FunnyJunk threatens to sue Oatmeal creator

FunnyJunk is threatening to sue Matthew Inman, creator of The Oatmeal, for $20,000 in federal court. His offense? Criticizing FunnyJunk, and making fun of it for its relentless, unauthorized monetization of his and others' work.

Inman first lampooned FunnyJunk last year, after discovering its users had scraped most of his own website; in return, he received a sneering response that exhorted FunnyJunk's fans to "contact" Inman. But the boot was soon on the other foot: The Oatmeal's comic retort was so widely linked—because it was funny—that it is now among the highest-ranking results when you search for FunnyJunk itself.

You want ME to pay YOU $20,000 for hosting MY unlicensed comics on YOUR shitty website for the past three years? No, I've got a better idea.
1. I'm going to try and raise $20,000 in donations. 2. I'm going to take a photo of the raised money. 3. I'm going to mail you that photo, along with this picture of your mom seducing a Kodiak bear. 4. I'm going to take that money and donate half of it to the National Wildlife Federation and half of it to the American Cancer Society.

To this day, Inman points out, FunnyJunk maintains a substantially complete scraping of his site. But the funniest thing about FunnyJunk is, of course, that nothing there is funnier than the Streisand Effect.

The fine gent pictured to the top right is FunnyJunk's lawyer.

The Oatmeal responds to Funnyjunk [Reddit]

Update: The Oatmeal's pretty much dead from the traffic! Here's a mirror of Inman's response [NYUD]

⟿ Follow Rob Beschizza on Twitter.

MORE: abuse • funnyjunk • law • oatmeal

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Geekized

Funnyjunk are a bunch of assholes.
- Pedantic Douchebag
  
  I disagree. Assholes actually serve a useful purpose.
  - Geekized
    
    Good point.
franko

i admit that i find the oatmeal’s humor a bit tiresome, but i also admit that in this case he’s a golden god, and i hope he raises $20k for EACH charity, and that funnyjunk goes down in a ball of flames.
- http://www.facebook.com/nikolaj.mariager Nikolaj Mariager
  
  He has already raised more than $60k total.
  - franko
    
    well, heck – that was fast. GO, OATMEAL, GO!
    - NicholasChamberlin
      
      It’s nearly $80,000 now… Lol, those funnyjunk asshats REALLY screwed themselves here… Their lawyer looks like a clown, too funny….
      - http://profiles.google.com/chudez Ted Bautista
        
        The awesomeness continues: USD94.5k and counting
      - SamSam
        
        Holy shit the power of Reddit: $104,779 raised.
teapot

I think this screencap is enough demonstration of how worthless and shit Funny Junk, its staff and its regulars are:

PS: Can you please sue them!?! Pretty please?
- BillStewart2012
  
  Oatmeal Dude said that he’d really rather be drawing comics than hassling with lawyers, and good for him. Taunting them sufficiently in public may have more impact anyway. Hopefully they’ll go away and he won’t have to taunt them a third time. (I wonder if The Internet Archive saved the pages they’ve now taken down?)
  - howaboutthisdangit
    
    FJ is not on the Wayback Machine. Maybe the Internet Archive spiders didn’t like the taste.
PJG

Wouldn’t it be great if that donation was just enough to cure cancer? Two tumours, one stone.
oldtaku

All those links of the stolen Oatmeal comics are now mysteriously 404ed. Well that’s one way to get them finally taken down.
- morcheeba
  
  the DMCA can be a joke. The IP holder has to scour every single website for infringement, and funnyjunk can blacklist their search terms so this scouring isn’t as easy as searching for “theoatmeal”. By the time a comic is caught, funnyjunk has made their money off of ads.
  - Nonentity
    
    I think it’s rather funny that a search for “oatmeal” on funnyjunk currently returns no results.. while just to the left side of the page, under “top funnyjunk”, there is one titled “Oatmeal vs. FJ”.
    
