatory statements. At the end of the day, a lawsuit against The Oatmeal in this situation is just a really bad idea.

I actually like this lawyer. Now there's a sentence I thought I'd never write.

Re:Obligatory

[mjwx]

So in a loser pays system, what happens if you're on the wrong end of a lawsuit from one of those $500/hr lawyer teams and you can only pony up for a $150/hour lawyer and you lose?

Here is where lawyers do something called "no-win, no-fee". If you've got a semi-decent defence (remember that the plaintiff has the burden of proof, they must prove what they say you did, you need only provide enough evidence to cast that into doubt) a high priced lawyer may choose to take on your case on a no-win, no-fee basis as he's got a good chance of winning his high price off the plaintiff. A lot of firms do no-win no fee in Australia.

No-win, no-fee can be used in the reverse (by a plaintiff of "claimant") but 1. they need rock solid evidence and 2. I'm assuming in your example that the lawsuit is a sham and the defender is innocent.

Loser pays is not perfect and by far not impossible to game but it's a hell of a lot better then the alternatives. It's been working in Australia and other nations for over 20 years now, if it were that easy to game someone would have done it by now. Instead people who launch frivolous suits like the MPIAA/RIAA are afraid to do so in Australia as they would be responsible for the costs, they tried suing one ISP and are currently trying to get the amount they have to pay for the defendants lawyers reduced.

Lets try this scenario again except changing the "loser pays" system to the "American rule" where each side is responsible for their own fees.

what happens if you're on the wrong end of a lawsuit from one of those $500/hr lawyer teams and you can only pony up for a $150/hour lawyer and you lose?

So what happens here, you can only afford a cheap lawyer regardless of your chances of winning?

Not only have your chances not decreased because they can afford better lawyers and are at no risk from losing, your chances of being sued frivolously have increased because they will never be punished for it.

Re:Obligatory

[twmcneil]

He's a little over-weight if you ask me. Maybe he should go to the gym instead of imitating Barbara Streisand.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

No you were right the first time. He is sueing for himself (pro se) and his client.

This will be a shit storm.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

So in a loser pays system, what happens if you're on the wrong end of a lawsuit from one of those $500/hr lawyer teams and you can only pony up for a $150/hour lawyer and you lose?

Reality isn't necessarily that black and white, unless it's the corporatists who write the law. Under a reasonable system, the court could e.g adjust the bill so the loser only pay a reasonable part of the sum. After all the nominal purpose of the system is "justice", not being a mean for those well off to ruin those who can't match their spending.

Re:Obligatory

[Belial6]

Yep. That is why we need an equal pay system. Each side pays the other side's lawyer an equal amount to what they pay their own. That way if Super-Mega-Corp want's to bring in $500/hour lawyers to crush Working-Two-Jobs-To-Make-Ends-Meet-Joe, Joe will have just as good of representation as Super-Mega-Corp.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you meant this in some sort of wry sense, I'll just assume you missed Cmdr Taco's exit from Slashdot several months back.

The recent "Slashdot is dying" meme seems to have a modicum of validity. Have you looked around lately? Seems like the level of participation has really dropped off.

Re:Obligatory

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

No, but it's GREAT for taking a substantial lead in this year's "Jack Thompson's Legal Career" Memorial Award for Bad Legal Interaction with an Website, Online Forum, or Service Provider.

Re:Obligatory

[residieu]

You'd think his first goal would be to get a couple of successes under his wing. Be able to point to a case that he won for his client, "see, I can make you big bugs, just like these guys." Then it doesn't matter how many cases he loses, he'll still have that one case to show people.

Re:Obligatory

[Soupster]

This was my initial reaction too when this drama first started, but after a few minutes I realized, wouldn't a good lawyer be able to turn this internet backlash into some kind of sobstory about victimization for a dumb jury? There is a realistic possibility that Carrean will make Inman bleed badly, maybe enough to bankrupt him, and that scares the crap out of me. What do the lawyers of Slashdot say? Does he have a good case?

Re:Obligatory

[gl4ss]

Assuming even scaling - a human that, at approximately 6 feet tall weighed 180 pounds would not be 500 pounds. He would be 1,440 pounds (again approximately). Don't forget that the size (and hence the mass / weight) doubles in each of the three dimensions (what we could call height, width, and thickness). This is why we have the cube square law that shows how that impressive 12 foot, 1,440 pound human would be unable to walk.

who said human? obviously he's a massive boa constrictor packed full of shit.

Re:Obligatory

[MisterSquid]

As William Butler Yeats puts it in his apocalyptic vision of "The Second Coming"

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Re:Obligatory

[__aawmso8327]

Yep. That is why we need an equal pay system. Each side pays the other side's lawyer an equal amount to what they pay their own. That way if Super-Mega-Corp want's to bring in $500/hour lawyers to crush Working-Two-Jobs-To-Make-Ends-Meet-Joe, Joe will have just as good of representation as Super-Mega-Corp.

Actual outcome: $500/hour lawyers get "paid layman rates," while their uncles/children/foreign bank accounts collect the remainder. See college athletes.

Re:Obligatory

[jjp9999]

My thoughts exactly. It will be classic when the judge declares the claims of douchbaggery are accurate.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

As wonderful as such a world would be, that implies the courts would become more fair.

Can't see that happening... big business has too much riding on the ability to just throw more lawyers at problems to allow a rule like this to ever become real.

Re:Obligatory

[Reverand Dave]

That is when you settle, regardless of whether you are right or wrong.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

"Carreon is also suing the National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society"

That can't be good for business

I think it is in fact great for business. In the past week a crappy website, that I had previously never heard of, has been the center of attention(good bad) and has been reported on bay many news outlets.

I 100% guarantee that StupidJunk's click rate has skyrocketed for the past week. Their June ad earnings will likely be higher than the total of the previous two quarters. Sure, it's only cheap short term bump, but they won;t lose regular users to this and the traffic spike could possibly be used to motivate a buyer.

Re:Obligatory

[IICV]

Or, we could all pay for legal representation via taxes and have randomly-assigned public lawyers on both sides of all cases. Legal consultation would of course be free, but there would have to be some sort of scaling court fees based on how many lawsuits you've filed in the last 12 months - say $1000 for the first one, which may be voided if you bring the details to the (free!) legal consultation and they help you file the lawsuit (which, of course, they will only do if it isn't frivolous). After that it would have to increase on an exponential scale, again with discounts if you can show you aren't spamming lawsuits.

Re:Obligatory

[alexo]

So in a loser pays system, what happens if you're on the wrong end of a lawsuit from one of those $500/hr lawyer teams and you can only pony up for a $150/hour lawyer and you lose?

The judge decides the amount you're liable for according to the individual circumstances of the case and the parties involved.

Re:Obligatory

[t4ng*]

run of the mill moron that have an overinflated ego

What struck me was his bizarre inclusion of his height and weight in his diatribe. Sounds to me like he is a narcissist!

Re:Obligatory

[idontgno]

"A lawyer who represents himself in court has an idiot for a lawyer and a fool for a client."

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually like this lawyer. Now there's a sentence I thought I'd never write.

It's only 5 nines of lawyers that give the rest of them a bad name.
(updated from the old joke estimate of 99%, due to increases in lawyer population and higher precision testing)

Re:Obligatory

[idontgno]

Well, first he has to find a fool foolish enough to trust him to represent him in that first case. I think the only one fool enough to do that is himself.

Apparently, even a world that believes in the Flat Earth and the birther controversy and flatly refuses to consider AGW, is too smart to fall for his vision of internet-slander-lawsuit riches.

Re:Obligatory

[jeff4747]

"Loser pays" has a lot of issues. For example, not all lawsuits are frivolous. Sometimes there is a genuine dispute on the law.

A better system is to let the judge award attorney's fees to the defendant when they dismiss a case with prejudice.

From what I'm told, in the current system you have to continue the suit to win attorney's fees even when the original case has been tossed for lack of merit. Meaning the defendant has to continue the suit and rack up more fees in the hopes that eventually the plaintiff will pay.

That way there's a human in the loop instead of an automatic "loser pays".

Re:Obligatory

[girlintraining]

Not that I would ever nitpick on /.

I view this as a thinly-veiled attempt to make slanderous and libelous comments towards me, president and CEO of Long Slashdot Posts Inc. By implying that people who have elevated themselves to high positions have merely risen to their own level of incompetence, and then stating that I overestimate my own abilities, you CLEARLY and WITH MALICE have decided to slander myself, a proud and noble member of self-important citizentry.

I demand 250,000 shillings ØÙÙ (Somali currency) per infraction, payable immediately!*

Re:Obligatory

[bartjan]

That is not metric, they are imperial values...

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Canada does not have an automatic loser pays system. The winning side can ask the judge that the loser pay their lawyers fees. The judge may or may not agree. The judge may decide that the issue before the court was a legitimate question that needed to be decided and so each side must pay its own costs. The judge may agree that the loser should pay reasonable costs, and the judge gets to decide what’s reasonable, which may not be anywhere near what the winner actually paid his lawyer. In lots of routine matters, e.g. an uncontested mortgage foreclosure, the maximum costs the loser must pay are predetermined.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

If you've got a semi-decent defence (remember that the plaintiff has the burden of proof, they must prove what they say you did, you need only provide enough evidence to cast that into doubt

That's only true in criminal cases. A civil judgement can be made against someone on a MUCH lower standard.

Re:Obligatory

[Belial6]

Why would the $500/hour lawyer get "paid layman rates"? And, if the other parties money is being siphoned off they are not going to be getting the best representation, if any, so you don't need a $500 lawyer on your side.

Re:Obligatory

[Rich0]

That's because you didn't see the bill for what that clever letter cost to write. :)

(For all I know it was pro bono. That's the problem with lawyers - they do a good service, but the service they do should not even be necessary most of the time.)

Re:Obligatory

[Belial6]

That would be another alternative. I would say that the solution to the scaling fee isn't to have the legal consultant decide if they will wave the fee. It would be to have the fee rise (points against your fees) when you lose cases. So, each case you lose, the cost goes up for the next one. This would prevent spamming the legal system, while not harming those that are most targeted. I would also stipulate that subsequent lawsuits against the same defendant count as points against your fees whether you win or lose. And that dropped cases count as points as well.

Re:Obligatory

[Rich0]

I've always wanted to see something similar to this. My vision would be a system where the amount at issue is agreed-upon up-front (or decided as a matter of law). Then based on that amount at issue the court looks at a table and assigns the legal costs available to each party. Both sides bring their choice of attorneys who are not paid a dime by the parties. THE COURT pays them up-front to litigate the case. Once the case is settled THE COURT pays the winner any judgments and compensation for their wasted time. The loser then owes a debt to the government for all of the costs.

In one stroke you control legal costs, eliminate vexatious lawsuits, and get rid of debt collection. The winner gets a check from the treasury and need not be hassled with collections, and the loser is treated like any deadbeat taxpayer if they don't pay up (sheriff sale their house, or whatever).

Lawyers would be viewed as officers of the court (go figure) whose job is to help make clear who is in the right and who is in the wrong.

Re:Obligatory

[Khyber]

Yeats wasn't all that good. My passionate intensity is what put me ahead of the game in horticulture, from zero-light food production to accelerated growth using sea salt and LED.

Those lacking conviction just laughed. Now who's laughing at $13K daily income, plus whatever bonuses and hourly wages I make working part-time at a porno shop?

Suckers.

Re:Obligatory

[Khyber]

What's funnier is his 180 lbs organic frame couldn't stand a chance against my 140 lbs titanium and kevlar reinforced frame. If he wanted a fight, I'd give it to him and he'd regret it. I'd put my foot so far up his ass the water on my knee would quench his thirst.

Re:Obligatory

[Khyber]

The attention has forced him to (futilely) remove all his contact info from his website and other associated accounts online.

Not good for business when nobody can find your contact info.

Re:Obligatory

[Khyber]

"Don't forget that the size (and hence the mass / weight) doubles in each of the three dimensions"

Except you forget muscle weighs more than fat, and 5'11" at 180 lbs is rather fat (I doubt a lawyer has any real muscle, hence why they're a lawyer.)

Assuming fat, more like 700 pounds at 12 feet. Muscle might get you your figure.

Re:Obligatory

[Khyber]

No, funny junk is what one of the actors in the American Dad XXX Parody Porno has. That shit bends nearly 90 degrees about 3 inches from the glans!

Re:Obligatory

[Khyber]

No-Win, No-Fee is almost universally used in personal injury lawsuits across the globe, and not much else.

Speaking from relevant business experience across UK, AUS, NZ, Morocco, China, etc.

Re:Obligatory

[Khyber]

"The loser then owes a debt to the government for all of the costs."

And in one stroke you'll reinstitute debtor's prisons. We all know how well those work out and why we barred them in the first place in the USA.

Did you think your cunning plan through thoroughly? Doesn't appear so from here.

Re:Obligatory

[Khyber]

We seriously need to create a trophy for this, to send to idiot lawyers.

Re:Obligatory

[GofG]

he already has. he litigated sex.com (whatever the fuck that means) got his client millions

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither can being an "Internet lawyer" with absolutely no understanding of the Streisand Effect.

Are you high? How the hell is this like the Streisand Effect? If anything, this is the opposite of the Streissand Effect

The Streisand Effect is when you counterproductively call attention to the thing you're trying to prevent people from seeing.

In this case, Lawyer Douchebag demanded that the "defamatory" content be removed from The Oatmeal. As a result of calling attention to it, millions more people will see it than otherwise would have. Classic Streisand Effect.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

This assumes you have a judge who competently does his job.
Both of those, in the entire country, would be overrun with cases if this sort of system were set up.

No, the problem is that when you start exacting penalties on the losing plaintiff, you need to inflict penalties on judges who pass bad judgement. Good luck getting that ball rolling.

