FunnyJunk’s ridiculous threats to theOatmeal
Published on 06.11.12
We love TheOatmeal and last year we covered the FunnyJunk VS Oatmeal copyright infringement case. It just got better with Funnyjunk hiring a lawyer and threatening to sue one of our Internet Heroes for defending his copyright!
Below is a sample of the legal threats’ letter, along with Mr Inman’s (theOatmeal’s creator) in-your-face public comments:
Click here to read the full legal letter by Charles Carreon (attorney at law), on the Oatmeal’s blog, asking Mr Inman for 20 000$, and share this with everybody you know. Idiots and bullies need to be exposed and it’s not often that a copyright holder has such a sharp sense of humor when receiving empty legal threats.
Go Oatmeal! We at Myows are 100% behind you and wish to put an end not only to shameless online copyright infringement, but to this kind of uberdubious lawyer attitude.
Matthew Inman, if you’re reading this, we have a nifty solution to help you protect your Intellectual Property:
Why don’t you Sign up for a free Myows account, then register your Oatmeal’s RSS feed. That should take about 90 seconds. Myows will then help you track copies of your work online and assist in sending Cease and Desist letters to copyright thieves so you needn’t waste your time. If the pirates don’t oblige, we’ll close them down. You can then focus on creating more awesome comics for millions to enjoy while we make sure junk sites don’t go stealing your work.
Like I wrote recently in Copyright Protection for Those Who Didn’t Attend Law School,
“I’m aware that Copyright is a heated issue and only a hypocrite would claim never to have infringed on someone else’s IP. Yet as online professionals we live in an ecosystem and lawlessness is no way to interact with other members of the community. May it be in the real world or the information highway, rules are in place to ensure everyone’s right to own property, pursue happiness and the mighty dollar bill. Those individuals who blatantly ignore these rules cause damage to the whole, and if you are passive about Copyright, by the time it affects your business it’s already too late.”
Shame on you FunnyJunk and Charles Carreon, you are not shaping the respectful internet I want to see and work in.
How would you react if you were Matthew Inman and received this kind of ridiculous legal letter from FunnyJunk’s attorney at Law?
Should copyright perpetrators be allowed to monetize other people’s work without the original creator’s consent? And if bust for blatant copyright infringement, should perps be apologetic, or resort to bully tactics and legal threats?
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3 Responses
[...] A year after this post was published funnyjunk’s lawyer Charles Carreon threatened the Oatmeal and asked for 20 [...]
Umm… you realize that this whole thing is about NOT using the Oatmeal to advertize for your products, right?
Now you’re turning this story into a plug for your service?
The point called. It says that you’re in the wrong county.
Hi Rob,
You do have an interesting point, I respect that. Look, fact of the matter is, I believe that this FunnyJunk Copyright Infringement story and the legal threats that followed qre a great example illustrating why Myows is useful for anyone making a living from their online creations, as it will help you track copies of your work, then assist you in the Cease and Desist process, all that for free. Using Myows would have saved theOatmeal quite a few headaches… but that’s my opinion.
I try to make use of copyright infringement cases to promote a service in which I believe, you’ll see I did something similar here exposing Shakira. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a clean way to do marketing for a very useful but bootstrapped app that has been recommended by many online heavyweights.
Now if you look at the way in which I write my posts, you’ll notice I’m very aware of not falling into copyright infringement and use a minimal amount of the Oatmeal’s work to illustrate my story, with plenty of linkbacks and mentions. If you had read the Oatmeal’s post from last year (link at the top of the article) you’ll notice that Inman’s major concern is the lack of link backs and attribution on Funnyjunk.
It’s only natural for me to offer a solution to the problem of online copyright infringement. By the way, what’s yours?