    It would be interesting see them defend the search term blacklisting in court. I’m pretty sure “make it more difficult for artists to find infringement of their copyrights” is not an appropriate action under the DMCA.
- Justin J. Snelgrove
  
  I’m not entirely sure that destroying evidence is the best way to begin a lawsuit…
  - fuzzyfuzzyfungus
    
    One gets the strong impression that this was a simple extortion-is-legal-if-written-on-legal-letterhead job.
    
    Anybody who seriously suspects that they are going to court would have to be one hell of a n00b to start out with trivially verifiable malfeasance…
Lyle Hopwood

I love Oatmeal and felt I should contribute, but Paedagogo, or whatever its name is, called my Paypal account an unauthorized credit card. I spent 20 minutes on it but couldn’t convince it, so sorry, Oatmeal guy.
daev

Great job, BB! Their server is underwater now!
…I’m upset because he’s gonna have to be pretty damn funny with this when the rest of the world gets to see it. Comments are promising here, glad you guys got to see it….
- corydodt
  
  His server’s been down for hours, long before the BB post. I think it got eaten by Tumblbeasts, hungry for new prey.
  - daev
    
    Fair enough. I wanna see this play out, and I don’t know as much about the situation as I’d like to.
  - morcheeba
    
    alot of web traffic. (edit: doh! wrong meme!)
Amphigorey

It’s a damn shame that there’s a pointless fat-phobic, slut-shaming Yer Mama joke spoiling an otherwise perfect response.
- http://www.facebook.com/dmaclennan2 Darren MacLennan
  
  Jokes _are_ shame.
purple-stater

His flag is backwards. :-(
- daev
  
  flags are backwards all the time… subtle protest?
- marukosu
  
  Little known fact, but half of all flags are backwards.
  - mccrum
    
    It depends on where you stand on the matter, I suppose.
    - Westfakia
      
      Symmetrical flags are unaffected, so your total would be less than half.
daev

ohwait… funnyjunk::ebaum as theivingassholes::theivingassholes.

It took me a while, life comes with a security rock.

Sue them with extreme prejudice, that is all.
http://profile.yahoo.com/OOWZDBOHM2NGNLJSZEFZQ2AZAM Samara

…I admit the FJ Admin is pulling a dick move, but I tire of people thinking the “scraping” of the Oatmeal is Admin’s fault. One site with 2 moderators and thousands upon thousands of users…It’s going to happen and Innman would be better off trying to find everyone who reposted his comics and sue them individually
- nixiebunny
  
  When your business model is based on having thousands of people scrape other sites and upload this “content” to your site so that you can make money from it, then you deserve all the crap you get.
  - OgilvyTheAstronomer
    
    By that logic, I fail to understand all the hate for FunnyJunk and all the love for MegaUpload.
    - http://www.facebook.com/maude.garner Red Garner
      
      Oh wow….
    - flosofl
      
      And some of us hate both.
      
      Today you learned that not all people are the same. (said in as annoyingly sarcastic voice you can imagine)
    - nixiebunny
      
      MegaUpload didn’t feature content scraped from other sites; it featured content scraped from DVDs. There’s a difference.
    - http://twitter.com/sirkowski Sirkowski
      
      Some of us hate MegaUpload too.
- mccrum
  
  Maybe they want to look into more moderation then, instead of hiring more lawyers.
- AirPillo
  
  It is the administrator’s fault if, when they’re confronted about it, they’re sarcastic and dismissive, instead of admitting it’s a problem and attempting some degree of remediation like an adult.
  