Re:Obligatory

[eril]

Oops - I didn't realize the parent post was talking about the guy's lawyer. Perhaps I should've read it more carefully... but I was just in a mood, and wanted to flame somebody, and maybe call them a fucktard - so my work is done.

Re:Obligatory

[Translation Error]

But... but what about NewYorkCountryLawyer?

Re:Obligatory

[amoeba1911]

Lawyers are especially good at finding loopholes to abuse. You pass a law saying megacorp has to pay joe's lawyer expenses to match their own lawyer expenses, it wouldn't take long until megacorp finds a way to funnel huge amount of cash to their own lawyers through some special undisclosed ways. Megacorp then would hire a team of dozen lawyers for the bargain price of about $20/hour while you get screwed because you can't afford even a single lawyer on that price.

The legal and tax codes are chuck-full of stupid laws like this that are almost designed to be abused. In the end it will not solve anything, just make a bigger mess.

Re:Obligatory

[durrr]

Give me half a days income or I won't belive you.

Also why work at a porno shop with that income?

Re:Obligatory

[Khyber]

"why work at a porno shop with that income?"

Because R&D is fucking expensive, especially when you're doing it yourself and have investors to pay.

"Give me half a days income or I won't belive you."

Nice entitlement complex you have. Given your poor spelling, no wonder.

Re:Obligatory

[Belial6]

At worst, you would be no more screwed than you are now. At best, Megacorp wouldn't want to risk that every single one of their wins get invalidated due to misconduct AND having to pay out to every single person that they have been in a legal dispute with for the correct price.

The lawyers are going to have to claim more than $20 an hour, or they will quickly be uncovered for lying to the court. They might be able to hide some of the funds, but that would still put us all in far better shape than we are now.

Re:Obligatory

[UnknownSoldier]

> Not good for business when nobody can find your contact info.

Seems to work for Google though ...

Re:Obligatory

[JTsyo]

It wouldn't be a jury trial.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that good a lawyer. I reckon that's pretty much what FunnyJunk would need in order to get a temporary injunction against The Oatmeal - it's not like his lawyer can really deny that refusing to grant one would cause irreparable harm to the plaintiff after writing that statement.

Re:Obligatory

[Jeng]

If you owe a debt to the government they don't arrest you for it, they take it out of your paycheck.

Why did you think he was talking about debtor prisons? I really don't see anything in his post that insinuates a debtor prisons type situation.

Re:Obligatory

[Goobermunch]

Obviously written by someone who has no experience with the legal system.

Look, the fact of the matter is that litigation necessarily involves disputed facts. I say you violated your non-compete, you say you didn't. You say I appropriated your trade secrets, I say I discovered them independently. That's why we have juries, to help establish an "official" set of facts.

The reality is that the best cases settle out of court before trial. Hell, in the U.S. over 97% of cases resolve prior to trial. That's because if it's a slam dunk case on liability and damages, the defendant (or his insurer) will pay to end the lawsuit. On the other hand, if the case is obviously frivolous, the plaintiff or his lawyer will dismiss the case as that becomes clear. Plaintiff's lawyers don't generally enjoy spending hours and hours of time that could be put to productive uses working on B.S. cases. We'd really prefer to take cases that have a chance of turning into revenue.

This means that the cases that are most likely going to go to trial are the rare close ones. These are generally cases where there is evidence on both sides, and no clear, slam dunk winner. In other words, these are the cases that most need a jury's input so that the parties can at least resolve their disputes and move forward.

A loser pays system does nothing to eliminate frivolous claims or defenses. It just further punishes a person who had an intractable dispute and was wrong about who the facts favor.

--AC

Re:Obligatory

[operagost]

Lawyers go to the gym just like anyone else.

Re:Obligatory

[Goobermunch]

Actually, in the United States, barring a contract or statute to the contrary, the rule is that each party pays its own attorney fees.

In many jurisdictions, there are statutes that permit the judge to award fees if the case is groundless, frivolous, or vexatious. A few states have statutes that permit an award of fees if the defense is groundless, frivolous, or vexatious (but nobody ever thinks about that side of the equation).

If the original case is "tossed," then judgment enters for the defendant, and the case is over (unless there are counterclaims, or only some of the plaintiff's claims were tossed). A court cannot continue to hear a case that has been fully resolved (where there are no remaining claims between the parties), because there is no longer a case or controversy before it. I am not aware of any system in which the defendant must continue incurring fees in the hopes of making a losing plaintiff pay them. That's a catastrophically stupid way to run a legal system.

--AC

Re:Obligatory

[jeff4747]

If the original case is "tossed," then judgment enters for the defendant, and the case is over. A court cannot continue to hear a case that has been fully resolved, because there is no longer a case or controversy before it.

Right. I'm advocating a change whereby the judge can award attorneys fees as he "tosses" the case. That way the trial does not have to continue in order for the defendant to win attorney's fees, thus racking up attorney's fees.

Just have the judge say "You are a moron. You have to pay that guy's bill" and move on to the next case.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

(remember that the plaintiff has the burden of proof, they must prove what they say you did, you need only provide enough evidence to cast that into doubt)

IANAL, but I think that YANAL, too, because you seem to be confusing civil and criminal trials. In civil trials (which are ones where "the people" or the "the state" is not the plaintiff) the standard of proof is "preponderance of evidence." That means that if you and I have equally credible accounts of what happened, but mine is just delta more credible than yours, then I win. There is no "tie goes to the defendant" and there is no "reasonable doubt" (that's reserved for criminal trials, where it is assumed that the state has much greater resources to prosecute you than you have to defend yourself).

Keep in mind also that (at least in many jurisdictions in the USA) the plaintiff more-or-less automatically wins if the defendant fails to show up in court. In that case the plaintiff doesn't need to show any evidence or prove anything at all!

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

At least he's safe from cancer and bears now. Those groups won't be letting him join up for a while.

Re:Obligatory

[ZeroSumHappiness]

I dunno. I think Candice Schwager is still ahead.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

NYCL's heart was in the right place, but he was wrong a lot...

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

That's inconsistent, assuming a normal wage you'd earn at most $200 a day from working at a porno shop as opposed to you $13k a day from your other income source.

You can't even produce a belivable lie so I'll just flag you down as a retard.

Re:Obligatory

[DMUTPeregrine]

Noooo! My penguin!

Re:Obligatory

[Goobermunch]

But the trial doesn't continue if the judge tosses the case. It just ends. However, if (big if) the case is frivolous, groundless, or vexatious, then the judge can award attorney fees in many U.S. jurisdictions.

No one continues litigating to rack up attorney fees under the existing system.

--AC

Re:Obligatory

[jeff4747]

Ok, I'm just gonna quote myself a dozen times until this sinks in.

I'm advocating a change

I'm advocating a change

I'm advocating a change

I'm advocating a change

I'm advocating a change

I'm advocating a change

I'm advocating a change

I'm advocating a change

I'm advocating a change

I'm advocating a change

Moving on...

However, if (big if) the case is frivolous, groundless, or vexatious, then the judge can award attorney fees in many U.S. jurisdictions.

Only via a trial. That's the problem. The judge can't dismiss the case before a trial and award attorney's fees. He can dismiss the plantiff's case, but then the defendant's counter-claims, including attorney's fees, must be evaluated at trial.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

The recent "Slashdot is dying" meme hasn't been "recent" for at least ten years.

Re:Obligatory

[arose]

There's probably a lot of good lawyers out there, but "Lawyer fairly represents client, achieves reasonable result" is not exactly headline material nor memorable in case we hear about it anyway. Cue huge amounts of selection and confirmation bias.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

It still needs a base and a plaque, but the top is done:

http://nerdapproved.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/huta1.jpg?cb5e28

Re:Obligatory

[Trax3001BBS]

Personally I've never heard of FunnyJunk before a few days ago, but I've just added it to the blacklist of my routers DNS relay, just in case I accidentally visit it.

To my HOSTS file here, I don't need to have anything to do with funkyjunk (intentional). Block an accidental popping into the site
from a link and generate any sort of income, or a notch on a "number of users been here" list for this low life.
Sorry for the name calling, but christ what a loser this guy Charles Carreon is.

Re:Obligatory

[DarwinSurvivor]

"There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity." ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - German dramatist, novelist, poet, & scientist (1749 - 1832)

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

[Bows]

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

"So in a loser pays system, what happens if you're on the wrong end of a lawsuit from one of those $500/hr lawyer teams and you can only pony up for a $150/hour lawyer and you lose?"

I'm not aware of any loser pays system where the loser is required to pay actual costs. They pay reasonable costs. If the plaintiff decided to fork out for an expensive legal team, then they will be out the difference between the actual costs and the reasonable costs.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

His posting history is full of delusional posts. He used to call himself head of a multinational corporation.

Re:Obligatory

[Ginger Unicorn]

Yeah, but does he know the Mayor of Boston, and does he "wwebsite as on the internet"?

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

The Dunning-Kruger effect may, in essence, destroy America's political system. Americans seem to be encouraging more incompetent fanatics to go into government simply because they can talk a good game. These fanatics can "win" debates because the wiser candidate is handicapped by the fact that he/she always tries to make his/her argument make sense. Fanatics have no such restriction, they are free to spew forth clearly illogical and idiotic arguments at will. Fanatical political candidates are trying to invoke a visceral emotion out of the potential voters by appealing to every prejudice without blatantly doing so. So far that strategy is winning and basic reasoning is being thrown out the windows.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Loser pays lesser of the two's court costs solves that.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, I finally reached the point where the comments diverge from the discussion at hand. Seems like it happens more often these days...

Re:Obligatory

[Goobermunch]

It's not a change if it is how things already are.

In every jurisdiction within the U.S., a judge can, upon motion, enter summary judgment for one party or the other. Summary judgment can be entered if there is no genuine issue of material fact, and one party is entitled to win as a matter of law. There is no trial.

In many jurisdictions in the U.S., if the judge concludes that the case is frivolous, groundless, or vexatious, the judge may then enter an award of attorney fees for the winning party, even without a trial. However, if there are counterclaims . . . in other words, if the prevailing party is suing the losing party for other matters, then a trial is necessary, because the losing party may still have a valid defense.

Your proposed system is not a change . . . .

--AC

Re:Obligatory

[Vintermann]

I didn't miss Taco leaving, but the site's decline in relative importance predates that by a lot. And also, it was a joke.

I'm really more sad about Slashdot still not having unicode support, than I am about decreasing traffic numbers.

Re:Obligatory

[Khyber]

"If you owe a debt to the government they don't arrest you for it, they take it out of your paycheck."

I can tell you've never had dealings with the IRS.

Do what I do -

[Anonymous Coward]

Sue early, sue often. Sue pre-emptively.

Re:Do what I do -

[rullywowr]

1. Sue

2. Lather

3. Rinse

4. Repeat

Re:Do what I do -

[Penguinisto]

Sue early, sue often. Sue pre-emptively.

...until you stumble into the Righthaven Effect

Re:Do what I do -

[SmurfButcher Bob]

No, you forget to say "See you at CES , E3 , Pax East .?"

"Charles Carreon (the man who has FunnyJunk)"

[Anonymous Coward]

I see what you did there! Nice.

captcha: excites. Lol.

Re:"Charles Carreon (the man who has FunnyJunk)"

[yincrash]

The summary is incorrect. Carreon is not FunnyJunk, and probably not the owner of FunnyJunk (I couldn't figure out who is). He represented FunnyJunk in the legal threats sent to Inman. There doesn't appear to be any lawsuit against Inman by FunnyJunk, but there is a lawsuit by Carreon, a lawyer, (who is representing himself pro se) against Inman, IndieGoGo, ACS, and NWF.

Associations

[Rei]

You can't encourage people to ... associate me with incompetence with stupidity, and douchebaggery.

No, only you can do that. ;)

Re:Associations

[ancientt]

That doesn't mean you can just declare netwar,

I guess I missed that part... maybe it depends on what you define as 'netwar'

that doesn't mean you can encourage people to hack my website,

Oh, that. Well, I'm pretty sure he didn't do that so I don't see the relevance.

to brute force my WordPress installation so I have to change my password.

Seriously? That's a terrible example of hacking. I might disagree with the term use generally because it ignores the honorable history of the word, but I can accept modern usage. That's not hacking by either definition. Seriously, shouldn't you use a good password anyway?

You can't encourage people to violate my trademark

Has anyone done this? Now that I think of it, actually he could, couldn't he? I don't think it would be illegal to encourage other people to take that action.

and violate my twitter name

Somebody violated your twitter? Shocking! Outrageous! Somewhat humorous!

and associate me with incompetence with stupidity, and douchebaggery.

Well, technically that's freedom of speech. There are some limits on it but I'm pretty sure you can call someone stupid, incompetent and a douchebag. Lets try it: You, Charles Carreon, are a stupid and incompetent douchebag.

Note that I didn't say anything about bravery. I think it takes an amazing level of bravery to set yourself up as the target instead of your client for the rage of a good old fashioned flame war. Bravery and stupidity are not exclusive, in fact, I think they may have a very open relationship. (I do see that there is a tempting reference there to Kodiak romance, but I'm not quite willing to make it.)

Re:Associations

[postbigbang]

This very post, and all of the clicks behind it, are just kerosene to pour on the flames. Carreon isn't a twit, he's getting lots of free stuff from the crowds that go Fight! Fight! Fight! in the lunchrooms of their high schools, where their maturation process stopped.

Bravery? Douchebaggery? This is the Internet, where World==Dog. He's manipulated you, and a jillion others into clicking over truly stupid stuff. His lawyer==PR manager. Just by foisting/hoisting the argument, look at all the ostensible do-gooders he got to be sucker-baited into mess. Add in a little bit of testosterone, and you can almost smell the napalm.

Re:Associations

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you know "violate" and "rape" can be both translated to the same word in Spanish?

As a native Spanish speaker, it's even more humorous when you read "Violate my Twitter name" (Just for fun take "name" out of it).

