How's everyone feeling about funnyjunk vs the oatmeal?

[Matthew]

I'm sure you guys have heard about this already, but what's everyone thinking?

For those who don't know, the owner of theoatmeal.com sent a message to funnyjunk.com asking him to stop hosting his comics without watermarks on them. The guy from funnyjunk took this poorly and sent a C&D letter to theoatmeal and demanded $20,000 in damages for his claims. theoatmeal then said, "no fuck that. I'm going to raise $20,000, take a photo of it, and send it to you with a drawing of your mother seducing a bear. Then I'm going to donate half to the American Cancer Association and the other half to National Wildlife Federation."

Funnyjunk then decided to sue theoatmeal.com, the website in which his fundraiser was hosted by, and both the American Cancer Association and the National Wildlife Federation.

I doubt many people really are going to take funnyjunk's side, but does anyone think that theoatmeal's response to the C&D letter was a little unjustified? He could have made it less explicit to say the least, though I do support the causes he's donating to. Especially now when he has collected close to $200,000 dollars.

The start of it all
C&D letter with oatmeal's colorful comments
Talking about suing 'n' stuff

some web-comedians / lawyers doing free work for everyone because they're wonderful
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donate if you want, also

 

[VKCA]

Well funnyjunk's stuff is community uploaded isn't it? so it'd be a lot of work to police people for watermarking (or the lack thereof in this case) wouldn't it?
I don't actually know how funnyjunk works though, I'm pretty sure I've never been
Edit>Yeah there's an upload button, so what exactly was the oatmeal trying to accomplish with this? Not that funnyjunk isn't retarded as fuck (community always was, but the creator too apparently if his actions are any judge), but it seems a little pointless. Why not just be happy for the attention?

ahahaha their lawyer

 

[Layell]

As I understand it there was oatmeal stuff on the site that had the original website edited out. This begs the question of what sort of user uploader would upload just about all of the oatmeals comics and remove the logos to stay out of trouble and ideally keep people on fj. So while some of the comics may have been uploaded by users, any with the removed website may have been done by the fj staff.

 

[DM]

I am completely on the side of the Oatmeal on this one, and anyone who understands Copyright law is as well. That attorney is a fucking MORON.

 

[VKCA]

As I understand it there was oatmeal stuff on the site that had the original website edited out. This begs the question of what sort of user uploader would upload just about all of the oatmeals comics and remove the logos to stay out of trouble and ideally keep people on fj. So while some of the comics may have been uploaded by users, any with the removed website may have been done by the fj staff.

hmm yeah that is a bit strange... given any photo hosting/sharing website I've ever been to has literally no users who will go through the trouble of editing out a watermark.

 

[Umbreon Dan]

the weirdest part was the one-year interval between the first time the oatmeal complained about funnyjunk's habits and when funnyjunk decided to sue.

i have no sympathy for funnyjunk. it produces almost no original content, so i really don't care if it dies.

 

[Hipmonlee]

Rare case of supporting the copyright holders in internet copyright lawsuits..

 

[Shiny Mew2]

If I become a lawyer, I'm gonna be ethical and do the opposite of what fj's lawyer did. But, the whole charity is fucking genius. I can't wait to hear what happens when he gets the picture. But yeah, suing the Cancer Foundation and Wildlife foundation is just a dick move.

 

[faint]

when I first heard about it my initial reaction was "PEOPLE STILL USE FUNNYJUNK?" I haven't been on that site since I first discovered the internet.

 

[Fatecrashers]

funnyjunk will not allow you to hotlink to anything on their site, as many smogon users may have already discovered through practice

oh the fucking irony

 

[capefeather]

The FunnyJunk reaction was bizarre, to say the least. I don't frequent either of them (yeah idk why I don't regularly visit theoatmeal.com, I should be ashamed :( ) This is more about theoatmeal's reaction, though. Honestly, it was nothing short of... expected. This is a pretty standard stunt to create a shitstorm and rally the fans and all that. It's pretty much the lawyer's fault for getting involved in something he clearly knew nothing about.

 

[Nastyjungle]

remember when funnyjunk was like just a collection of about 40 pictures and maybe like 5 videos when it was first online

i didnt even know it still existed

 

[Snkz]

i really dont know why oatmeal gave a shit in the first place, both of their shitty egos caused this. I honestly couldn't care less on how this turns out

 

[Zacchaeus]

Oatmeal is being awesome as always, funnyjunk is run by hardass losers

That means I'm siding with The Oatmeal

 

[VKCA]

It's pretty much the lawyer's fault for getting involved in something he clearly knew nothing about.

I don't know, from reading snippets of interviews with him, he seems reasonably tech savy (ie: "to brute force my WordPress installation"), if not savy of the recent influx of... how should I put this.. good will(?) on the internet. Mob psychology/rage as he says.