  Aggregator sites have a great deal of difficulty policing content, this is true. However if they respond to this by acting like rude, entitled teenagers, then screw them they obviously don’t want nor deserve the sympathy.
- macegr
  
  Matthew actually let FunnyJunk off the hook for this, after one initial round of complaints and some reluctant takedowns. He knew it was virtually impossible for FunnyJunk to police everything all the time, and let it go (while ridiculing their handling of the situation) instead of hounding them with hundreds of DMCA notices. Their response, much later, is to sue him because of some unflattering Google rankings.
  - elix
    
    How dare my reputation catch up with me in a way that hurts my search ranking! TO THE LAWYER PEN!
    - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1515015318 Missy Pants
      
      I want a lawyer pen!
      - http://www.xradiograph.com/ OtherMichael
        
        Really? After a lawyer has spent six sweltering months in the pen, with no room to turn around or lie down, fed through a tube, their excretions falling through the grated floor, their sweaty bodies hosed off perhaps once a week, their tenderized flesh swelling with succulent lawyer juices…. you want the PEN?!?!?
        
        Fire up the BBQ, we’re having lawyer steaks for dinner.
      - mccrum
        
        Ugh. No thanks. I can’t think of a worse way to ruin dinner than having lawyers involved.
    - kennapea
      
      oh please, oh please tell me LAWYER PENS sound like the pen from Bill Cosby’s Picture Pages!!
      - http://mightybob.com thatbob
        
        Mortimer Ichabod Marker, Esq.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Malinda-Perkins/100000577616089 Malinda Perkins
  
  Matt is not interested in sueing ANYONE. He just wants to write comics.
Kerouac

FunnyJunk finally managed to involve themselves in something that makes me laugh. Congrats, douchebags!
http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.tsai.9 Jonathan Tsai

I think not all of the members of FunnyJunk deserve to be called douches. I go on both sites and I still see nice, funny, and original comics by honest FunnyJunkers. It is really just a site that wants to share laughs. Problem is there are some people who have power there that kind of screw things over. Heck I wasn’t even aware that this lawsuit was happening until I saw the post today. I’m sure most of the other people on FunnyJunk still aren’t aware of all this law stuff going down. They are still posting comics and their own creations on there not aware of this legal thing going on. They just want to share their laughter, just like finding a really good restaurant and inviting their friends over to share that awesome food. I do hope that FunnyJunk and the Oatmeal continue on doing what they do best and bringing laughs out of people. The best thing I think we should do now is to cause as little damage as possible and learn from our mistakes, letting the little things slide. Or else at the end of the day no one will be happy, and no one will be laughing.
- joeposts
  
  Where will we be without laughter?
  
  ogodthinkofthechildren.jpg
- That_Anonymous_Coward
  
  But they can be called douches if they keep using a site that enjoys making money from other peoples work, and when Google rankings shift them down below one of the people they rip off send a letter demanding to get paid.
  They made outrageous claims and demanded money, Oatmeal backed up his claims and never demanded money.
Mac

It’s a clever move on the part of ‘FunnyJunk’. Imagine their conversation: “We’d like to get Reddit & Boing Boing to post a big advertisement for us about how we have a lot of funny stuff – including an archive of Oatmeal’s site. But they want money for an ad. What can we do?”

“I’ve got an idea – why not get Oatmeal to write a funny letter with all that information in it, and use the Streisand effect to get the letter posted all over the web? Sure – they’ll call us douches – but that’s OK .. as long as they include the vital information – where we are and the fact that we have a lot of other people’s content on there. After all – Pirate Bay gets a lot of publicity because of people complaining about how they are a good source of illegal content. This should work just as well!”
—–
(PS: Yes – I’m aware the technically Pirate Bay doesn’t host etc etc etc. But I’m assuming that everyone who donates to Oatmeal’s cause is swearing off pirated material – including new release films etc. .. which is a good thing.

Someone who pirate another person’s material is a douche. )
- http://twitter.com/frederikvdz Frederik
  
  Doesn’t work like that. Pirate Bay links to things people want to get illegaly. FunnyJunk ripps off content people want to support via the original source (becasue they already provide it for free). They only end up looking bad rather then getting more audiance.
  
