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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 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.
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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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.
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.
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
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.