Re:Associations

[Stormwatch]

The same goes for English, Portuguese, French, and probably a ton of other languages.

Re:Associations

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody violated your twitter? Shocking! Outrageous! Somewhat humorous!

Nah, man. The slut was asking for it. Putting itself all out on the Internet for everyone to see, it was just begging for a good violating.

Re:Associations

[mrball_cb]

You can't encourage people to ... associate me with incompetence with stupidity, and douchebaggery.

No, only you can do that. ;)

The bullies never like it when you hit back and it turns out you can hit back harder. Now his complaint is that they are doing the same thing to him that he asked his followers to do? Yeah, that is gonna suck for him.

Re:Associations

[Theaetetus]

You can't encourage people to violate my trademark

Has anyone done this? Now that I think of it, actually he could, couldn't he? I don't think it would be illegal to encourage other people to take that action.

Actually, that's the only one that would be legitimate*... Intentionally inducing infringement creates liability.

*But there's no evidence that Inman did induce anyone**.
**Plus, he's claiming his name is the trademark, but people using his name are (a) not using it in commerce, and (b) even if they are, it's nominative fair use.

Welcome to the internet

[f3rret]

Where everything always turns into a complete shitstorm.

fun place.

Re:Welcome to the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Stuff like this is actually the reason why I don't run any large public sites. The legality of it all is just crazy and policing the world at large to prevent them from posting illegal material or causing other issues is an impossible task. All this for very little payoff and high risk. It's just not worth it.

Re:Welcome to the internet

[LordLimecat]

Someone should let Zuckerberg know that it isnt worth it. Im sure he will find that fascinating.

Re:Welcome to the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Stuff like this is actually the reason why I don't run any large public sites. The legality of it all is just crazy and policing the world at large to prevent them from posting illegal material or causing other issues is an impossible task. All this for very little payoff and high risk. It's just not worth it.

Yeah. That and lack of any good ideas.

Re:Welcome to the internet

[Skarecrow77]

Amusement value of that statement aside, I don't doubt that his company employs/retains one hell of an expensive legal team, who are no doubt kept quite busy.

for every site like facebook or youtube that "makes it", how many sites are there that go under not because of lack of good ideas, or good management, but because of legal action (be it legit or otherwise)?

To this day I still remember the story of small upstart hardware manufacturer Aureal, who in the late 90s/early 2000s produced the first true competitor to Creative Lab's dominance of the PC sound card market. The hardware was cheaper, the features were more advanced, and the company was a hell of a lot better to deal with. Creative Lab's solution was to sue, sue, and sue some more. Aureal won every single time, but the cost of continiously defending themselves pushed them into bankruptcy, where they were purchased for pennies on the dollar... by Creative Labs.

so yeah, fuck that.

Re:Welcome to the internet

[WankersRevenge]

Right on brother ... I don't even leave my basement anymore. It's all tin foil hats and sturdy pair of depends.

Re:Welcome to the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Wall Street is in the process of doing so...

Re:Welcome to the internet

[LordLimecat]

for every site like facebook or youtube that "makes it", how many sites are there that go under not because of lack of good ideas, or good management, but because of legal action (be it legit or otherwise)?

Welcome to the realities of entrepreneurship. Is this any different than any startup?

Its like that patent joke, where its treated as new and different just because someone added "on the internet" to it. Starting ANY business is hard, and you need a legal team to defend against various kinds of BS. The bigger you are, the bigger your team needs to be.

Re:Welcome to the internet

[gl4ss]

legal action against sites comes only worthwhile after they're successful, so not that many.

and aureal had shitty lawyers and their products weren't that much better to matter, really.

Re:Welcome to the internet

[jittles]

Aureal was a great company. I knew people there, and I had one of their sound cards. Their 3D sound was awesome, I was very impressed with their demos and the games that supported it. I believe that Turtle Beach uses some of their technology to this day.

Re:Welcome to the internet

[JTsyo]

Well their laywers must have sucked since they could have had a counterclaim to get back legal expenses.

Suing the ACS, really?

[JoshuaZ]

I'm not a fan of the American Cancer Society. They are a highly inefficient charity and very little of their money goes to things like research. But, really suing a charity that's at least trying to fight cancer? I thought FunnyJunk was engaging in really poor PR but that's even worse. I can't even begin to think of a legal argument for why they should sue the ACS in this context, and even if they had a marginally plausible argument that didn't immediately invite Rule 11 sanctions ahref=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_11%23Chapter_III_-_Pleadings_and_Motionsrel=url2html-23882http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_11#Chapter_III_-_Pleadings_and_Motions>, any sane lawyer would say that this would just be a bad idea. The lack of awareness here was impressive before but has no crossed over into a whole other level of stupidity and douchebaggery.

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[JoshuaZ]

Ugh, screwed up the link that should be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_11#Chapter_III_-_Pleadings_and_Motions. Sorry about that.

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[Anne_Nonymous]

So you're saying Funky Junk is worse than cancer?

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[crazyjj]

But, really suing a charity that's at least trying to fight cancer?

If he thinks he's under a shitstorm now, he just better hope it never hits the mainstream press.

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[SJHillman]

In other news, cancer has decided that the enemy of its enemy is its friend and has thus teamed up with FunnyJunk. The resulting entity has not yet been named, but FunCancer is currently favored.

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be too quick to judge the ACS. There's already a shitton of money being thrown at research. They do other things with the money as well, like supporting families while their loved one is in treatment, or helping terminally ill people have a chance at a semi-normal last few months of life.

The issue is not as cut-and-dried as "very little of their money goes to things like research".

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[samoanbiscuit]

He also included unnamed "does" in his suit. That means either he's suing Bambi's harem of sexy wives, or he might be trolling the interwebs looking for people making comments about him he can include in the suit.

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cancerjunk was rejected on the grounds that they might face trademark conflicts from Lance Armstrong.

Too Soon?

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[JoshuaZ]

Some of their money does go to things that are arguably worthwhile. But a lot of it isn't even going to things like family support or end of life quality care either. The Relays for example often cost almost as much money to run as they get out of them, so the Relay for Life ends up having no substantial amount of money go anywhere useful http://www.jafsica.com/2010/04/26/life-death-cancer/. This is a big part of why the ACS only gets three stars on financials by Charity Navigator http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=6495. Many other groups dedicated to fighting cancer get better numbers from Charity Navigator, either in the financial category or for overall, or both.

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[bws111]

The Relays for example often cost almost as much money to run as they get out of them

So what? Not everything is measured in dollars. I have several people close to me who have or had cancer, and I can't tell you how much things like Relay For Life mean to them.

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

LumpyJunk

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[JoshuaZ]

Are we really going down the personal anecdote road? Because if so we can. My mother is a cancer survivor. Both my grandmothers died of cancer. My aunt is as we speak recovering from a relapse of stomach cancer. My little brother's nanny has cancer and they just made the decision to only give palliative care because there's not much else they can do. So if we're going down that road, I think I'm allowed to say that just because some people feel good from Relay for Life doesn't mean tat Relay for Life is the best or most efficient way to do so. It is possible to do almost everything Relay for Life does and still actually raise money. In fact, many Relay participants don't realize how little money actually goes to anything other than Relay expenses. Whether that's because they haven't looked into it or have been actively misinformed seems to vary from person to person, but either way, lying by either omission or commission to cancer survivors isn't good behavior.

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[Shatrat]

I suspect it means a lot less than more effective treatment would...should we coin a new term, "Charity Theatre"?

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[KPU]

Apparently the American Cancer Society doesn't want atheist money. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brandon-g-withrow/american-cancer-society-atheist_b_1014403.html .

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[David Gerard]

No, the ACS apparently doesn't need any more money.

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[RivenAleem]

Wait, /. isn't mainstream press?

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[nitehawk214]

Actually Rule 11 is:

11. All your carefully picked arguments can easily be ignored.

Actually this rather applies to the case as well.

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[JWW]

Hits the mainstream press? He was on MSNBC last week.

Oh wait, yeah, just wait until this hits the mainstream press.

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, many Relay participants don't realize how little money actually goes to anything other than Relay expenses.

If we're going down anecdote road, I don't know anybody who was aware the Relay didn't lose money. I was under the impression the money was to recoup some of the costs of the relay.

It's not a fundraising event, it's an advertisement event. If they break even, that's damn impressive. The point is to bring awareness to the cause, and I fully expected them to be paying money to make it happen, just like they pay money for TV ads.

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

My brother died of cancer. No amount of "patient support" or "public awareness" is ever going to mitigate the outrageous heartfuck that is a loved one being stuck down in his prime by a largely-unknown and undiagnoseable disease (he was dead before they ever really knew what kind of cancer it was, apparently there are only a few labs in the US that can do that kind of work). Fuck the ACS: only between 9%-12% of their donations actually go to real cancer science, while huge "administrative expenses" including multi-million-dollar CEO salaries, and million dollar salaries to board members who are already pharmaceutical-company millionaires.

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[D'Sphitz]

One of the "does" may be Walt Disney, you know, for inciting nuclear war...

"It might not have seemed very dehumanizing when Walt Disney made Japanese people look silly with buck teeth and big glasses who could not pronounce their 'R's or their 'L's. But it was dehumanizing, and the purpose was to direct evil intentions against them, which ultimately resulted in the only nuclear holocaust that ever occurred in the history of humanity. I don't think Truman would have ever done that if we hadn't so dehumanized the enemy."

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Too Soon.

However due to the huge puddle of water/saliva mixture on my keyboard thanks to your post, I'm typing this with the on-screen keyboard.

P.S. Windows on-screen keyboard sucks!

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple of things here...

1. Shouldn't it either be "anecdote-road", or "anecdotal road"?

2. You said "tat", but failed to mention any "tit". I thought this was a good place for me to pick up the slack.

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[Theaetetus]

I can't even begin to think of a legal argument for why they should sue the ACS in this context, and even if they had a marginally plausible argument that didn't immediately invite Rule 11 sanctions ahref=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_11%23Chapter_III_-_Pleadings_and_Motionsrel=url2html-23882http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_11#Chapter_III_-_Pleadings_and_Motions>...

Oh, he does. Specifically, there's a California law that says that donation collection agencies that are collecting on behalf of the charity have to be registered, and if they don't, the charity can shut down the collection agency (this is to prevent "uh, yeah, I'm collecting on behalf of... the veterans. Uh, all of them. The American Veterans Association or something. Just give me your cash"). IndieGogo didn't register with the ACS, and so the ACS has a legal right to shut them down... He's suing the ACS to force them to exercise that legal right. But other than that, they're not involved. They won't pay any damages, they probably won't even bother showing up to court, particularly because before it ever gets to them having to shut down IndieGogo, first Carreron has to show that IndieGogo was acting fraudulently with the alleged donation collection really just being a cover for inciting the public to attack him. And that's unlikely to happen.

any sane lawyer would say that this would just be a bad idea.

... well, yeah.

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that has already been taken by the churches.

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[Plombo]

It's likely that the Does are supposed to be the unknown individuals that he's alleging "hacked" his site, infringed his trademark on his name with a false Twitter account, and did the other things he's claiming happened to him as a result of The Oatmeal's posting of his letter.

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Relays for example often cost almost as much money to run as they get out of them

So they're all profitable, but some of them are more profitable than others (the other side of the "often"), and people like them. Remind me again why they're a bad thing?

I eat at 3 star (out of 4) restaurants all the time. They're still very good. This is a 3 star out of 4 charity. That doesn't mean it sucks or is evil. If it were a zero or one star, I could see the point, but there's not really much to complain about .

Re:Suing the ACS, really?

[evanism]

And about as funny as the Great Depression.

This guy isn't funny, he's unhinged. He has unleashed a shitstorm of an epic magnitude. Sueing a charity? Now that's going to put him on the bottom of everyone's fun-guy list.

I need to patent...

[DWMorse]

I need to file a patent on frivolous lawsuits. I know exactly how I'd word the letter announcing my intent to protect my IP.

"Yo dawg, I heard you like to sue, so I'm suing you for suing, so you can go to court for going to court..."

Re:I need to patent...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seem to remember someone actually doing/trying to do that. Specifically the process of patent trolling. A brief search returned no relevant results, so maybe I dreamed it or it was an April Fools joke or something..

Re:I need to patent...

[Anonymous Coward]

I need to file a patent on frivolous lawsuits. I know exactly how I'd word the letter announcing my intent to protect my IP.

"Yo dawg, I heard you like to sue, so I'm suing you for suing, so you can go to court for going to court..."

Hypothetically, aren't business methods now patentable?

Therefore, couldn't you (at least theoretically) patent the business method of creating a pool of patents, without producing any goods, and then suing any who would infringe upon the patent?

Re:I need to patent...

[Anonymous Coward]

haliburton

Re:I need to patent...

[ZeroSumHappiness]

Methods are, models are not. You could only patent the infrastructure and search techniques you use to find your targets, I believe.

Re:I need to patent...

[hvm2hvm]

No, it was some guy on a TED talk that wanted to abolish patents or something like that. And this was his plan, patenting frivolous lawsuits. Everyone laughed and cheered.

Re:I need to patent...

[desdinova 216]

maybe that's Righthaven's next move?

Oatmeal stumbled here

[hsmith]

Honestly: He messed up.

He should have gone on the extreme offensive and sued the shit out of Funny Junk once he got that letter. I found what he did amusing, as well as good for humanity (with his charity) - but in the end he let a useless website continue on churning out stolen content.

Granted, Inman said he seeked council before doing what he did, so perhaps he knew it was inevitable. The court case should be amusing, to say the least. I hope he counter sues for 200x the amount.

Re:Oatmeal stumbled here

[NatasRevol]

Wait until FunnyJunk gets his lawyer fees. Bet they won't be around long after that.

Re:Oatmeal stumbled here

[jimicus]

ISTR the US legal system is notoriously reluctant to award costs, mainly to prevent cases where huge companies can use "We'll claim costs against you!" as a tool to intimidate smaller organisations and individuals.