  And the reason people think it’s okay to ripp off big media rather then an indy content provider like The Oatmeal is in the way they are treated and how the content is provided.
  Treat your fans well and they will reward you, treat them poorly and they will pirate your goods.
- blueelm
  
  But… who has been clicking on their site? This would only work if it meant a rush of traffic to them. Seems like most people are following the link to the oatmeal and donating money there. So… not so brilliant an advert. Good for wildlife and cancer research though.
http://twitter.com/the_turtle The Turtle 

Do not make Hulk angry, ya’ll…
Charles Richter

That letter isn’t threatening to sue for $20,000. It demands $20,000 right now, apparently as a condition to AVOID a lawsuit. Basically, a cease-and-desist-and-cough-up-the-dough.
- OgilvyTheAstronomer
  
  A.K.A. Blackmail.
  - http://www.microcar.org microcars
    
    IANAL but I am pretty sure you cannot use your position as one to demand money from someone “or else”. As already mentioned, it is blackmail. The lawyer could be disbarred for this. Hope someone who knows what they are doing can follow up on this with some action. Raising money is nice, but nicer still would be to get this douchnozzle lawyer disbarred. C’mon Lawyer people, this guy is making your profession look bad – don’t give money, give some time and get rid of this guy. THEN we will stop with the lawyer jokes. I promise.
    - Theo Grace
      
      My understanding is that this only applies where the threatened action is legal rather than civil. (i.e. one cannot use evidence/ threat of legal prosecution to further a civil suit or extort money, however when done so in relation to a civil suit it is seen merely as a settlement)
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1515015318 Missy Pants

$98,024 in less than 24 hours. Wow.
The internet is an awesome and terrifying place.
- blueelm
  
  Wow. It is 107k now. Still in 24 hours! Holy… bear love.
Eric09

He was hoping to raise $20,000 in 15 days, and instead raised almost $100k in 24 hours? Holy crap.

Oh, and Funnyjunk’s reputation is pretty much dead in the water at this point. Was it worth it?
- http://twitter.com/Polackio Matt Popke
  
  FunnyJunk had a reputation? This is the first I’ve heard of them. Who actually uses these crap aggregator sites? I’m consistently amazed at how different a place the internet seems to be for some people than it is for me. Makes me worry about the “filter bubble” effect more and more, especially during an election year (what if I’m wrong and Romney actually does have a chance of winning? It’s downright terrifying to think of just how wrong my perspective of the current state of the world might be).
- asterios9
  
  I guess I am terribly anal retentive, but I think raising a neat $20K would have said “look at this money you can’t have” better than a giant heap.
  
  I guess it does say “people really love The Oatmeal” though.
Jellodyne

Of course, by live linking all those urls on from his site to theirs, he’s raising their Google rep.
- alexorella
  
  Most of those links go to 404s now that they’ve started taking content down. Google will just think they have a bunch of crappy broken content.
http://twitter.com/joeybladb joe k.

I hadn’t heard of “funnyjunk” before, so I assumed “he” was some kind of white hip hop artist, like eminem… and I was also thinking why would a hip hop artist sue the Oatmeal. The pieces JUST DIDN’T FIT. So I clicked the links and wow.

That’s a lot of money! Good job, The Oatmeal!
SamSam

I want BoingBoing to be the top site for porn!

porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn porn
robdobbs

I wonder if anyone has posted this particular comic on FunnyJunk.

Yep: http://www.funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/3786053/Oatmeal+vs.+FJ/
http://www.matthewpetty.com/ Matthew Petty

When do we go go after the Cheezburger network?
- eselqueso
  
  Staying on theme here…
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Cheezburger-Yutani has laser cats. You don’t have a chance.
  - http://www.matthewpetty.com/ Matthew Petty
    
    “Building Better Memes”
bklynchris

Withnail, s’it just me or s’that you?
Can’t wait to see the photo of monies. Do you think oatmeal is thinking, ok i said 20K to bears on chemo, canz the rest be for me please?
pjk

personally, I’m really looking forward to thepornmeal.com