THE INTERNET IS SERIOUS BUSINESS

I see you haven't noticed the latest part in this saga.
They've found a way to make it so very much worse: they're trying to get the fundraiser shut down

I'd be tempted to feel some sympathy for Carreon, save for the fact that the interview closes with this: "He also explains that he believes Inman's fundraiser to be a violation of the terms of service of IndieGoGo, the website being used to collect donations, and has sent a request to disable the fundraising campaign." It's hard to feel sympathy for someone who wants to take over $100,000 away from cancer charities because of a supposed violation of someone else's fine-print.

http://boingboing.net/2012/06/12/funnyjunks-bewildered-lawyer.html

When in a hole, you really should stop digging!

#sendmemoney

I use stumbleupon a lot, and it frequently "stumbles" onto content that I know isn't credited to its creator. It is a really lucrative business right now, to host humorous content and not credit the creator. I have seen Inman's comics on numerous websites with a "XXXXX.com" logo on it, with no mention of theoatmeal.com, and I feel for him.

While I cannot say for sure whether or not I ever saw any of Inman's content specifically on funnyjunk's site, thoroughly enjoy every tiny bit of comic he produces and intend to donate to help the bears (btw, are they even in any trouble? Who Fs with a bear?) and fight cancer.

shame this article's so flippant, I was hoping to read a bit more analysis of the case and the implications for content creators and aggregator sites on the internet.

If you're going to chase my demographic, Graun. You could do a better job of it :D

There are a series of better stories about this. Forbes did a good one - http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/06/12/the-oatmeal-raises-100k-for-charity-in-response-to-funnyjunk-lawsuit/

And TorrentFreak did a good one by making a comparison between this story and music piracy.

http://torrentfreak.com/comedy-copyright-battle-raises-seriously-funny-issues-120612/

Cheers, m'dear

Good article. And good point about the difference in how long it would take to get the money through the legal system. Not all the reasons law takes a long time are good ones - most lawyers bill by the hour, after all...

This lawyer is doing a splendid job of making sure no web based work ever comes his way again.
As for his attempt to freeze the donations, it's like Regretsy v. Paypal never happened....

Carreon seems the kind of lawyer who would ask for clemency for Lizzie Borden on the grounds that she was an orphan

A good cause on this occasion, but quite scary how easily online lynch mobs can gather.

Also, 'Carreon' seems too apt to be true.

You cant really compare fund raising with suing someone. And like Arwa says: 'The niceties of due process are not, it seems, something that people tend to respect when left to their own devices.'

Erm, the fact that the article contains a link to the same page makes me think the author might have noticed this part in the saga. Agree that Carreon should probably stop digging, though!

You claim The Oatmeal's strategy is brilliantly successful, but what exactly have they achieved? They're still being sued. I guess bears have some money, but that's it.

Forbes...didn't they do an article about Tesla recently?

The bears (or at least the bears' self-appointed supporters) do have some money, but we can't know for sure what would have happened to the money without BearLove.

We do know that the value of the money was created as always by people working, not by the fund-raising campaign, and that without the fund-raising the money would have been otherwise used, probably partly for other worthy causes, and partly for other things that people value.

The seems to be a tendency for fund-raising to be promoted as if it creates the value of the funds from nothing, which is particularly annoying when people fundraise by doing something like skydiving and then expect you to be grateful.

A lawyer called Carreon must be an open goal, but I still can't score, dammit!

This is pretty hopeless journalism I would say - don't give up the day job !

Yes, bears are in trouble. First, polar bears are losing their habitat; second, bears in India, Pakistan, Eastern European countries are captured as cubs, after killing the mother, and through torture used as dancing bears or even worse--used for bear baiting (this is truly horrific). Bears are very much in trouble. And, third, in China they are kept in tiny cages while they are tapped for bile--just so cruel it is hard to believe. There are many rescue groups for bears. Bears even have their paws cut off one by one for 'bear paw soup'--the treatment of bears worldwide is so bad it is sickening.

Hmmm ... a British reporter calling for the downfall of the American Justice System. What can that mean?

This is pretty hopeless journalism I would say - don't give up the day job !

