Slashdot Mirror
Charles Carreon Drops Case Against the Oatmeal
Dynamoo writes "Charles Carreon has reportedly dropped his lawsuit against the creator of The Oatmeal, Matthew Inman. This bizarre lawsuit (dubbed a SLAPP suit by the EFF) kicked off after a dispute between Inman and FunnyJunk.com which spun rapidly out of control. Perhaps Carreon has seen sense, but it turns out that there might be an even more bizarre twist in this tale."
Kudos to Oatmeal for winning this round, but this fight may not be over. Carreon seems to have shown himself to file odd lawsuits but being a lawyer, he isn't a complete idiot. Note that he dismissed his lawsuits without prejudice, which means that he can file them again at any time. He may just be waiting for the bad PR and public focus to go elsewhere before refiling. But kudos to Mr. Inman in the mean time.
I have never heard of the Oatmeal, but I do know about Barbara Streisand. It makes me wonder if wonder if Charles Carreon has.
Sources say his lawsuit against the cream of wheat will proceed.
For once I wash I had done the more common slashdot action and NOT read the article. How do people manage to become lawyers while maintaining the maturity of a preteen girl? (and by that I reference the ability to hold a meaningless grudge and carry it out to all kinds of extremes)
If you haven't seen the text of the Inman suit against Carreon it is required reading. Someone is going to jail for this one.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
I especially like the way Mrs. FunnyJunk.com rants about how obviously Inman is a murderer, or at least is morally indistinguishable from Jared Lee Loughner (the gunman in the 2011 Tuscon shooting) even if technically he hasn't shot anybody (yet). Because that's NOT defamation of character, unlike ranting about how much FunnyJunk drag their heels on removing copyrighted works, which is the most vile sort of slander imaginable.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Hi, Tara! How are you today?
You cared enough to comment about it though...
The demands of Carreon's initial letter--extortion, in my opinion--ought to be immediately identified as an abuse of power and information asymmetry (again, in my opinion). In a functional legal system, the state bar would review his actions, possibly leading to a revocation of his license.
As a resident of Arizona, I asked that this be looked into at http://www.azbar.org/contactus/contactusform.
I believe such action would go far toward preventing this kind of behavior in the future.
Dance like you're hurt, Love like you need money, and work when somebody's watching.
-Scott Adams
The IRS is a perfect example of. A simple 10% flat tax would remove ALL the loop-holes.
It'd also remove all the definitions and clarity of the current system. What exactly is or is not taxed in this "simple" solution? If I give a gift to my brother-in-law with cancer to cover a hospital bill, does that count as taxable income for him? If so, then I'll just pay his bills directly so he can avoid the tax. If not, then I'll also give a gift to my wife of $everything, so I avoid all my taxes. If there's a limit on what's taxable to try to promote fairness, then I'll complain that it's a needless complication that slants the law in someone else's favor.
Simplicity and fairness are not correlated. No matter how simple or complex the system, there are always people who will abuse it for their own benefit, and there will always be someone who can't understand it. Thus far, the legal system has erred on the side of caution, making laws that are very specific at the risk of making them difficult to understand, and favoring the consistency of precedence over the flexibility of constant reinterpretation. They aren't too hard if you take the time to read and understand them, but most people just want something they can understand in a nutshell and not have to think about.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
My personal (and protected) opinion is that Charles Carreon should lose his law license over this for Barratry immediately, if not sooner. And let him be a lesson to all other lawyers who would consider the same course of action.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
being a lawyer is a noble profession.
Spoken like a true lawyer.
Hmmm... Let's check your blog
i’m a first-year law student
You could have mentioned this little tidbit of information but evidently decided not to. There may be noble lawyers out there (the EFF perhaps) but I would not hasten to include you in that group.
no one likes lawyers until they realize they are at a point in their lives where they need one.
That's te first reason that no one likes lawyers: the legal system is set up so that you need to retain a lawyer, and they are not cheap (Wikipedia: Surveys suggest that fees range from $150 to $1000 per hour when billed hourly). Apparently, justice is not an affordable commodity: it is often cheaper to cave in than to fight, not just in civil cases (settling) but in criminal ones as well (plea bargains). Public defenders are so overworked and underfunded that they cannot realistically do their job and since a consequence of the adversary system is that the side with the better lawyers often wins regardless of merits, lawyers are seen as either thugs or extortionists, depending on the side they are on.
And who do you think perpetuates such a system? Lawyers.
the role of the lawyer overall is to represent their client, zealously and loyally. that's likely the primary reason that the general public dislikes them: they take on the undesirable role of being an advocate for another, and this almost always means that the lawyer will be an adversary to whoever is in opposition to their client.
