FunnyJunk threatens lawsuit against The Oatmeal

By em_te
in Back Page News

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em_te

Posted
Posted

Remember FunnyJunk? Almost exactly a year ago I [The Oatmeal] 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 bull**** 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

Experienced

andrewbares

Posted
Posted

Tempting as it is to write up a piece about this latest development, I'd bet the same lawyer would go after any site that covers this letter.

That's true, and just by commenting on this post I bet I'm going to be sued by that lawyer.

"I hope you lose oatmeal I never liked eating you anyways!" *yelled Andrew in a forced and paniced voice* Maybe that'll protect me from crazy lawyer.

Anyways, on a serious note, it's not at all legal for a website to request you remove mentions of another website. What a joke...

Veteran

Twiddle

Posted
Posted

What is more impressive is the charity donations as the $20,000.

I run a comedy website called The Oatmeal.

Last year I wrote a blog post about another website called FunnyJunk which stole a bunch of my comics and hosted them on their website without giving me credit. They apparently didn?t like my blog post and recently FunnyJunk sent me a letter stating that unless I pay them $20,000 in damages they?re going to file a federal lawsuit against me. You can view the letter along with my response here.

Instead of mailing the owner of FunnyJunk the money, I'm going to send the above drawing of his mother. I'm going to try and raise $20,000 and instead send it to the National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society.

I?m hoping that philanthropy trumps douchebaggery and greed.

post-46379-0-26488800-1339715898.jpg

Good for you Oatmeal.

Grand Master

Denis W. Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

What is more impressive is the charity donations as the $20,000.

post-46379-0-26488800-1339715898.jpg

Good for you Oatmeal.

Very nice. (Y)

Ah, might as well cover this, in light of that donation milestone.

  • andrewbares, MightyJordan and Twiddle
  • Like 3
Grand Master

articuno1au

Posted
Posted

I think he might find himself in hot water if this goes to court..

I hope he wins, but I think what he said was fairly blatantly defamatory..

Either way, the funny junk admin needs a good kicking in the head.

I also realised upon reading all of this (I got it off ars a few days ago) that a ton of comics I had read and thought were brilliant were written by him and I just didn't know D:

Grand Master

remixedcat

Posted
Posted

yey nice way to do it and do some good.

I also realised upon reading all of this (I got it off ars a few days ago) that a ton of comics I had read and thought were brilliant were written by him and I just didn't know D:

the printer one is the best as well as the kitteh ones.

Grand Master

xpablo

Posted
Posted

The point is Funnyjunk is stealing The Oatmeal's content and making revenue from the content.

Matt should counter sue FJ for 50% of the ad revenue FJ made from the comics.

probably not anywhere near the $160k The Oatmeal's project is collecting, I think advertisers should boycott

FJ since this site is like The Pirate Bay of comics.

Grand Master

FloatingFatMan

Posted
Posted

The point is Funnyjunk is stealing The Oatmeal's content and making revenue from the content.

Matt should counter sue FJ for 50% of the ad revenue FJ made from the comics.

Seeing as FJ stole his comics, he should counter sue for ALL of the revenue made from the stolen works, plus damages of a minimum of $20k per comic stolen. Plus legal fees, of course. ;)

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