But these communities can also get it wrong. In one example of misguided vigilantism, a Redditor urged his peers to mobilise against a user claiming to shave her head for cancer as it was "obviously a huge scam". It turned out, however, that there was no scam, just a smiley St Lawrence senior left somewhat traumatised by the online vitriol unleashed against her

Traumatised? One morning, the mobilisation commenced and people went over the top, resulting in her website being shut down after she was reported for fraud. By the next day, it had been established she was for real and the “Redditor” changed his tune, claiming she may well be legit. She carried on with her fund raising and probably got more than she would have otherwise.
All done and dusted, swiftly. People make mistakes, they go over the top, they learn better, things move on. Sod law suites, bans, prosecutions, and all that sorry stupid stuff.

The wildness of the ‘net is also a protected wild like no other wild before: it’s all virtual! Posts on websites can rant and rave all they like but it’s when a few fools act as if it’s identical to real-life ranting that nasty stuff may emerge in real life.
To treat it like it’s identical to real life is to miss the opportunity it offers to revitalise humanity. Unleash people’s potential for expression, communication, learning, creativity, giving, etc.

Bearing these cautionary tales in mind, then, back to The Oatmeal inquiry, where attorney Charles Carreon is in a state of bewilderment over Inman's "style of responding to a legal threat". What happens next is anybody's guess but it is seems likely that it will make, if not an ass, a Kodiak bear of the law. And that, perhaps, is no bad thing.

If only far more publishers — virtual world and real world — would adopt something like this kind of contempt for laws so ill-suited (and so reactionary) to this new age.
How about it, Guardian?
If the law is so often an ass, treat it like one, for God’s sake!
If only a few publishers of weight agreed to defy laws that restricted expression, those laws would swiftly become unenforceable. If someone throws a libel suit at you, ignore it! Refuse to respond, and let them do their worse.
If a judge slaps a ban on prior disclosure, disclose!
Publish and be damned.

quite scary how easily online lynch mobs can gather.

Where it becomes “scary” (oo-err) is when it spills over into offline hostility: when it becomes REAL. When physical/material effects follow (which too often means when law enforcement butt their ugly mugs into things).

The best thing about the ’net is it’s virtuality, and the tremendous freedom of expression that offers.

The worst thing about the ’net is that it’s mistaken for reality.

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Fascists defend hate speech as free speech. Let me repeat: fascists defend hate speech as free speech

They may defend it as speech, which is hard to deny. They may claim it should be allowed, in any society that claims it upholds people’s freedom to speak; again, that’s a no-brainer.
If a society restricts such speech, or any speech, it has failed to uphold free-speech.

Matthew Inman effectly works for the corporations trying to keep intellectual property OUT of the fair use hands of the people

by pointing out how another website is making money from his copyrighted material? IE: by exercising his right to freely speak against what he sees as exploitation?
It’s HIM who’s being threatened with legal action!

If there are laws that allow someone to sue him, when it’s his comics that they were making money off, then society is better off without those laws.

"Matthew Inman effectly works for the corporations trying to keep intellectual property OUT of the fair use hands of the people"

Funny, last I checked the content on The Oatmeal is free, no subscription fee required to read at all. And then there is the fact that The Oatmeal was taken down in protest against SOPA.

"when they don't actually know the real story"

You are the one who does not know the real story. Inman never threatened to sue FunnyJunk, he took issue with the fact his work was published without any credit given to him, with the name The Oatmeal photoshopped out of the comics, while others made money off it. How, exactly, you can accuse him with being in bed with huge corporations who sue people for ridiculous amounts of money over downloading songs is beyond me.

Yours is a naive view of the separation between the online world (where expression is free and easy) and the offline world (where things can hurt). There are many instances which suggest that the freedom of expression offered by the web, which you trumpet as tremendous, can have direct and violent consequences, without offline hostility (Megan Meier, Micaela Strothers, to give two, sad examples). Quite how you would patrol these borders I do not know.

Also, who puts an apostrophe before 'net'?!

Matthew Inman is a Killer Klown from Outer Space

Perceptive and proportionate opening line. Shame your post was all downhill from there.

Posts on websites can rant and rave all they like but it’s when a few fools act as if it’s identical to real-life ranting that nasty stuff may emerge in real life.

Classic blame-the-victim attitude.

I thought the piece was well written and made a lot of sense. Unlike your comment (pretty + hopeless?).