Re:Oatmeal stumbled here

[closetpsycho]

I think that being awarded legal costs should be more common, but only up to the amount that the loser spent. So if side A has a fairly average costing lawyer and loses to the ultra high priced legal team of side B, then side A still only has to pay as much to side B as he paid for side A. So basically, at worst, the loser would have to double his legal costs.

Re:Oatmeal stumbled here

[gbjbaanb]

unfortunately, this also means that big corporations can use "our highly trained team of lawyers will tie you up in legal processes that it'll cost you far more than you can afford.... and you can't even claim costs when err, if you win, haha" as a tool to intimidate smaller organisations and individuals.

Re:Oatmeal stumbled here

[bws111]

So if someone sues you you should spend as little as possible defending yourself, because if you lose you are going to have double your legal costs? What a stupid idea.

Re:Oatmeal stumbled here

[NatasRevol]

Not The Oatmeal's lawyer. Just their own lawyer.

Re:Oatmeal stumbled here

[gl4ss]

amusement is the entire point of oatmeal.

(he's got a printed book of some stuff from the site, it's pretty good wc reading)

Re:Oatmeal stumbled here

[reimero]

In the state of California, by state law, the loser pays the winner's court costs. The suit was filed in San Francisco, so costs may be awarded anyway.

Re:Oatmeal stumbled here

[ZeroSumHappiness]

Well, if you know you're going to lose anyway but want your day in court, yes. The flip side of this suggestion, however, should be that if the defendant wins then the plaintiff owes whatever his lawyer's costs were to the defendant's lawyer.

Big company sues little man with $1M dream team. Johnny Cochran jumps on the case on a only-pay-if-you-win basis for $5k to little man. Johnny Cochran wins. Big company owes Johnny $1M.

It would encourage good lawyers to defend good but poor people.

Re:Oatmeal stumbled here

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're strongly overestimating the hourly rates of an attorney who defends himself in court.

Re:Oatmeal stumbled here

[bws111]

If you know you are going to lose anyway, just settle.

The main problem though is that you are starting from a faulty premise. The number of times 'Big company sues little man' is tiny compared to the number of times 'Little man sues big company'. And the number of times Big company files a suit that is doesn't have a very good chance of winning is even smaller than that.

Today, most cases of 'little man sues big company' are on a contingency basis. If the plaintiff doesn't win, he has no expenses. However, if the plaintiff does win, he may have to give 30% to the lawyer. So how does your 'loser pays' idea work with that? A losing plaintiff has zero expenses, so will never have to pay.

If we do away with the contingency fees, then someone who is truly harmed by another party must first weigh what will happen if they lose. They can not mount the best possible case because if they lose they will be out twice the money.

These types of proposals harm the little guy far more often than the big guy.

Re:Oatmeal stumbled here

[zeon]

That is incorrect for several reasons. Without going into detail, there is no blanket rule in California for cost/fee shifting. Statutes provide for costs and fees only under certain circumstances. IAAL

Re:Oatmeal stumbled here

[ZeroSumHappiness]

How do you settle for $20k if you have no money?

Plaintiff sues with a lawyer on contingency. Plaintiff loses. Lawyer on contingency gets paid nothing, defendant's lawyers get paid nothing from the plaintiff. That's no worse than the current system.

Plaintiff sues with a good lawyer on contingency against a high value target. Plaintiff wins and his contingency lawyer makes some money off the plaintiff's judgement and a ton based on the defendant's court costs. This encourages good lawyers to take on contingency cases that they think they will win to get the court costs from the defendant's side. This is a good thing and is better than the current system for plaintiffs.

Defendant is sued. Now he can hire a lawyer who will defend him on contingency based on the plaintiff's court costs. This means defendants are likely to get lawyers in the same tier as plaintiffs. Does the plaintiff have a $1M lawyer? The defendant might find a lawyer that would normally do $500k cases. This is better than the current system where most defendants can't actually afford representation.

Re:Oatmeal stumbled here

[LihTox]

Only if you're certain you're going to lose; presumably the other person is suing you for a lot more than double your legal costs.

Re:Oatmeal stumbled here

[NatasRevol]

FunnyJunk isn't run by a lawyer.

Re:Oatmeal stumbled here

[Translation Error]

I don't know... I'd never heard of The Oatmeal until this whole issue started popping up on sites.

Re:Oatmeal stumbled here

[a90Tj2P7]

GP's statement does apply more to plaintiffs than defandants, who are more likely to be awarded costs if they win. Really, that doesn't go overlooked or ignored.

Re:Oatmeal stumbled here

[rastoboy29]

To be fair (if you want to be fair), I do think there's a grey area when user-uploaded content is considered.  I don't think it would be fair to expect site administrators to police copyrighted material from their forums and such.

The guy is still a fool, of course....

Re:Oatmeal stumbled here

[Goobermunch]

While I generally agree with what you're saying, your post is not entirely accurate.

The truth is that a losing plaintiff often ends up with substantial expenses. While his lawyer may be on a contingency fee, his expert is likely barred from working on contingency. That means the engineer, doctor, economist, or general contractor whose testimony is key to the case is charging the plaintiff hourly for his or her work on the case. Most states prohibit plaintiff's lawyers from absorbing those costs (due to concerns about champerty and maintenance). That means that even though the case may be close, that losing plaintiff may end up on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars in costs.

So the little guy can end up bankrupt simply by losing a close case.

--AC

Re:Oatmeal stumbled here

[bws111]

Having no money makes no difference at all. If you don't have the money to settle, you aren't going to have the money to lose the case either. Settling almost always costs less than losing, and now you want to saddle the loser with the winner's legal tab.

Your first scenario is the current system.

Your second scenario is flawed. Today, the plaintiffs lawyer is trying to get the biggest payoff for his client, while minimizing his own expenses. The bigger the payout, the more he makes. Under your scheme, the plaintiffs lawyer, if he has a solid case, has incentive to make the proceedings as expensive as possible for the defense, so he gets a bigger paycheck. There is no upside to that for anyone except the two lawyers involved. Also, your second scenario does not work at all when you take your third scenario into account.

Your third scenario fails if the plaintiff is paying his lawyers on contingency.

Your whole proposal is based on faulty assumptions, namely that is usually a richer entity suing a poorer one (rarely), and that the only reason the richer entity wins is because of poor representation for the poorer one (as opposed to the poorer one just being in the wrong). Remember that this is civil court, and the standards of proof are lower than in criminal court. A Johnny Cochran like song and dance is not as likely to prevail as defense in a civil case.

Re:Oatmeal stumbled here

[ZeroSumHappiness]

If you don't have the money to settle you can at least take a chance on not losing by finding a contingency basis lawyer. By awarding the defending lawyer fees from the plaintiff a poor defendant has a chance at finding a lawyer. If you lose anyway, well, the losing was going to bankrupt you either way. This is not worse than before.

Yes, my first scenario is no worse than the current system. Being the current system succeeds at being that.

Under the current system the plaintiff's lawyer already tries to make the case as expensive as possible for the defendant, the purpose being to make the defendant's lawyer advise the defendant to give up because he's not going to turn a profit on this case. If the defendant would get more money for continuing to fight he might as well continue the fight. This is no worse than the current system because lawyers already play the bankrupt-the-opponent game. This is better than the current system because a poor person has a chance at getting a good lawyer on contingency.

If both lawyers end up taking the case on contingency then that's best possible outcome for justice -- now neither side can win solely by paying for a more expensive lawyer. This evens up the playing field without denying people choice of lawyer. I guess the lawyers lose, but that's not a terrible outcome in my book.

The assumption I'm making, of the rich suing the poor, is the most damaging of situations and thus is the one I'm focusing on. If the poor person is in the wrong, well, he was fucked anyway, wasn't he?

If it's rich suing rich or poor suing poor, the system is fair anyway. If it's poor suing rich the winning lawyer being paid costs of the losing lawyer is helpful to the poor.

Finally, do you have a better idea than our current system which is, obviously, broken?

Re:Oatmeal stumbled here

[jonadab]

> The number of times 'Big company sues little man' is tiny compared
> to the number of times 'Little man sues big company'. And the number
> of times Big company files a suit that is doesn't have a very good
> chance of winning is even smaller than that.

So are we calling the RIAA a "little man" now, or what?

The really correct solution is to make it illegal to solicit or provide legal services for payment (i.e., lawyers become illegal). Each person must stand before the court and make his own case and be judged. A private company would be represented by the owner, and any publicly traded company would be represented by the largest individual shareholder (if said person holds at least some fixed percentage of the stock -- perhaps 5% or so) or a court-appointed advocate (otherwise).

We could argue about whether it should be legal to sell some or all of your stock in order to duck the responsibility of representing the company in court. I tend to think yes, but I'm potentially willing to be persuaded otherwise, if someone can come up with good reasons.

Re:Oatmeal stumbled here

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care who runs FunnyJunk (I assumed it was Carreon), I'm talking about the case in the summary.

Unless you're talking about a completely unrelated suit or unless I am grossly misunderstanding your statements, I don't see how Charles Carreon is going to be butthurt about having to pay himself attorney fees.

Can't associate him with douchebaggery

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, we can't.

Cuz it's too late.

He done did it himself already.

Carreon, you ARE a douchebag.

Wow ...

[mister2au]

ummm .... #winning I guess ... for acts of douchebaggery

Only in 2012

[assertation]

Can you see a "news" headline like this

"FunnyJunk Sues the Oatmeal Over TM "

Re:Only in 2012

[Internal Modem]

As an article, "the" is always lowercase in title case sentences...unless it is part of a proper noun. Samzenpus is one of the most illiterate editors ever.

Re:Only in 2012

[msauve]

Can you see a "news" headline like this

"FunnyJunk Sues the Oatmeal Over TM "

If FunnyJunk got the tm from the Oatmeal, then it would be the Oaeal.

Come on editors

[Anonymous Coward]

The title is wrong. Read the linked articles. Charles Carreon is the lawyer, he is suing several of these entities on his own, not representing FunkyJunk.

The line

Charles Carreon (the man who has FunnyJunk)

ranges from ambiguous to wrong. He is not the owner of this awful site.

one word

[Tom]

kindergarden

Re:one word

[Anonymous Coward]

kindergarten

Re:one word

[Anonymous Coward]

Kindergarten

Re:one word

[Anonymous Coward]

or vagina

Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

FunnyJunk isn't suing.
FunnyJunk's Lawyer is suing.

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Or is it the lawyer's FunnyJunk that's doing the suing? Whoa, meta!

Re:Wrong

[Penguinisto]

FunnyJunk's Lawyer is suing.

Then maybe the douchebags at Funnyjunk should publicly disavow any connection to the douchebag who's doing the actual suing?

You know, like, sometime before the folks at CNN, BBC, et al decide to pick up the story and broadcast it with the lede: "...and in other news, the internet site funnyjunk.com is suing some comic site and TWO BIG CHARITIES today..." (followed of course by the charities giving a ton of damning soundbites that make the site and its lawyer look like massive, well, you know, douchebags...)

('course, there's still that whole douchebag factor, but that's not my problem. I'm only here to offer helpful advice about that lawyer vs. reputation thing).

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

And, of course, fire his lawyer for engaging in crap against his client's interests.

I think a countersuit is definitely in order

[crazyjj]

I hop Oatmeal countersues that 5'11 180 pound frame prick into oblivion.

Re:I think a countersuit is definitely in order

[Anonymous Coward]

I hop Oatmeal countersues that 5'11 180 pound frame prick into oblivion.

I'm 99% sure that anyone who describes themselves as 5' 11" is, in reality, closer to 5' 9-1/2" tall. Without his lifts.

Re:I think a countersuit is definitely in order

[seepho]

I, for one, plan on supporting The Oatmeal with all of the fury my 5'4" 130 pound frame can muster.

Re:I think a countersuit is definitely in order

[steveo777]

I accidentally red that as "all of the furry my..."

I'm sure either way Inman will be all about that "support"

Re:I think a countersuit is definitely in order

[Anonymous Coward]

5'11 180 pound frame

Pfft. Is that supposed to be impressive? My wife is 5'4 and 200 lbs!

Note: She was 120lbs when I met her though.

PS: i'm depressed.

Re:I think a countersuit is definitely in order

[Anonymous Coward]

Where I live being 5'11" 180 pounds makes you at most an average sized guy which doesn't really make it much of a threat. I think I only know 2 guys that might be smaller than that.

Re:I think a countersuit is definitely in order

[ItsJustAPseudonym]

The IHOP serves oatmeal? I thought they were all about pancakes.

This is fantastic.

[p0p0]

I love it. It's so open and shut in favor of The Oatmeal. He never incited anyone. He in fact mentions that he DIDN'T incite anyone and that it was FunnyJunk who messaged their userbase to confront The Oatmeal, or at least very heavily implied they should. Everything The Oatmeal has done is retaliatory, in defense, and FJ has been on the offense for the entire situation.
God knows why. Money I suppose. The Oatmeal's comics are popular and probably bring a lot of traffic when the comics are linked to FJ and not The Oatmeal.

Everytime the owner of FJ speaks he tries to paint himself as the one being hurt, but all the damage is self-induced by the bad PR he's constantly causing by sending rude messages and generally un-gentlemanly behavior.

Now if this ever does reach court, I'm sure it'll be decently long as FJ tries to throw everything it can at The Oatmeal because if they lose the Streisand Effect will hit even harder. I'm sure at least some users will leave, but more importantly they'll lose many potential users just because of they'll be shown beforehand how FJ operates.

Either way, I'm going to just grab some popcorn and enjoy. I can't wait for The Oatmeal's response to this. Should have just complied with the takedown request (it was a request, The Oatmeal never once filed a DMCA) but apparently the owner of FJ just can't stand being told (asked) what to do.

Re:This is fantastic.

