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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."
Neither can being an "Internet lawyer" with absolutely no understanding of the Streisand Effect.
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
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.
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.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
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 hop Oatmeal countersues that 5'11 180 pound frame prick into oblivion.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
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.
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.
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.
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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?
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
I guess I missed that part... maybe it depends on what you define as 'netwar'
Oh, that. Well, I'm pretty sure he didn't do that so I don't see the relevance.
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?
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.
Somebody violated your twitter? Shocking! Outrageous! Somewhat humorous!
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.)
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
How many submissions/comments and how short/long his UID is doesn't make you more literate than him.
"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.
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.
My work here is dung.
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.
Not a fuck was given.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
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).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
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 /.
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
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"
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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 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
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.
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.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
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.
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.
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.
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.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
And Mr. Funkyjunk had better hope that his state does not have a SLAPP statute!
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.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
But... but what about NewYorkCountryLawyer?
When someone says, "Any fool can see