 

[zorbees]

I don't get the point of this topic. It's like me creating a topic "How's everyone feeling about the sky being blue vs the sky being yellow". Everyone agreeing on something is boring for discussion usually.

 

[Danmire]

funnyjunk will not allow you to hotlink to anything on their site, as many smogon users may have already discovered through practice

oh the fucking irony

QFT

 

[breh]

I don't think it's possible for a company to demonize itself more than by simultaneously suing the American Cancer Association, the National Wildlife Federation, and a charity that gains money for both. I don't know who's right in this dispute, but it's sure that funnyjunk's lawyer is awful.

 

[ck49]

the oatmeal has done the classy thing, or at least as classy as a comedian can be. I feel really sorry for him for this happening to him right after the Forbes/Tesla thing. I understand FJ's lawyer being pretty damn pissed off, and at least trying to sue oatmeal (not that he should succeed), but the cancer society and the wildlife stuff? Really? WTF!

 

[Flounder]

going to put in a shameless plug for ars technica's coverage of the whole saga: they clarify a lot of things people seem to be confused about here.

Firstly, is that, as I understand it, FunnyJunk nor Charles Carreon sued the oatmeal: they merely demanded monetary damages for defamation etc, since Inman called so much (deserved) negative attention to the website.

Of course, this is entirely ludicrous, since FunnyJunk went out of their way to strip attribution to The Oatmeal from the images.
Charles Carreon, funnyjunk's representative, is suing a few people/groups for a few reasons: the only one that really has merit is him suing for defamation of his name (which is, incidentally, trademarked). While he's not exactly an upstanding individual, The Oatmeal's reporting of the saga has called an overwhelming amount of negative attention to Carreon, pretty much ruining his legal career henceforth, regardless of how much of a cock he may or may not be. Making outlandish demands seems to be more or less the standard in the legal system these days, as anyone following the "patent wars" between the various smartphone manufacturers can tell you. That alone isn't really valid reason to eternally shame an otherwise benign lawyer. The issue lies in the internet's collaborative mission to eternally ruin Charles Carreon by any means, a major one being the fake twitter account created in his name.

I don't come close to agreeing with his points on anything other than this: Carreon's name is definitely ruined, likely forever. He seems to be blaming The Oatmeal for this, which probably has some validity, but not much. I think, mostly, he's trying to save as much face here as possible: were I in this guy's position, I'd be doing everything I could not to end the career I spent a decade of post-secondary education studying to enter, y'know? Issuing an apology and dropping everything would probably be more effective, but he's apparently a pretty headstrong fellow. :/

 

[Vintage Books]

I just read the letter with the 'colourful' comments, and I have to say, Oatmeal seems to in no way be in the wrong in this situation.

I don't really understand how fj can just ask for that amount of money for no reason.

It seems like a really pointless and petty argument

 

[KnightoftheWind]

A missing chapter of this saga.

The admin of FunnyJunk is a moron.

 

[Stratos]

it's pretty obvious that this is a classic case of two people being jackasses but one of them being funny and thus garnering all the public support.

that said i'm part of the public.

 

[Steamroll]

remember when funnyjunk was like just a collection of about 40 pictures and maybe like 5 videos when it was first online

i didnt even know it still existed

I remember when it was white and the owner was the only one who posted the material. Now it's just a bunch of 13 year olds that steal material from other sites, take credit for making it and flame at each other while the owner sits on his fat ass and acts like a douche to anyone who wants him to do something about it, amazing what can happen in 5-6 years. I remember the debates that he had about allowing porn on the site (which you don't even need to be 18 to see there, there's an option to enable/disable it in your user CP and it's disabled when you first join). I also remember them declaring war with reddit in its early stages and bitching about 4chan in any image that had a 4chan thread.

Really the Oatmeal is in the right on this, but because their egos are eating up so much of this "issue." Would like for The Oatmeal to win this suit but either way I couldn't give a shit what happens as long as none of the Funnyjunk users decides to post pokemon showdown on that site :\

EDIT: screw that last part shut Funnyjunk down. I'm loling so hard at the list of links of his content still on the site and the fact that the admin removed all the stuff that was properly credited. Really Funnyjunk is just compounding on its own stupidity xD.

And this isn't the first time they've gotten a C&D from someone, C&H and VGCats also asked for one but nearly nothing came of it. I'm pretty sure there have been a lot more C&Ds against them but those were the two that stood out. They've probably gotten about 7-8 C&Ds total.

 

[Darkaxis]

when I first heard about it my initial reaction was "PEOPLE STILL USE FUNNYJUNK?" I haven't been on that site since I first discovered the internet.

This.

Also FJ sueing the Cancer Foundation, and the Wildlife foundation will just prove how much of a moron he is. Sueing 2 big foundations is not a good idea. His page will get a shiton of haters(more than it already has), it's activity will probably decrease. Not a very smart move in my opinion.