Seriously?? You have to step up and defend your husband on this because he made a bad call and sent an exaggerated threat to a cartoonist that was giving a hard time to a client? I'm surprised he doesn't have his Mom on here telling us what a good boy he is. I had a good laugh and even felt a little sympathy for your husband after the public thrashing he got for his stupid legal move. BUT he then had to go and try to stop the fundraiser. Very poorly done. He really should have run that move past a few of his lawyer friends before he tried that. Total Striesand Effect. If he is half as smart as I have read about (in his past exploits) he will back down and let it go. You rant about what a deplorable person Matthew Inman is and you are allowed to....because of free speech. Should he then hire a lawyer (if he can find someone stupid enough to take the case) to sue you for defamation because of the hateful things you have said? Take your hippy love and let us laugh at ourselves and society as a whole. His "hate speech" as you termed it is directed at everyone. I don't see a problem with that. I know a lot of people like that. Most of them are cantankerous old men, but that still doesn't make it illegal. You and your husband need to let it go. You were wrong to pursue this.

Hey, no argument here. This is mob mentality 101. We are loyal to Inman. That loyalty is being malevolently leveraged to make us THE MOB that is...feeding bears and curing cancer. And making fun of a lawyer.

I'd rather live in a society without law than a society without The Oatmeal.

Classic blame-the-victim attitude.

’Victim”?

the freedom of expression offered by the web, which you trumpet as tremendous, can have direct and violent consequences, without offline hostility (Megan Meier, Micaela Strothers, to give two, sad examples). Quite how you would patrol these borders I do not know

What “borders”? They are different worlds, although people typically conflate them, as so many have rushed to embrace it’s allure and mentally attach themselves to it, like addicts to a drug.
It’s when people’s minds become infected with this ‘net virus (“’net", as distinguished from “net” — which suggests entrapment) that they allow their online activities to spill over into their REAL world.
Megan and Micaela — two mentally disturbed teenagers — killed themselves. Megan — under psychiatric care, depressed and suffering ADD — hung herself. To claim that the fake “boyfriend” seeming to turn against her directly lead to her violent terminal self-abuse is absurd; that she may have allowed this online “relationship” to appear “real” to her exemplifies:

The worst thing about the ’net is that it’s mistaken for reality

As for Micaela, she posted false stuff about herself being pregnant and then killed herself while drunk. She had talked of suicide to a friend, so obviously harboured suicidal thoughts. Neither of these cases, particularly the latter, come close to typifying the so called “cyber bullying” contagion (sic) that so many people seem to accept as a fact, when the details of particular cases reveal far more complex pictures of what actually happened.
It’s in the real flesh and blood physical world where stuff actually happens.
People, in their minds, tend to live to a large degree in a realm of words, images and sounds, and mistake these for the reality they refer to and signify. Messages may be mistaken for, or at least taken to indicate, actuality; and the medium is blamed for what may then occur in reality, due to this mental mistake.

The problem is in people’s minds; what their minds make of this made-up internet virtuality.
Carry on patrolling the offline world; and educate people to recognise the difference between on and offline. Realise that it all vanishes when the computer is turned off.

So, your husband’s client makes money out of hosting Inman’s

imagery of assholes, farts, penises, misogyny, sadism, child abuse, animal abuse, and spewing his disgusting hatred for everyone all over the Internet in a juvenile attempt to take our culture down to the lowest level possible

on his website. Then, when Inman voices his disapproval and tells his followers what’s going on, your husband threatens Inman with legal action against him for doing this!
When Inman posts a long list of items from his site that your husband’s client had hosted, that client removes them and then your husband accuses Inman of posting defunct links?!

You associate Inman’s comics with anti-semitic Nazi cartoons; which suggests your husband is defending his client’s right to "publish" and make money out of the equivalent of Nazi-anti-semitic cartoons. You imply that Inman and fascists hate speech should be distinguished from free speech, yet it’s your husband who’s defending his client’s right to freely 'publish” this “hate speech”.

As for what the law says, it seems Inman is more clued in than your lawyer husband, knowing that his “cease and desist” threat to sue is hot-headed hot air, lacking legal basis.
Are you willing to predict that your husband’s client will win this? Or even that there’s any chance in hell that this will ever come to trial?

Do you know the “real story” behind Penguin Books and that e-book pricing case? That Amazon are seeking to monopolise this market like they dominate the “real” book market, by forcing publisher prices down to a level that will put many out of business?
How easy it is for the likes of Google and Amazon to make huge amounts of money out of the work of others. What content did either create? How profuse such product must seem to them, ripe for picking and plucking and selling at rock-bottom prices (until they’ve wiped out the competition, whereupon prices will rocket). But where’s the new stuff to come from, who’s gonna nature new talent, if all the publishers are out of business?
Apple and Penguin are far from saints in this; they of course have their corporate money-making aims. But, if people want “intellectual property” and "fair use" means getting it for next-to-free, then how much more new such works can intelligent people afford the time to produce?