[Adambomb]

Before everyone finishes patting themselves on the back about how stupid Carreon is, how he has invoked the Streisand effect and a bunch of bad PR ask yourself this: How many of us had honestly even heard of Funnyjunk before today.

Given that it contains so much user submitted content, imagine how many ads have been served on pages where people have gone to flame them, despite the bulk of slashdot readers using adblocks on unfamiliar sites.

I wonder if his ego might still have them laughing all the way to the bank depending on how long it takes them to drop or settle the suits. Even before the internet its been known in marketing that the only bad publicity is no publicity.

Re:This is fantastic.

[hsmith]

Never heard of Funny Junk before this. But, I still have never visited their site. So, no gain for them really.

Re:This is fantastic.

[gman003]

I'd actually heard of it. Mostly from people bitching about how a) very little junk on there is actually funny, and b) they seem to slap big watermarks on anything uploaded. I'm not surprised that their management/legal counsel are morons - their main userbase consists of people who find outdated, misused memes and "lol so random!" "humor" to be funny.

Re:This is fantastic.

[aaron552]

I knew that FunnyJunk was basically the new ebaumsworld - or at least the subsequent iteration (9GAG is the next one) of the "take other people's content, add advertising, profit" business model - but little more than that. Now I also know that its lawyer is unbelievably ignorant about the internet and the Streisand Effect.

Re:This is fantastic.

[Jumperalex]

I may now have heard of it but I can promise you one thing: I have never visited nor will I ever. No click counts, no ad impressions, nothing. The only thing they might get from me is a bump in google ranking due to links (if I actually created links) but that would ONLY be the result of propogating this very story, a story that is not going to help them in the long run, even if it helps them in the short run. I do however now know who The Oatmeal is :)

Re:This is fantastic.

[p0p0]

I've known of it. I've visited. Never liked it. The userbase tend to pick one thing to completely obsesses about for a week before they move on and it causes all the posts to be completely the same. It's also just kids who haven't seen a lot of content that has existed for a long time and get excited easily. Also, I use Ad-block so there is no revenue there. If I do visit, it's directly to the URL and not google, so no referrals there.

Re:This is fantastic.

[Anonymous Coward]

I visited for you. It's really shitty. Basically, it's all the racist and stupid shit that your idiot high school classmate posts on facebook collected in one place.

For example, on the front page of funny junk right now there is a joke about black people who say "shizzle" and eat fried chicken. And, its not even funny. FunnyJunk is run by an idiot scumbag, for idiot scumbags.

Re:This is fantastic.

[Megane]

I knew that FunnyJunk was basically the new ebaumsworld

Thank you. I had never heard of it before, and now I understand why. And I had only heard of 9fag because they tried to worm their way around 4chan a few months ago.

Re:This is fantastic.

[Saint Fnordius]

I have a hunch that the FunnyJunk owner is not really all that interested any more, and that Carreon picked this fight as a way to gain a reputation. Now his ego won't let him back down, and in his world the Oatmeal is now the Moby Dick to his Ahab, with FunnyJunk tricked into being his Pequod.

Re:This is fantastic.

[clickclickdrone]

The userbase tend to pick one thing to completely obsesses about for a week before they move on and it causes all the posts to be completely the same

That's Slashdot when there's a Linux or Apple story.

Re:This is fantastic.

[BackwardPawn]

I disagree. I think he's using the Streisand Effect to his advantage. I'd never heard of this site before reading this article. In the whole vein of no publicity is bad publicity, he gets his name out there, gets clicks, profits. Why pay for advertising when you can just act like a douchbag and sue someone? Hopefully it backfires and nobody clicks on his site, but I think enough people will be curious enough that he'll get what he wanted out of this.

Re:This is fantastic.

[Jason Levine]

I really don't subscribe to the "any publicity is good publicity" school of thought. Yes, some people might hear about FunnyJunk now, think "let me visit this site and see what it is all about", and then become long-term members, but that's the minority. Most people now will think "FunnyJunk? Oh they're the ones who stole those comics and then sued the comic's creator when they were found out." People have a negative image of FunnyJunk that FJ will need to counter if they want to attract more users. Then again, given the "quality" of the users they seem to have, this might not be so much of a problem. Sadly, one can always find more 12 year old kids who see nothing wrong with scraping content from across the Internet and posting it somewhere else with no attribution whatsoever.

Re:This is fantastic.

[Anonymous Coward]

Conversely... I had never heard of the oatmeal until this episode... but now i visit the site daily.

In fact... i might just order a couple posters.

Re:This is fantastic.

[TrekkieGod]

Before everyone finishes patting themselves on the back about how stupid Carreon is, how he has invoked the Streisand effect and a bunch of bad PR ask yourself this: How many of us had honestly even heard of Funnyjunk before today.

The whole "any publicity is good publicity" thing is bullshit. Bad publicity kills you quicker than obscurity.

Given that it contains so much user submitted content, imagine how many ads have been served on pages where people have gone to flame them, despite the bulk of slashdot readers using adblocks on unfamiliar sites.

Short-term gains at the expense of a viable long-term strategy is pretty much the definition of stupidity. Intelligence is, after all, only advantageous because it allows you to predict the consequences of your actions before you perform them.

Re:This is fantastic.

[Anonymous Coward]

Never heard of either FunnyJunk , or TheOatmeal. Those are now just 2 of several other million websites I don't visit.

Take away from that what you will.

Re:This is fantastic.

[evanism]

If he has made money out of other peoples content, then I would expect him to be facing 43000 lawsuits from the owners later this week all seeking their pound of flesh.

He is doomed.

13-year-old girl wrote summary.

[Internal Modem]

The summary is so poorly written, assuming that the reader knows and cares about tiny details and any of players, that I am finally convinced the real Slashdot is dead.

Re:13-year-old girl wrote summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

With a UID that high it was dead before you joined.

Re:13-year-old girl wrote summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, but I can't even figure out what's supposed to be happening. I've never heard of either site, the summary text is too long and it doesn't help me figure out who might be in the right (except that it has an obvious bias).

"...threat of defamation lawsuit against The Oatmeal highlighting a fairly pervasive problem of rehosting content..." Oh, so The Oatmeal is a site that rehosts content without asking? That's messed up, they should be sued. Wait, they're not? Who did what? I don't get it.

"Charles Carreon (the man who has FunnyJunk) has made statements of Inman saying..." Huh? So who's saying what now?

TL;DC (don't care)

Re:13-year-old girl wrote summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one that encourages and expects thirteen-year-old girls to write well?

Re:13-year-old girl wrote summary.

[Anonymous Coward]

You put on your robe and wizard hat ...

Careful, editors...

[Anonymous Coward]

...do you want to be the next target of this internet troll? I would caution against the use of the word "extortion".

Remember the guy who invented the term "patent troll"? He did that because his use of the phrase "patent extortion" brought a libel suit. Just like Penn & Teller's show, "Bullshit", they're using a negative (but subjective!) term to criticize people who probably have it coming, but the terminology gets them off any legal hooks for libel.

Posting anon because I've been moderating... couldn't help myself.

Re:Careful, editors...

[Infiniti2000]

I agree with this. Mod parent up. eldavojohn, take note (see you commented about why the summary has issues). Also, put opinions in a follow-up post, not in the summary. I'd prefer to read news stories, not editorials, not after I read the facts and have formed my own opinions.

We often complain that the law is too complex...

[Anonymous Coward]

...yet when I read this lawyer's letter, I see why and think perhaps complexity in the law is a good thing: because it's dealing with complex issues. The lawyer cites cases where it was determined that statements have to be made in a context where people will take them seriously, before those statements can be taken as libelous or slanderous. I would have never thought to look for that defense. Which is why he's a lawyer and I'm not, right?

I suppose what still irks me is that hiring a lawyer can be a necessity in a modern, complex society, just like getting emergency room treatment can be a necessity. An ER will not turn you away if you need treatment (by law they must treat you). But if you need "emergency" legal representation, unless it's a public defender, where does one turn? If you can't afford a lawyer, and you live in a complex society where a lawyer is an occassional necessity, what are your options?

I think I speak for everyone when I say

[Anonymous Coward]

meh..

That's not quite what's happening

[Roujo]

The title is wrong. FunnyJunk isn't suing, their lawyer Charles Carreon is. He's not representing them, he's representing himself. At least, that's what I got from the title of the case on Courthouse News Service, "Charles Carreon v Matthew Inman".

Re:That's not quite what's happening

[Anonymous Coward]

Then what the hell is he suing for? The beef here is with FunnyJunk.

Re:That's not quite what's happening

[L4t3r4lu5]

Someone should tell this dude about RightHaven... Suing other people for copyright infringement when you yourself don't hold the copyright is A Bad Thing.

Re:That's not quite what's happening

[Anonymous Coward]

Try reading it again. Carreon is not suing for copyright infringement.

Re:That's not quite what's happening

[Rich0]

What is his standing then?

Can I buy $500 worth of Google stock and then sue Apple over their anti-Android tactics, since it has an adverse impact on my shares? If the company isn't suing, then Charles is just suing as a shareholder as far as I understand the law. I can understand shareholder suits against the company they own shares in since that is a direct relationship.

Re:That's not quite what's happening

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA, or even TFS. He's suing for [what he's claiming are] damages from The Oatmeal's and The Oatmeal's supporters' [claimed] actions directed at him individually/professionally. He feels that he, personally, is being attacked (hacked, defamed, etc.) at the incitement of The Oatmeal.

Re:That's not quite what's happening

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no idea what "Oatmeal" is or "FunnyJunk", so I couldn't give two shits about this whole ordeal.

Re:That's not quite what's happening

[Spad]

Charles Carreon is/was a lawyer representing FunnyJunk in their lawsuit against Matthew Inman (who runs The Oatmeal) in which FunnyJunk are upset that, over a year ago, Matthew Inman said it was a pretty dickish thing for FunnyJunk to republish loads of his content without attribution.

Because of all the shit that Charles Carreon has received from The Internet following this, he is additionally now personally suing Matthew Inman and the two charities that he is raising money for.

Re:That's not quite what's happening

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no idea what "Oatmeal" is or "FunnyJunk", so I couldn't give two shits about this whole ordeal.

And since you are clueless about the topic of this article, nobody gives two shits about your opinion of it.

Just FYI: The Oatmeal has a lot of fans. A LOT. More than you would think. I'm not shocked that you're unaware of this, though.

Yeah, He's Also the Lawyer for FunnyJunk

[eldavojohn]

Submitter here. I forgot to mention in the summary he's also the lawyer for FunnyJunk.

Re:Yeah, He's Also the Lawyer for FunnyJunk

[Pope]

That was one of the worst summaries I've ever read on Slashdot.

Re:Yeah, He's Also the Lawyer for FunnyJunk

[amicusNYCL]

You also forgot to mention that he is only the lawyer, not the owner. FunnyJunk operates out of New York, Carreon is based right here in sunny Arizona. Matt Inman seems not to draw a line between the two (e.g., this picture of "your mom" seducing a bear could apply to either party), but FJ is the client, and Carreon is the attorney.

Re:Yeah, He's Also the Lawyer for FunnyJunk

[Theaetetus]

Submitter here. I forgot to mention in the summary he's also the lawyer for FunnyJunk.

You got this part wrong, though: "Charles Carreon curiously fails to mention that he first incited all of his users to harass The Oatmeal anyway they can which they dutifully did."

He's FunnyJunk's lawyer, not FunnyJunk's owner. Carreon has no users.

Thank god.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck Funnyjunk, sick of seeing it. It is getting as bad as Ebaums World was in its prime.

I'm fine with people hosting work and linking directly to the original content creators (and taking it down at the request of content creators), but when people take effort to steal content by slapping logos or erasing other logos off work and so on, it gets a bit pathetic.

Bring it down a level, please.

Now if only we could do this with Zynga too. And Facebook. They are the counterparts of these 2 in their respective industries.

Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[eldavojohn]

The summary is so poorly written, assuming that the reader knows and cares about tiny details and any of players, that I am finally convinced the real Slashdot is dead.

Sorry to suck so badly. I'll try harder next time. Thought my name was good around here but apparently I'm the end of Slashdot. Care to rewrite the summary in a concise manner so I can take notes? It's really really easy to leave empty criticisms with no valid critiques and rhetoric about how Slashdot is dead. But someone's modding you up so I'll bite. You have zero submissions and 150 comments? I hate to say it but I think I've been registered on here a bit longer than you and have been a little more active (that's me on the hall of fame list for submitters) ... but we who paraphrase, link, write book reviews and write comments with content, we're the ones who are ruining Slashdot? Got it.

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[Bad Ad]

How many submissions/comments and how short/long his UID is doesn't make you more literate than him.

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[Anonymous Coward]

How many submissions/comments and how short/long his UID is doesn't make you more literate than him.

Obviously it was in response to "the real Slashdot is dead" statement and not who's more literate. "The real Slashdot" is the people who have contributed to this site meaningfully over the years. The first post in this thread was basically saying that the submitter is ruining Slashdot but how can that be if he's been around for a long enough time?

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[RazzleFrog]

It really was very poorly written. Here are some tips:

- Get rid of the sarcastic editorializing like "FunnyJunk's extortion ... er ... threat of defamation". It is immature and doesn't help the summary in anyway. Right or wrong, you should keep your opinions to yourself.

- Formatting is your friend. A wall of text does not make for an interesting read. As somebody pointed out you quoted too much of the linked article. People know how to read for themselves.

- Some of your wording is awkward. "with 8 days left he has only garnered 900% of his goal". It makes the 900% look like a typo for 90%. You should have said "Even with 8 days remaining he has already surpassed his goal by $xx".

- Less links. I think you could have summarized where things stand more concisely and then listed links that people can reference for more information.

Hope that helps.

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[ColdWetDog]

Cut him some slack - Internal Modem is just a bit slow and behind the times. He can't help it.

