SydLexia.com - The Forums :: View topic - The Oatmeal and Funny Junk

Banned Joined: Sep 13 2008 Posts: 3129

You can read the full story here. But for the lazy I'll summarize it here.

FunnyJunk's lawyer is claiming that The Oatmeal, owes them $20,000 in damages... actually you know what, I'm one of the lazy ones too. Here's a quote from the page

Quote:

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.

He posted the full letter sent to him, as well as his annotations which are quite funny and totally worth checking out that page.

I think The Oatmeal's right with his arguments. FunnyJunk has been monetizing his comics without his permission for years now, and they were just barely taken down after he posted a full list of every single one of his comics on their site in his annotated letter.
Another thing to consider is in the letter the lawyer sent he mentioned how all of the hyperlinks that The Oatmeal posted which bring up search results for his comics don't work, well I checked on that and the lawyer is right they don't work. You know what else doesn't work? The entire search function itself! I searched for pretty generic things, including things on the sidebar, and nothing came up in the results.

Posted: Jun 15 2012 01:18 pm

I saw this when he posted it, and I think it is funny how someone can try to sue someone after stealing their work and using it to make money. If I was him I'd be countersuing because he has an easy case against them. Plus last time I checked the lawyer's contact page said something along the lines of: "Due to security attacks by Matt Inman this page has been temporarily disabled." Pretty sure he could at least get defamation out of that.

His fundraiser raised the 20k in 64 minutes and is now sitting just under 170k as well which is pretty awesome.

Posted: Jun 15 2012 06:08 pm

It will be interesting to watch further developments, but that's a lot of money raised for charities.

Wizard Joined: Jun 12 2009 Posts: 4209

Who the fuck uses FunnyJunk? I get severely annoyed trying to just navigate the site.

Maybe I shouldn't immediately exit whenever I happen to link into it.

Posted: Jun 16 2012 08:38 pm

Drew Linky wrote:

Who the fuck uses FunnyJunk? I get severely annoyed trying to just navigate the site.

Maybe I shouldn't immediately exit whenever I happen to link into it.

Like a decade ago it was just a page that displayed a random "funny" image. It has clearly gone downhill.

Posted: Jun 22 2012 12:45 am

So apparently the lawyer who took up this thing for Funnyjunk is now suing both the charities that The Oatmeal is raising money for and Matt Inman himself. Dude doesn't know when to quit.

Here's the link to the post he made about it:
http://theoatmeal.com/blog/carreon

Posted: Jun 22 2012 01:12 am

Conspiracy to libel?

Posted: Jun 22 2012 01:30 am

Apparently he is claiming that Matt Inman told people to commit "cyber vandalism" against him. Also that some unknown person, who he assumes to be Inman without any proof, made a satirical twitter account using his name which he claims to have trademarked and made mean tweets in his name or something. The lawyer blog Popehat, linked in Inman's post, goes into a more detailed explanation and breaks down the whole thing for us non-lawyers. I'm just kind of paraphrasing it from memory.

Here's a link to all their posts on the subject which makes all that lawyer speak make some sense. Part V breaks down the complaint that was filed.
http://www.popehat.com/tag/oatmeal-v-funnyjunk/

Posted: Jun 22 2012 02:03 am

http://www.scribd.com/doc/96850920/FunnyJunk-The-Oatmeal-Response

BURN.

Posted: Jun 22 2012 04:46 am

I can't take this situation seriously. Someone is suing "The Oatmeal." Come on, how do yout ake that seriously.

Posted: Jun 22 2012 10:11 am

Because The Oatmeal happens to be a very prolific comic with a notable following outside of the internet.

UsaSatsui's Youtube Channel · Posted: Jun 22 2012 12:23 pm

I think he kind of meant that the sentence "I'm suing The Oatmeal" without any context is pretty silly.

Posted: Jun 22 2012 12:37 pm

That is indeed what I meant. I had also never heard of The Oatmeal before this story which made the initial headline even more confusing.

Posted: Jun 22 2012 01:21 pm

If there's any Oatmeal that's worth suing, it's this one:

Posted: Jun 22 2012 02:20 pm

Reading that clusterfuck of legalese while hungover was not the best decision I've ever made.

Posted: Jun 22 2012 03:28 pm

Everything's a clusterfuck to you today...

Title: Titlating Joined: Dec 17 2007 Posts: 5042

Now i want a cereal with some oatmeal clusters.

Posted: Jun 23 2012 12:59 am

Optimist With Doubts wrote:

Now i want a cereal with some oatmeal clusters.

QFD