Seems very much like your comment is par for your ordinary course.

Carry on.

WHY ON EARTH DOESN"T THIS ARTICLE LINK TO INMAN'S LETTER, OR DIRECT TO THE CAMPAIGN???
Seriously, this is the worst omission of the important hyperlinks I have ever seen in an article.
Come on Guardian! Get your act together!
For those of you who missed it: the links are here: http://theoatmeal.com/blog/funnyjunk_letter
and here: http://www.indiegogo.com/bearlovegood

"Matthew Inman is a Killer Klown from Outer Space, obsessed with proliferating the imagery of assholes, farts, penises, misogyny, sadism, child abuse, animal abuse, and spewing his disgusting hatred for everyone all over the Internet in a juvenile attempt to take our culture down to the lowest level possible."

- That's defamation. Forget what Inman wrote about Funnjunk. You just said it right there lady.

"Fascists defend hate speech as free speech. Let me repeat: fascists defend hate speech as free speech. If Matthew Inman's hate speech is free speech, then so were all the Nazi cartoons ridiculing Jews. "

Excuse me? Hate speech against who exactly? If you're implying that he is anti-semitic or publishes anti-semitic work, you'd better be prepared to back that up with some pretty hefty evidence lady!

"Matthew Inman effectly works for the corporations trying to keep intellectual property OUT of the fair use hands of the people, corporations like Penguin Books who is being prosecuted by the Department of Justice for conspiring to set e-book prices."

Uh, no. Matthew Inman is an original content creator who has the balls to go it alone and do what he wants to do, and the gift of being funny, intelligent and artistic. If he wants to defend his rights as an author, he's quite within his remit to do so. What you're suggesting is that by sticking up for their copyrights, artists are somehow in league with the Devil, when what you should be doing is realising what it means to be an artist who struggles to make their own work, and their own voice, recognised and understood and valued in the public sphere.

"It is amazing that people are so willing to jump on Matthew Inman's bandwagon and spew blame when they don't actually know the real story, and have no idea what the law says. Screw the law, these people say. Really? You want to live in a society without law? This is mob psychology, and it's not pretty to look at."

Actually, it's pretty cool to watch, and a lot of us do know the law and recognise that you can't defame people in public, like you did at the beginning of this post. Good luck with that by the way.

Tara Carreon folks. Judge for yourself.

Seriously though.

"Matthew Inman is a Killer Klown from Outer Space, obsessed with proliferating the imagery of assholes, farts, penises, misogyny, sadism, child abuse, animal abuse, and spewing his disgusting hatred for everyone all over the Internet in a juvenile attempt to take our culture down to the lowest level possible.” - That's defamation.

Really? Given the content of some of Inman’s work, it would be hard for him to show that this comment damaged his good reputation! And, apart from the descriptive part (from “assholes…[to] animal abuse”, the rest is mere (feeble) opinion.
Accusing her of defamation seems to risk descending to her dire level, especially when what she’s said here is so feeble and won no support here.
She has her right to reply; let’s see if she takes it before the thread closes.

The best response to “defamatory/libellous” comments is comments.

WHY ON EARTH DOESN"T THIS ARTICLE LINK TO INMAN'S LETTER, OR DIRECT TO THE CAMPAIGN??? Seriously, this is the worst omission of the important hyperlinks I have ever seen in an article.

Good point.
It does link to Charles Carreon’s crazy association with a (now ex-) client — the owner of sex.com — which is a must read!
As part payment for representing this client , CC claims it was agreed he (CC) would get a 15% stake in profits from the sex.com porn site (which was then raking in $millions/year)!
But, after only 2 months of payments, CC got cold feet over some of the content, and wanted the more explicit stuff removed. The owner, hardly surprisingly, refused.
So, this lawyer accepts as payment a share in profits from a porn site, the content of which he doesn’t even bother to check out beforehand?!
Would you want this guy representing you?
If this is the kind of person he’s up against, Inman’s contempt and mockery seems well judged. Whether FunnyJunk and CC are well-matched, may remain to be seen.