You could have just flashed the phone line on him to shut him up.

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you missed his point. So I'll make it more concise for you: "put up or shut up."

And since you brought up the topic of literacy...

How many submissions/comments and how short/long his UID is doesn't make you more literate than him.

"Him" should be "he."

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to be clear... as many of us, /. readers from non-native English speaking countries, it's difficult to make/write a summary.

In my case, I've only remember submitting a story once, which curiously made the front page. It was completely edited and even the submitted links changed...
In other words: That's what the editors are there for! If you submitted it, and the editor didn't change it, or did it for worse (which I think was my case, because the link they replaced was pointing to a different page with annoying ads), then why do you think it's your problem or why does the other has to be a prolific submitter? You do what you can, if not, editors should fix it, if not... well... welcome to Slashdot, where Editors don't work and mod points don't matter.

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[Anonymous Coward]

Like telling Walter Kronkite all his awards and lifelong career don't mean jack.
Yes you will always be judged on the level of your current work. But your previous work is also still relevant.

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[Anonymous Coward]

That was not even their point.

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[Wizy]

Lies!

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[Anonymous Coward]

How many submissions/comments and how short/long his UID is doesn't make you more literate than him.

You sticking up for an idiot also doesn't make you smarter than the GP, either, Mini-Me.

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[Bieeanda]

The summary read like shit. Incorrect shit, given that FJ has backed off and it's the site's lawyer who is suing The Oatmeal and the charities.

Further, dickwaving about post counts? Seriously? That's GameFAQs and Gaia Online-level stupid and does nothing to help you look good or him look bad. Try again. Better, don't.

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[Kielistic]

"Him" should be "he."

I think you might want to brush up on your pronouns.

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[Anonymous Coward]

On the hall of fame list for submitters eh?

The women must drop their panties and groan with lust when they hear of your manly exploits upon the good ship slashdot ...

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[Nyder]

The summary is so poorly written, assuming that the reader knows and cares about tiny details and any of players, that I am finally convinced the real Slashdot is dead.

Sorry to suck so badly. I'll try harder next time. Thought my name was good around here but apparently I'm the end of Slashdot. Care to rewrite the summary in a concise manner so I can take notes? It's really really easy to leave empty criticisms with no valid critiques and rhetoric about how Slashdot is dead. But someone's modding you up so I'll bite. You have zero submissions and 150 comments? I hate to say it but I think I've been registered on here a bit longer than you and have been a little more active (that's me on the hall of fame list for submitters) ... but we who paraphrase, link, write book reviews and write comments with content, we're the ones who are ruining Slashdot? Got it.

Okay, you know more because you've been here longer, sure dude.

You forgot, "Get off my lawn"

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to defend Internal Modem, but the whole "I've been here longer than you" is no defense of a badly written summary. (I don't think it was badly written, but if you feel the need to defend it, do so, don't just try to claim you've been around longer than him so your writing must be fine)

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, or care, who eldavojohn is. But submitting stories to slashdot doesn't make him Walter Kronkite.

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[LanMan04]

Well I've been registered longer than you and you've been on my foes list for years.

In short: fuck off.

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[liquidsin]

no, but he's correct in asserting that his many article submissions have likely contributed positively to the site. he's also correct in pointing out that merely telling someone they suck is not a critique.

so to Internal Modem, i would ask why you would waste your time to bitch about a topic you're not interested in on a dead website. there are, in fact, many stories posted to /. where the summary isn't as clear as it could be; this is supposed to be why there are editors, but the summary contains links to all of the relevant info on the story and then some so if you really wanted to learn more, try clicking and reading - it's pretty much what the internet does.

and to eldavojohn, reading over your summary again i'd have to say maybe you could have been more concise. sorry, i'm not much of a writer and i was already fairly familiar with this case, but skimming over that summary left me with lots of tidbits of info but lacking a broader overview of the story to this point. but you did provide lots of clickables for anyone who wants more history. and while i'm not familiar with you personally, or what it is you "do", i do recognize your name from many /. submissions and comments, and i have to appreciate anyone who contributes to a user-driven site such as this one that i can enjoy for free, so thanks!

tl;dr - "you suck" is not a criticism and it's not constructive. try some positivity in your life!

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[Bad Ad]

I actually agree with you, just not the whole "I have been here longer than you" tone of his reply. I have been here even longer than the submitter and contributed a hell of a lot less. How long anyone has been here means nothing to how much you can or cannot have contributed - therefore didn't need including in his reply and only made him sound like a douchebag when doing so.

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[liquidsin]

yeah, i can see that. i originally read it more as a response to the "real slashdot is dead" line (which kinda makes sense...a user who has been here longer probably has a better grasp on the "real" site). re-reading it i can see it being taken as a bit of a dickish comment, but given the content and tone of the post he was replying to i can see why he might have felt the need to go that route with the reply.

i just don't grasp the people who post comments like that in the first place. reading over Internal Modem's comment history, he doesn't seem like a common troll and in fact comes up with some insightful comments. but there is absolutely nothing constructive about his post here; if you have legitimate criticisms to offer, go for it - a well written critique on the original article submission could have been informative for many readers, whereas telling someone they did a shitty job and the whole website is fail projects the image that you are a petulant child with nothing real to add to the conversation other than your desire to be heard.

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[FitForTheSun]

Ha, you got trolled. Don't feed the trolls!

I thought this submission was just fine, if maybe a little wordier than it needed to be.

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[Anonymous Coward]

Well since I have read slashdot daily since long before eldavojohn (or you for that matter) decided to contribute instead of being a wise coward I believe I can say that I have seen the best and worst of slashdot. This summary is far above average for this site, and most any others. Here are my counterpoints:

1. It is entertaining. It makes the news interesting to people who did not care before. Though I will agree with you on this one.

2. a. Have you never read a textbook?
b. Verbatim quotes are a good thing. Cite your sources and don't mince words. After all rewriting and summarizing inherently leads #1 which you don't like.

3. It is awkward, yet "Even with 8 days remaining he has already surpassed his goal by $xx" shows some bias, once again #1.

4. Good God no. More links, more sources, more evidence, more truth, and more journalism. Summary of the truth is, you guessed it, #1. Let people decide for themselves what is and is not important, give them the tools to do it, and never ever create a fallacy of incomplete evidence.

While writing this it has become patently clear that the less actual writing, submitters do, the less chance for opinions to be injected. We need less writers and more researchers. eldavojohn is high on my list in that regard.

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[Translation Error]

I think you might want to. "He" is correct.

How many submissions/comments and how short/long his UID is doesn't make you more literate than [...]

The actual comparison would be 'more literate than he is', but the final 'is' is dropped, leaving 'more literate than he'.

I'm sure a lot of people would say, "Who cares--it doesn't matter!" but sometimes it does. For example, there's a world of difference between "I love you more than him," and "I love you more than he."

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[RazzleFrog]

2 - This isn't a textbook. A news summary should never be written as if it was. You never see a summary with full quotes. They always have those lovely ellipses.

3 - Not biased because you don't say whether it is a good thing or bad thing that he surpassed the goal. It just states that he has support behind him.

4 - Inline hyperlinks are notoriously bad. They break the flow of the summary. The proper way, but obviously wouldn't work on slashdot, would be references listed in the end notes (like on wikipedia). Then people can read through the summary as it is and then decide which notes to follow. It also means that people don't have to hove over a link to see if it is a source they care to read. Obviously Forbes is a powerful source compared to an unknown blog.

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[Kielistic]

I believe there is no rule that in informal situations you cannot use the objective pronoun. Especially when there are no ambiguities.

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's ask Grammar Girl:

http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/than-I-versus-than-me.aspx

Re:Guess I'm the 13 Year Old Girl

[Anonymous Coward]

Fewer links, not less. Fewer. Your application for story editor has been rejected.

So, when funnyjunks users upload false stuff its..

[djsmiley]

Ok, just copyright infringment by the users, but not the site.

However,

When Oatmeal users possibly libel/troll/flame/attack (ahahah yeah right) others, that IS TheOatmeals fault?

Double standards much?

Who did what to whom?

[biodata]

I don't know who FunnyJunk or TheOatmeal are, and this article doesn't inspire me to find out.

Re:Who did what to whom?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, one is a website owned by and filled with nothing but the content created by a single person that many people find hilarious. The other is a website where people copy-paste stuff (...) from other websites without permission of any kind. You should be able to take sides now.

Re:Who did what to whom?

[QuasiSteve]

FunnyJunk is like YouTube - a reasonably popular site where users upload content and other users view that content while advertisements around it garner YouTube some money for the service provided.

TheOatmeal is like the RIAA - somebody who believes their content, in this case comics, was 'stolen' and sent a DMCA take-down notice while lambasting that very same system because it doesn't foresee in preventing the same or future comics from being uploaded by users again and is hoping for stronger measures to be available in the future.

Wait... I think I may have gotten the analogies mixed up.. I think we're supposed to root for TheOatmeal here. Let's try that again.

FunnyJunk is one of those run-of-the-mill filfth-of-the-internet sites similar to ebaumsworld that take the hard work of others (via their minion users) and profit off of it (though ads) without so much as a kudos to the original creator nevermind proper attribution or a way to share in the advertisement dollars.

TheOatmeal is such an independent artist creating original content that holds great value, and who exercised his lawful right in terms of copyright and distribution rights by sending a takedown notice to FunnyJunk.

Whichever way you lean: drama of the internets.

If they settle out of court there'll be plenty of winners: FunnyJunk and TheOatmeal for all the exposure, the lawyers for drafting a few letters, and the charities for the money raised. The cynic in me almost wants this to have been staged.

Re:Who did what to whom?

[Anrego]

TheOatmeal: a somewhat funny and extremely popular (but in my opinion overrated) comic site.
FunnyJunk: classic application of the user submitted content ad farm concept.

I honestly believe the guy behind The Oatmeal is sincere in his wish to just keep doing what he's doing. I don't know what funnyjunk's involvement in this round of suing is (it's the funnyjunk lawyer suing, not funnyjunk) .. but I suspect funnyjunk is perfectly happy with the PR this is bringing (it's an ad farm.. best thing you can do for them is hit their website, even if to write a nasty comment). Even with adblock enabled you are still inflating their traffic stats!

Re:Who did what to whom?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Oatmeal is a humor website that is occasionally funny. If you are the type of person who enjoys cracked or the onion, you may enjoy The Oatmeal.

FunnyJunk is a shitty link farm that posts a lot of old and tired "meme" pictures. If you are a moubreathing moron who enjoyslike uploading shitty racist crap to facebook to annoy the people you went to high school with, you may enjoy FunnyJunk.

Re:Who did what to whom?

[Jason Levine]

Forget FunnyJunk, but you should definitely check out TheOatmeal. It's a very funny webcomic.

Re:Who did what to whom?

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I can tell, FunnyJunk is a website that specializes in humorous pictures of people's testicles, and TheOatmeal is a site dedicated to one of life's best breakfast foods.

Re:Who did what to whom?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you link to the DMCA takedown issued by The Oatmeal? As far as I have read, he complained about copying his cartoons and made absolutely no legal action except to respond.

Re:Who did what to whom?

[Anonymous Coward]

FunnyJunk is like YouTube - a reasonably popular site where users upload content and other users view that content while advertisements around it garner YouTube some money for the service provided.

Somewhat true. The difference appears to be that funnyjunk is mostly other people's stuff and there's less user generated stuff.

TheOatmeal is like the RIAA - somebody who believes their content, in this case comics, was 'stolen' and sent a DMCA take-down notice while lambasting that very same system because it doesn't foresee in preventing the same or future comics from being uploaded by users again and is hoping for stronger measures to be available in the future.

False. He never issued a DMCA take down, and in fact said it wasn't worth it. He mocked the site for their business model and said it was difficult to try and work with them. Mostly, he vented about the situation.

The RIAA engaged in legal action. The Oatmeal never did. After they complained, the people at Funnyjunk threatened to sue him.

Then when he made fun of that threat and sent the money instead to two charities, the lawyer representing funnyjunk decided to sue the Oatmeal AND THE TWO CHARITIES.

There's no RIAA/Oatmeal comparison to be made. The RIAA are a bunch of litigious jerks. Charles Carreon is a litigious jerk. The Oatmeal has only reacted to funnyjunk and Carreon, and has been damned reasonable about it.

Re:Who did what to whom?

[QuasiSteve]

Ah, thanks for clearing that up (re: takedown sent or not). I blame misreading the document stating:

In response to the Blog Post, FunnyJunk and The Oatmeal had a few (indirect) onlineexchanges. FunnyJunk removed some, but not all, of The Oatmealâ(TM)s comics, as detailed in a follow-up blog post by The Oatmeal.

Presumably this taking down of content was as a result of it being pointed out at the very least (where I assumed it was due to a takedown request). Not a formal (DMCA) takedown request, by any means, of course.

Re:Nice Op-Ed.. err i mean Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are you kidding?

FJ are blatantly IP trolls. (who are abusing a product THEY DON'T EVEN OWN!)
We take the piss out of them on /. all the time. Where have you been?

A little better punctuation would go a long way.

[vjlen]

The quoted text from Carreon is too long and you get the feeling someone fell asleep writing it. I re-read it a second time, imagining better formatting and it read better, IMO.

Class action...

[beaverdownunder]

This has class action written all over it. Everyone ripped off by FunnyJunk should join it, and bury that f**cker so deep that his bones will only be exposed for a brief millisecond when a supernova Sun eventually envelopes the Earth.

Re:Class action...

[mumblestheclown]

what about TPB? class action too, by all rightsholders? remember the millions of ad revenue that pirate bay has gotten for playing the same two step.

Re:Class action...

[Russ1642]

The Sun isn't going to go supernova at the end of its life. Too bad. Would have been cool.

Re:Class action...