No, the primary reason that the general public dislikes them is, like I wrote above, the better (read: more expensive) lawyer will likely win regardless of merits in a large percentage of cases. The general public wants justice , not a game inherently biased in favour of those who learned to game the system or can afford to pay somebody to do that for them.
but here's the thing: at one point or another, every single person will find themselves in need of an advocate to protect and ensure his or her legal rights. that remains true whether the client is a hardworking laborer or even one of the vaunted rich CEOs. in the actual world, the system can be lopsided, with wealthy persons being able to afford high-powered lawyers.
Replace "can be" with "is extremely".
In a perfect world, *every* lawyer that practices privately would be required to serve as public defenders similarly to the jury duty of regular citizens (and for similar compensation). A lawyer that tried to avoid that duty or did not perform it *exclusively* and to the best of their abilities would be disbarred on the spot.
Some countries have socialized medicine and yet not a single one seems to have socialized justice. I wonder why.
nevertheless, there ARE lawyers willing to try to ensure that disparity is mitigated, if not eliminated.
[citation desperately needed]
Out of the 760,000 or so practicing lawyers in the US, how many are such valiant defenders of the poor as you paint them to be? (I assume you have data to back up your numbers).
the parent post tries to paint all lawyers as people who have chosen to do evil.
No, they just chose to perpetuate an evil system, and profit handsomely while they're at it.
if anything, the majority of lawyers are in the very business of making the world a better place, by defending the common person or the outcast
Wow, you make lawyers look almost as beneficial to society as payday lenders.
when no one else will.
Because you monopolistic fucks
Ahh, I see that's why we have over 10,000 of pages of the Tax Code. For clarifying that, silly me. What was I thinking. I "forgot" that over-engineering was a good thing. /sarcasm
Yup. It covers everything from plain ol' normal income to how to tax gifts to foreign charities who are charities by American standards but not their home countries, after declaring bankruptcy. This is vitally important stuff to someone working with foreign charities and bankruptcies, but "over-engineering" to most others.
So we should obfuscate the hell out of it so NO ONE can practically follow it. Gotcha.
No, we should have them organized and cross-referenced into a document that can be read in sections, so nobody has to understand the whole thing at once, but can simply refer to the sections they need. You know, something like Title 26...
Right, so you've personally read ALL 20 Volumes of Title 26 which is 13,458 pages of the Tax Code??
No, but I've read the sections that apply to me to understand my tax situation. I'm probably not qualified to tell you your tax situation, but that's what tax preparers are for, whose training is vetted by lawyers who have (collectively) read the whole thing.
If no, then how you do you know you are _following_ the law?
For the exact same reason that I know I'm following California's laws for explosives: they don't apply to me. I've never dealt with explosives in California, and I've never been in the vast majority of situations described in the tax code.
Cognitive dissonance much?
You'll have to forgive me for not seeing the dissonance. Simplicity describes the measure of how detailed a system is, while fairness is a measure of how evenly the rules affect everyone. It's perfectly simple to say "No one under five feet tall may vote in any Presidential election" but it's obviously not fair. On the other hand, a rule of "No one may wear hats in public, except for those for whom hats are medically necessary, or otherwise required by law or an otherwise-legal mandated uniform, unless there is precipitation in excess of the equivalent of one quarter-inch of rainfall per hour, as reported by the National Weather Service" is far more complex, but fair, as it covers everyone equally and does not place undue hardship on any group of people. If the rule were simplified by, for example, removing the "medically necessary" clause, it would be less fair, because it effectively discriminates against those with skin damage or baldness, though it isn't explicitly written against them.
Similarly, a flat 10% tax rate is very simple, but also unfair, because that percentage is the only expense that changes. There are no limits that rent must be under 5% of someone's income, or that groceries are only 15%, or that vehicle maintenance will only cost you 2% of your income annually. There is no flat tax low enough to leave enough money for a family in poverty to feed itself.
A progressive tax is complicated, but much more fair. Each income bracket is assigned a rate that is (ideally) low enough to allow a decent standard of living (or in the case of poverty, not make things any worse), while high enough to cover the government's expenses.
If you were in school and got a 4.0 GPA is it FAIR that you are forced to give a portion of that to someone else? That is precisely what the _existing_ tax code does.
You mean like a group project, where my 4.0 is dependent on my fellow students getting off their ass and working? Yes, it sounds fair, because a part of the group project's lesson is management, so I am partially responsible for the work the others put in. From a different perspective, it's their hard work that lets me earn that 4.0, so it's also fair that we share the grade. I'm not sure how you're relating this to taxes, though.
A
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.