Funnyjunk threatens to sue TheOatmeal unless they pay 20k.

[Jez]

Remember FunnyJunk? Almost exactly a year ago I published a blog post about my comics being stolen, re-hosted, and monetized on FunnyJunk's website. The owner of the site responded and some of the comics were taken down, He still had a ton of my comics hosted without credit, but the energy it would take to get him to take them down wasn't worth it. I thought the issue was done and over with so I let him be.

A few days ago I was served papers informing me that the owner of FunnyJunk is going to file a federal lawsuit against me unless I pay him $20,000 in damages. You can read the full letter here.

The owner of FunnyJunk hired Charles Carreon, a lawyer who became famous in the 90s after successfully litigating sex.com.
Charles does a bit of modeling too, apparently.

I don't want to get tied up in courtroom nonsense. I don't want to pay more money to my lawyer. Don't you miss the days when I posted 2 comics a week, instead of writing rebuttals to Forbes and dealing with **** like this?

So do I.

I've annotated the letter below as well as outlined how I'm going to deal with this.

http://theoatmeal.com/blog/funnyjunk_letter

tl;dr Funnyjunk lawyer gets butthurt over theoatmeal making fun of their business model, tries to extort 20 grand off the oatmeal, oatmeal sets up donation fund to mock FJ and has already reached 70k.

[Gotrek1966]

Now that's funny

[exe3]

dun dun dunnnnnnnnn.....

[Marius]

That's pretty stupid. The lawyer's whole argument is in ignorance of Google cache.

[Gotrek1966]

Oh we soooo need to be kept up to date on this one.
Going to be an interesting read later on in regards lawyers reply.

[Bicketybam]

tl;dr Funnyjunk lawyer gets butthurt over theoatmeal making fun of their business model, tries to extort 20 grand off the oatmeal, oatmeal sets up donation fund to mock FJ and has already reached 70k.

5 hours later and it is up to $104,000.



http://www.indiegogo.com/bearlovegood

[Jez]

tl;dr Funnyjunk lawyer gets butthurt over theoatmeal making fun of their business model, tries to extort 20 grand off the oatmeal, oatmeal sets up donation fund to mock FJ and has already reached 70k.

5 hours later and it is up to $104,000.



http://www.indiegogo.com/bearlovegood

I just saw that earlier.

Apparently they reached 20k within two hours of going live, absolutely hilarious. Funnyjunk seems like it's almost as bad as ebaumsworld in terms of business model.

[v4moose]

go oatmeal.

i must admit i think it takes some balls to post that kind of retort after receiving teh summons

the due date was yesterday. this should get interesting.

[wayne19540]

Its as if some one is all ways going to "sue" some one for easy money;

If they are going to post any thing then they as I understand must say its copyright protected and must not be used or copied .

[skitzor]

I don't really understand how either funnyjunk or their lawyer saw a case in this.

from my understanding, they are suing for false statements made by the oatmeal. is that correct?

it just seems so backward. funnyjunk steals content, then sues. would oatmeal have a case against funnyjunk?

[Brunius]

It's built on the assumption they won't even check the laws and will simply get scared by the threat of legal action. TPB gets a lot of the same sort of thing.

[DeusIgnis]

http://boingboing.net/2012/06/12/funnyj ... awyer.html
http://boingboing.net/2012/06/14/funnyj ... es-to.html
http://boingboing.net/2012/06/16/funnyj ... reven.html

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201206 ... acks.shtml

http://www.popehat.com/2012/06/12/hey-d ... e-oatmeal/
http://www.popehat.com/2012/06/13/how-d ... -bullying/
http://www.popehat.com/2012/06/15/the-o ... -internet/

http://digitallife.today.msnbc.msn.com/ ... fundraiser


so many lulz

EDIT:
Official letter from the oatmeals lawer
http://www.scribd.com/doc/96850920/Funn ... l-Response

EDIT2:
O sweet irony
http://www.funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures ... s+Oatmeal/

[Kinky__]

Not a big fan of oatmeal but this seems a bit silly.
Gotta wonder if funnyjunk read and appproved the email before it was sent though.
I hope for their sake they didn't

[Jez]

FunnyJunk's lawyer sues American Cancer Society and National Wildlife Federation

[SaNE]

FunnyJunk's lawyer sues American Cancer Society and National Wildlife Federation

Nuff not said.