[Jeng]

Those involved have a better chance of getting a good settlement if they don't go the give all the money to the attorney route of a class action suit.

dumb fuck

[Legion303]

"You can't encourage people to [...] associate me with incompetence with stupidity, and douchebaggery."

No, that was all you. You vomit-smeared, feckless pile of yak shit.

Re:dumb fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

"You can't encourage people to [...] associate me with incompetence with stupidity, and douchebaggery."

No, that was all you. You vomit-smeared, feckless pile of yak shit.

Oh, great.

Now I've got the lawyer for the Emetophile Anti-Defamation League on line 1, someone representing People Utterly Bereft of Feck on Line 2, and a very angry yak on Line 3!

Funkyjunk sues own lawyer now

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the Funkyjunk's Lawyer is now causing problems for Funkyjunk, Funkeyjunk needs to add his lawyer to the lawsuit.

Please Help Me Through Demonstration

[eldavojohn]

The quoted text from Carreon is too long and you get the feeling someone fell asleep writing it. I re-read it a second time, imagining better formatting and it read better, IMO.

So help me out here, can you show me what you mean? I basically grabbed those quotes from the two news articles where he gave interviews. I'm not one to change the language, punctuation or grammar of what someone is quoted as saying from a reputable news source. Please, if you want to help me, tell me what I was supposed to do with the quote in this article:

“So someone takes one of my letters and takes it apart. That doesn’t mean you can just declare netwar, that doesn’t mean you can encourage people to hack my website, to brute force my WordPress installation so I have to change my password. You can’t encourage people to violate my trademark and violate my twitter name and associate me with incompetence with stupidity, and douchebaggery,” he says. “And if that’s where the world is going I will fight with every ounce of force in this 5’11 180 pound frame against it. I’ve got the energy, and I’ve got the time.”

That's how it appears in Forbes and it's the entire basis for his lawsuit so I thought it was important. I took his words and left Forbes' interjections because that's their work and also when you're writing a summary it should be concise so I remove the "he said" and "she wrote" pieces.

I'm willing to learn and get better at this. It's really hard when people just say "You're a 13 year old girl, you're illiterate and other people's quotes are too long." Any helpful suggestions are greatly appreciated -- especially when they're more constructive than name calling.

Re:Please Help Me Through Demonstration

[Internal Modem]

Where in the summary did you provide any context for the news? You are not writing about a feud between well-known characters such as Steve Ballmer and Sergey Brin. There is no reason we should know who these people are and care about this issue solely based on your summary. Aside from the players, the issue being argued isn't clear, and the summary devolves into a he said, she said ramble.

Re:Please Help Me Through Demonstration

[PCM2]

Please, if you want to help me, tell me what I was supposed to do with the quote in this article.

That's obvious. Don't use it. It's not a quote that's suitable for reprinting. Paraphrase, in as few words as possible. If /. readers don't believe you, they have the link and they can read for themselves.

As far as Forbes being "a reputable news source," you should have done your homework and noticed that Dave Thier is a freelance "contributor" to a Forbes blog, not to the magazine. Blogs are generally given less rigorous editorial treatment than news articles. You don't need to take everything written as gospel, punctuation, capitalization and all.

Also, skip all the "well it appears," "speaking of," "one more detail," etc. All of these phrases are totally superfluous. All they do is add words to the summary.

And kill the adverbs. Nobody cares whether you think the details are "juicy," just like nobody cares whether you think The Oatmeal's lawyer is "fully competent" (are you a lawyer yourself?). What's more, the overall sarcastic tone ("he only garnered 900 percent of his goal") doesn't help your case much, either.

Finally, it is incumbent upon you, as submitter, to explain what the story is about. Your summary starts with, "You may recall the story last week..." Sorry, no. I don't. What now? I'm afraid your summary leaves me totally in the dark as to who the players are and who did what to whom.

In short, this is meant to be a summary of a news story, not a post on your personal blog.

Re:Please Help Me Through Demonstration

[Plombo]

Try the first line of the summary: "You may recall from last week the news item concerning FunnyJunk's extortion ..."

The meaning of that is "this is a continuation of a story that has been posted recently on Slashdot, and if you missed the earlier story, you might want to read up on it for context." That's why he included a link to the previous Slashdot post.

Re:Please Help Me Through Demonstration

[evanism]

It was a little hard to read... But the criticism isn't too harsh, at least for /. !

Yep, You Are That 13 Year Old Girl....

[macraig]

Howzabout you start by changing both the title and text to correctly state that it's Charles Carreon the private citizen who happens to be a lawyer who is suing The Oatmeal, and not Charles Carreon the lawyer acting on behalf of client FunnyJunk? TFA does not report that FunnyJunk is suing Inman, whether that happens eventually or not. Hell, I didn't even have to read your summary or TFA to know the title was misleading.

Boy, you musta had one helluva drunken debauched weekend. I've never seen you produce text this incoherent and just plain wrong here before (though I'm sure someone else who has been obsessively scrutinizing you for years will now pop in and correct me with Slashdot citations).

Re:Yep, You Are That 13 Year Old Girl....

[John Bresnahan]

Howzabout you start by changing both the title and text to correctly state that it's Charles Carreon the private citizen who happens to be a lawyer who is suing The Oatmeal, and not Charles Carreon the lawyer acting on behalf of client FunnyJunk?

I wonder if Carreon is still representing FJ? That would seem to be an obvious conflict of interest to me (but IANAL).

Re:Yep, You Are That 13 Year Old Girl....

[macraig]

... (but IANAL).

I'm not one of those critters, either, just someone whose editorial aptitudes shouldn't be wasted here. If I were the owner of FunnyJunk, I'd have already retained another lawyer and kicked Carreon to the curb before this occurred... but perhaps that's just me? Of course if I really were the owner of FunnyJunk I'd likely also be just as unprincipled and sociopathic as my lawyer, in which case I'd be having a beer with Carreon and commiserating about our respective "unjustified" persecutions.

mod parent down !!!

[lemur3]

Yeah the summary is poorly written..

BUT I AGREE WITH IT!!!

I thought that Carreon was the lawyer?

[mstra]

Pretty sure Charles ("Chaz") Carreon is the lawyer that FunnyJunk hired, whereas the summary states he is the owner of FJ. This is kind of a different spin on the story so it should be corrected.

No.

[JustAnotherIdiot]

You can't encourage people to ... associate me with incompetence with stupidity, and douchebaggery.

No dude, you did that on your own.

Here it is: the final nail in Slashdot's coffin

[macraig]

As if our resident SEO spammer wasn't writing on the wall enough, now we have here a well-known rather high-profile regular who submits an article for publishing after having failed to even read the article he's referenced correctly or fully, producing BOTH a misleading summary AND title... AND it gets approved.

Slashdot is dead, long live... Google+?

Re:Here it is: the final nail in Slashdot's coffin

[macraig]

FYI, vapid whining about limited title space aside, here's a competent example of how it's done (for the exact same news quoting the same sources).

Re:Here it is: the final nail in Slashdot's coffin

[Anonymous Coward]

So how many "final nails" does that make now?

The judges can go home now!

[Anonymous Coward]

Child porn. FunnyJunk. FBI. End of story. Simple, really!

Re:Nice Op-Ed.. err i mean Summary

[Molt]

Slashdot doesn't aim to present stories in an objective way, witness the classic "Linux yay! Windows boo!" stories of old, or the more recent "RIAA killed my hamster". It really is a giant opinion section.

This case has some good potential

[Anonymous Coward]

This case has some good potential.

With any luck Carreon will succeed in making a complete ass of himself in the Federal Court System, and get disbarred from practicing law anywhere in the US.

Be careful

[yoctology]

This Slashdot article might be construed as incitement to incite.

And throughout the whole kingdom of the internet

[tehcyder]

Not a fuck was given.

Time for FunnyJunk to sue its lawyer?

[nweaver]

It appears (we don't have the complaint yet) that Carreon is representing JUST himself in this.

Which means it is not FunnyJunk suing, but seemingly crazy lawyer suing.

Which makes me wonder if now FunnyJunk needs to sue its own lawyer.

Its clear that this behavior reflects negatively on Carreon's client, but Carreon, if he is indeed purely Pro Se (he's his own and the only lawyer), is not actually acting on his client's behalf and is acting without his client's authorization, in ways which are damaging his client's reputation.

Re:Time for FunnyJunk to sue its lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. Carreon has posted the full text of his complaint on his website. The Slashdot summary and headline are flat out wrong, and the dozen or so self-referential links in the summary are confusing and misleading. FunnyJunk isn't suing anyone, and has anything to do with the case. Carreon is a lawyer who once did some work for FunnyJunk, but he is now representing himself is a case that he's filed on his own behalf. Carreon is suing The Oatmeal and a bunch of charitable organizations. Funnyjunk isn't suing anyone.

It's pretty clear to me that Carreon has a few screws loose.

Of course, fighting with a crazy lawyer in a courtroom is like wrestling with a crazy alligator in the swamp. That alligator is trying to take a piece of you, and if you're not careful he's going to get it.

Re:Time for FunnyJunk to sue its lawyer?

[mungtor]

If FunnyJunk isn't suing anyone, why does Carreon's letter ask for $20,000 payable to FunnyJunk, LLC? At least the version posted on The Oatmeal does.

Re:Time for FunnyJunk to sue its lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's what's going on:

1) FunnyJunk and The Oatmeal got into a slapfight over content
2) FunnyJunk hired a lawyer, Charles Carreon, to send a nasty letter to The Oatmeal
3) The Oatmeal mocked FunnyJunk and the lawyer Charles Carreon
4) Charles Carreon got mad, and has filed a lawsuit on his own behalf against The Oatmeal. FunnyJunk is not involved in the lawsuit

I'm not a layer, but I've seen people pretend to be lawyers on TV, and here's a piece of legal advice that I feel confident giving: if you are a lawyer who has been hired by Party A to write a cease-and-desist letter to Party B, then you probably should think carefully before suing Party B on your own behalf because they openly mocked your cease-and-desist letter on the internet. You almost certainly have a professional responsibility to preserve the reputation of your former client Party A, and filing your own lawsuits against Party B is fraught with legal peril.

And if, after careful consideration, you do decide to sue anyhow, then you probably shouldn't treat the lawsuit as a marketing opportunity and start giving interviews to reporters from Forbes.

I don't know any of the parties to this case, but my guess is that Charles Carreon is batshit insane. This guy is a lawyer who has been involved in some high-profile internet lawsuits in the past, and I bet he knows other lawyers who have been involved in high-profile internet lawsuits in the past. The fact that he's representing himself Pro Se, instead of retaining one of the many lawyers he must know, makes me suspect that everyone he has ever dealt with professionally won't deal with him. Because he's insane.

Re:Time for FunnyJunk to sue its lawyer?

[a90Tj2P7]

Related but nonetheless separate issues. Conflict A was that FunnyJunk had Carreon inform The Oatmeal that they were threatening to sue. Conflict B is that Carreon is suing Inman because he believes The Oatmeal incited attacks against him personally (defamation, hacking) for his involvement in Conflict A.

To make the GP clearer, this development has nothing to do with FunnyJunk suing anyone.

Re:Let's Really Fix that Headline!

[macraig]

There are ample bytes allowed in Slashdot titles to allow at least a LESS misleading title for this summary. I'm not going to dissect the summary in detail, because that was Samzenpus' job, not mine. There's blame to spare on this one.

"brute force my WordPress installation "

[rickb928]

Ok, if you're using Wordpress, your expectations of security are without foundation. Password or not, Wordpress is not what I would use even if I weren't pissing people off by the thousands.

Re:"brute force my WordPress installation "

[Eponymous Hero]

i laughed so hard i cried. what a tard.

Best lawyer since Orly Taitz.

[MAXOMENOS]

Between the two of them, they make a compelling case for there being too many law schools.

Tomorrow's news

[telekon]

You may recall from last week the news item concerning FunnyJunk's extortion ...

Charles Carreon has filed suit in California court against Slashdot, alleging that an article appearing on the site defamed him by characterizing his lawsuit agains The Oatmeal as "extortion."

When reached for comment, Carreon stated, "They like to hide behind this claim that their content is all user-generated, but that certainly doesn't obviate their responsibility to... oh, fuck."

Re:Nice Op-Ed.. err i mean Summary

[flimflammer]

Charles Carreon, is that you?

No he didn't...

[nweaver]

Read the Oatmeal's lawyer's response. Its basically:

"You have no leg to stand on. Go away. But if you don't, know that a: The internet doesn't like this, you have been warned and b: Uhh, you never met the criteria needed for a DMCA safe-harbor defense. You don't want to start something here"

These guys don't need any help

[stox]

"You can't encourage people to......associate me with incompetence with stupidity, and douchebaggery."

Nope, they seem to be doing an awesome job of doing that themselves.

Classy guy...

[Anonymous Coward]

So Charles runs a few websites one of which is www.american-buddha.com which is interesting to say the least

Whole Different Level of Lawyering

[Koreantoast]

One would think that organizations as large as NWF and ACS have their own in-house legal teams as well as powerful law firms on retainer who, just because of the level of money they operate with, are used to battling much larger and more dangerous legal threats than these jokers. Carreon may have just picked a fight with entities possessing legal firepower and political capital far beyond what he's capable of battling against, especially for a bs case like this.

Re:Whole Different Level of Lawyering

[Anonymous Coward]

Too true, and what Funnyjunk will quickly learn from those lawyers is that copyright infringements have to be pursued consistently, or a court will deny you any such claim in the future. They will respond with "why this time? why now? why not before? logically, this particular suit is not motivated by copyright protection" and simply give away his ability to control the profit power of his original material. Inman *had* to stick to his guns or give up what he does entirely.

Re:Slashdot hypocricy, Chapter MXMLVICIMWHATEVER

[Lithdren]

I see this complaint a lot, both here and other places, about 'hypocricy' of the users of a site.

I always wonder what is moving through that brain of yours. Yes, some users would jump at the chance to bash the RIAA in your example above, while other users would jump to the defense of TheOatmeal in this example.

That's not hypocricy, thats two different sets of users voicing opinions on an open forum. Because of the type of people a site like this brings in, you'll have a lot of people who hate the RIAA. And you'll have a lot of people who support someone like TheOatmeal in this situation. It doesn't mean its the same people however.

Its all togeather possible you have two subcultures that dont cross often, though im sure they exist. Hypocricy is owned on a personal level, you cant blame the entire site for it unless you're a fool.

Thats all I wanted to say, back to tilting at windmills as you please.

using the word "cyber"

[Anonymous Coward]

willusingtheprefixcybermakemelooklikeanidiot.com

Re:Slashdot hypocricy, Chapter MXMLVICIMWHATEVER

[Anonymous Coward]

TPB doesn't host files. the comics from oatmeal et al are all hosted on funnyjunk. Pretty different, you dick.

Conflict of interest?

[dex22]

If Carreon sues Inman, doesn't he now have a conflict of interest that prevents him from representing FunnyJunk against Inman?

Re:Conflict of interest?

[theNAM666]

No. That's not a conflict of interest, that's a coincidence of interest.

Re:Conflict of interest?

[dex22]

No, it's not.

Carreon is suing the charities benefitting from the fundraiser - a deeply unpopular move bound to bring negative publicity, and quite likely against the wishes of FunnyJunk. FunnyJunk may take the view that this action is deeply harmful to their reputation.

The problem with owning an attack dog is that it might bite somebody, when all you want is a deterrent.

Re:Conflict of interest?

[theNAM666]

>FunnyJunk may take the view that this action is deeply harmful to their reputation.

They may, but that has little to do with conflict of interest as it is defined in the Rules of Evidence or various Bar Association's ethics rules. (Note: I'm a member of a State Bar Assn.). (This post does not constitute legal advice or an attorney-client relationship, etc).

That's still evidence of stupidity.

[Max Threshold]

Negative publicity is only good if it's only viewed as negative by people who are not your customers or potential customers. Negative publicity that is viewed as negative by just about everyone is, well, negative.

Re:Nice Op-Ed.. err i mean Summary

[mcgrew]

Now to Godwin the thread...

Slashdot posts a story about the horrors of the holocaust, and lemur3 says

Whats with the blatently biased summary ? [sic] is [sic] slashdot even gonna pretend that they can talk about stuff like this without such stuff ? [sic] Whether youre [sic] a person who 'supports' one side or the other on this or not.. I'd imagine that this is a thing that belongs in some kind of 'opinion' section.

Yes, very exagerated, but you get the point. FunnyJunk is clearly the bad guy here, I don't see how anyone could come to any other opinion. Since you seem to think there are two sides to every story, how about giving us the other side instead of just bashing slashdot?

Original complaint ...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the first time that I see the words "Fuck off" printed in big red letters in a complaint ... I think that's what the judge should anwser to Carreon

http://charlescarreon.com/Carreon.v.Inman.Gov.Code.25559.Redacted.pdf

Charles Carreon seems to be a hypocrite

[jppiiroinen]

At least accordingly to this blog post [1], the same person who thinks that a cartoon having no real persons in it [2] is offensive, has published pictures of former president having sex [3] on his own website [4], which Charles and Tara Carreon maintains.

So I would see Charles Carreon as a definition of hypocrite in this context, by publishing pictures of sexual nature with real people in them and judging others because they use freedom of speech and create art.

[1] http://www.popehat.com/2012/06/17/the-oatmeal-v-funnyjunk-part-iv-charles-carreon-sues-everybody/
[2] http://www.indiegogo.com/bearlovegood
[3] http://www.american-buddha.com/mondo.sceptre.htm
[4] http://www.american-buddha.com/what_is_buddhism.htm

Re:Let's Really Fix that Headline!

[Alt-F7]

There, that is correct! Seriously, dude, for the sake of brevity can I catch a break? Trust me, I've produced much more incorrect shit than this but you only get so many characters in the title.

Leaving out some details because of character limitations is one thing, but the headline is just plain wrong. I don't know what the character limit is, but based on another of today's headline's (about the Canadian DMCA) it is at least 80 characters:

Funnyjunk's lawyer sues owner of The Oatmeal for "Incitement to Cyber-Vandalism"

How fucking hard is that?

Hey you guys...

[dhaines]

Go fuck with Charles Carreon's website.

There, I've done more to "incite cyber-vandalism" than Inman has.

Re:Nice Op-Ed.. err i mean Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, very exagerated, but you get the point. FunnyJunk is clearly the bad guy here, I don't see how anyone could come to any other opinion. Since you seem to think there are two sides to every story, how about giving us the other side instead of just bashing slashdot?

FunnyJunk isn't the bad guy, because FunnyJunk isn't involved in the lawsuit at all. A lawyer who once represented FunnyJunk and sex.com has filed a lawsuit on his own behalf. FunnyJunk isn't suing anyone.

The Slashdot summary is flat out wrong. And I'm not saying it's wrong in the same sense as your eight-year-old view of morality, where if FunnyJunk isn't the bad guy, then The Oatmeal must be the bad guy, because you think there are exactly two sides to every discussion, and someone is always wrong. I'm saying that it's wrong because the core statements presented in the summary are factually incorrect.

Re:Slashdot hypocricy, Chapter MXMLVICIMWHATEVER

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see what The Pirate Bay (which, as you apparently wanted to overlook, does not host any of the content) has to do with FunnyJunk harassing and extorting the producer of content that it has ripped off.

The selective reading for some Slashdot readers and selective rationalizations that lead to such posting is staggering in its stupidity.

Speaking of Douchebaggery

[Anonymous Coward]

LanMan04 joins Charles Carreon ...

Re:Slashdot hypocricy, Chapter MXMLVICIMWHATEVER

[Anonymous Coward]

TPB didn't host the content, FJ does.

time for a PANDA SMACKDOWN!

[Thud457]

FJ really is stupid to try taking on WWF. WWF sued WWF for using the WWF trademark. They don't give a shit.

Irony.

[Anonymous Coward]

It tickles me that a site that basically steals content the same way ebaumsworld did is suing anyone over anything.

You could also just, you know, tell the truth

[Sycraft-fu]

Rather than trying to make up false analogies to stir people up.

Funnyjunk is an aggregation site, comics in this case, that takes user submitted content and hosts it. TheOatmeal is an online comics site for original material made by Mathew Inman. They are provided for free, without geographic restriction, with no ads other than for his own products (he makes money via selling prints, shirts, and so on).

Inman discovered Funnyjunk had a bunch of his comics on it about a year ago and found that they weren't good about taking them down. He wrote a blog post (http://theoatmeal.com/blog/funnyjunk) about it, asking his viewers what they thought he ought to do, if he should send them a C&D, since they didn't seem to respond to takedowns and so on. He did not in fact go after them, just wrote a post talking about how they operated and musing as to what he should do.

Funny Junk noticed this, and threatened to sue him (http://theoatmeal.com/blog/funnyjunk_letter) to which he responded in a goofy style. That has all lead to this current situation.

So really, no need for false analogies, no need to try and stir people up, no need to try and pretend like there is some special "two sides" way of viewing it, you can just present the story.

/. was never good

[Anonymous Coward]

/. is all nerdrage and the trolls that feed them.

Back in the good old days there used to be a little "news for nerds"[*] in there, too.


[*] yes, I know, that was old even then, but when I went back to find it, I saw that he had ported MINIX to it, and thought that was cool.

Tortious Interference With Contract

[MarkvW]

Everybody who gave money to the cartoonist, gave it to him with the understanding that he would give that money to charity. That is a contract between the donor and the cartoonist.

Is Mr. Funkyjunk unlawfully trying to interfere with that perfectly lawful contract?

Every donor might have a case against Mr. Funkyjunk for tortious interference with contract--in THEIR home state, not Mr. Funkyjunk's. And Mr. Funkyjunk could not make it go away by simply dismissing his case. They could insist on getting their damates (filing fees, costs, etc.) against Mr. Funkyjunk.

That would be SO beautiful.

Re:Tortious Interference With Contract

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny that you mention that, because I am preparing papers against Mr. Carreon for just that, on behalf of a group of donors in my state.

Included is a request for subpoena to compel Mr. Carreon to appear in our jurisdiction (at his expense, of course) to be deposed in the matter.

Re:Tortious Interference With Contract

[MarkvW]

That is SO FUCKING AWESOME!!!

Please keep us posted!

SLAPP

[MarkvW]

And Mr. Funkyjunk had better hope that his state does not have a SLAPP statute!

Is anyone on FJ's side?

[Sebastopol]

I haven't seen anyone take FJ's side in this. Just curious if there is even a slightly rational argument that can be made here from FJ's side.

I don't think there is, no matter how I look at it, I think FJ is a lame site, and is being used by lawyer to make some quick $$$ or drive up clicks, but I'm always suspicious enough to want to see both sides objectively.

Re:Let's Really Fix that Headline!

[a90Tj2P7]

Simplifying is one thing, but miscrediting (or, in this case, mis-blaming) a person/organization is another. Saying FunnyJunk is suing The Oatmeal isn't the same thing as saying something that makes it clear Carreon is suing The Oatmeal personally. Maybe "Lawyer Sues The Oatmeal Over FunnyJunk Threat Reactions". You don't want to misstate who the story is about or who took what action.

"forefront of a lot of technical development"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Carreon says, in the interview, he's "very fortunate to be at the forefront of a lot of technical development"; I guess that means perhaps he no longer wants to go back to the days of dialup. (Sadly, The Grauniad removed his wife's rant-tastic comment on an article about the case, but some replies quote some of the better bits.)

Eleven Lessons of War

[midgetpoker]

In The Fog of War, Robert S McNamara (the eighth Secretary of Defense for the USA) commented: "Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning." "If we had followed that rule in Vietnam, we wouldn't have been there. None of our allies supported us. Not Japan, not Germany, not Britain or France. If we can't persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we'd better reexamine our reasoning." Given this lawyer has suddenly discovered a giant groundswell of opposition to a war he unilaterally started and which presumably has few people rushing to his cause, perhaps it's time to reevaluate his reasoning and perhaps discover that what he's decided is the right course of action is no longer appropriate for a world which has moved on.

"Incitement to cyber-vandalism"

[Culture20]

Reminds me of the the advice regarding when a SO starts to think you're cheating out of the blue: they're probably cheating and are either projecting or assume you would be cheating too. Funnyjunk apparently assumes cyber-vandalism incitement is normal operating procedure.

Re:Nice Op-Ed.. err i mean Summary

[Johann Lau]

"Whats with the blatently biased summary ?"

It's, uhm, reader submitted?

Like, if you wanted to give it a different spin, you totally had (and still might have) the chance, yay!

Yes!

[IBitOBear]

Everyone who has ever felt "wrongd on the internet" should contat this man and tell him their story. Not as harassment but as object lesson. Explain to him his doom in ways both polite and emphatic. Re-tell him his fate. Convince him to take your case on a you-pay-only-if-we-win terms.

Let him -be- the go-to guy he desires to be. 8-)

What are the odds...

[Kaenneth]

That the attorney just drumming up rage to incite contributions to benefit the charities.

I'd call my own mother a bear molester if it could raise $100k+ for a good cause.

Re:What are the odds...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking something similar...
If this whole thing was a story I was writing, the ideal end would be for the reader to find out that this whole ruccus was a con-trick orchestrated and planned by theoatmeal, funnyjunk and a few lawyers to exploit the Streisand-effect and the predictability of us people on the internet and use it to drive up traffic to oatmeal and funnyjunk - and yes and why not even raise some money for charity...

California

[IBitOBear]

California has the -best- SLAPP statute. Funny thing is that CC chose the venue while he himselve is in Tuscon and Inman is in Washington State. He's actually pivoting his lawsuit not on Innman but on the business location of Indegogo and -their- terms of service in the click-through agreement that Innman must have agreed to.

(He also talks about "Does 1 through 5" and "Does 1 through 100" in the intro but only then mentions "Doe 1" in the text. Its all quite badly done even for being a bad idea.)

He's really not a good lawyer.

Re:Slashdot hypocricy, Chapter MXMLVICIMWHATEVER

[sir-gold]

The difference is that the oatmeal doesn't have a full-time team of lobbists wining and dining politicians 24/7 in order to get the laws changed in their favor

Also, The RIAA has never actually sued the pirate bay directly, all they have ever done is sue ISPs in other counties to have thepiratebay blocked.

It's not hypocrisy if you ignore the legal issues and always root for the underdog

Naw, you just fold the LLC

[rsilvergun]

and form a new company after gutting the old one via "consultation fees". Corporations are only people when privileges are discussed, not penalties.

FunnyJunk's Lawyer != FunnyJunk's Owner/Admin

[Anonymous Coward]

Charles Carreon is only their Lawyer.

Will funnyjunk survive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Never heard of them, don't care to visit the site.

The real question is: Will the funnyjunk site survive this?

How many small time internet sites who make their money on ads alone can survive a serious lawsuit?

Re:Slashdot hypocricy, Chapter MXMLVICIMWHATEVER

[Anonymous Coward]

well, if the RIAA gave away their content for free they would probably be a lot more popular.

Re:Slashdot hypocricy, Chapter MXMLVICIMWHATEVER

[Dan541]

Also the Pirate Bay isn't claiming authorship over the content. Funny Junk photo shopping out credits is a clear attempt at denying attribution.

It seems the summary is incorrect.

[hellop2]

Where it says "Charles Carreon [...] first incited all of his users to harass The Oatmeal anyway"

Since in this link the Oatmeal guy asks *if* he should send a C&D. Then at the bottom it seems to suggest contact (DOSing?) the other guy: "I felt I had to say something about what they're doing. Perhaps you should too".

So, maybe funnyjunk got crowd-DOSed first?