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The Oatmeal Fights Legal Threat, Raises $20,000 in an Hour
- planetguy 14y agoY'see, this is why The Oatmeal guy is a comic genius. He understands that while "drawing of your mom seducing a bear" is funny, "drawing of your mom seducing a kodiak bear" is hilarious.
- lbrandy 14y agocomedy protip: strong/hard consonants are funny. 'kodiak' is an awesome comedic word. Any punchline involving a bear could almost certainly be improved by inserting 'kodiak'. Just like you should use 'buick' when you need an arbitrary car, and 'tuesday' when you need an arbitrary day. This also explains why a well-placed 'fuck' is funny.
- skeletonjelly 14y agoCan you elaborate? I don't find his humour overly humourous but each to their own.
- freehunter 14y agoBesides the "komedy k's" that was already mentioned, a kodiak bear is a very specific type of bear. More specificity is generally considered funny when you're describing a story in the form of a joke. Not only does it add tension by drawing out the conclusion, it implies the comedian has actually put some significant thought into the situation they're describing. Not just a bear. Not a polar bear. Not a brown bear. A kodiak bear. The only thing funnier would be "a 8' tall, ill-tempered, honey-hating, monkey-fighting kodiak bear. Named Maurice."
- pi18n 14y agoHe's not a comic genius, he's a marketing genius. His comics are actually quite banal; everyone hates their printers, a list of reasons why makes us feel good but isn't actually funny.
- chris_wot 14y agoI guess everyone's sense of humor is different. Personally, I found the "literally" comic confronting, but I was rolling on the floor laughing at the gay-roller image... IMO, the guy is a comic genius :-)
- SonicSoul 14y agoum. i guess you have not read "Why Captain Higgins is my favorite parasitic worm" http://theoatmeal.com/comics/captain_higgins http://theoatmeal.com/comics/captain_higgins Still think its banal and not funny? does everyone hate parasites that can turn ants into zombies?
- ascendant 14y agoI'm sure 15 year old girls talk about zombie-creating parasites all the time. Everyone is bored of it ;)
- gbog 14y agoThe zombie thing is very cultural and limited in time, it may not be funny after the fashion is gone.
- pi18n 14y agoOf course not everyone would agree with me that it is banal, but I have read a number of them I've seen linked here and there, including the above. I didn't find any of them particularly amusing. Nor did I like the artwork.
- drcongo 14y agoThat's the least funny one I've seen yet, it's just some information that most people learn in school put to pictures. The kodiak bear pic however, is funny.
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- SideburnsOfDoom 14y agoThey really didn't like it the last time that The Oatmeal talked about funnyjunk (and was highly linked to, commented about and other google-juice-accumulating indicators), or at least that's what the lawyer's letter indicates. Why should this time be any different?
- dangrossman 14y agoMirror of The Oatmeal's post (annotated letter from the lawyer), since the site is down or slow right now: http://rorr.im/reddit.com/r/funny/comments/uwp0d/8d937aaedad38e133310e4672a0c4291.html http://rorr.im/reddit.com/r/funny/comments/uwp0d/8d937aaedad...
- TomGullen 14y agoIs there any chance that FunnyJunk has played the Oatmeal for promotional purposes here?
- redthrowaway 14y agoI'm guessing not. This isn't exactly the kind of publicity they need.
- pavel_lishin 14y agoWhat kind do they need? I'd wager they got quite a bit of traffic over this incident, and if the court case comes to nothing, they'll be able to show advertisers their numbers.
- flyinRyan 14y agoI don't know. I've never heard of them before and I didn't click on them because of this (though I did read all the oatmeal blog posts). Doesn't sound like there's a reason to click on them if they just copy other sites for which Oatmeal has a link to the originators.
- Symmetry 14y agoIf 90% of everyone who hears about this story hates their guts and only 1% start using their service that's a big win for them. Being a small website is not like being a politician or national brand where you can't afford to alienate large numbers of people.
- hobin 14y agoI thought that, too. 'Bad publicity is still publicity'?
- gbog 14y ago> 'Bad publicity is still publicity'? Obviously. For obscure brands, the first problem to solve is being unknown. It is much better to be hated than to be ignored. For well-established brands, it may be less true: I guess Shell and Total would prefer no publicity related to oil spills. But even then, bad publicity can have good outcome. I know from personal relations about a brand that has been under fire on Facebook and blogs: the amount of clients did actually increase during and after the hit.
- Shengster 14y agoIronically The Oatmeal is down. Presumably because so many people want to give him money that they've DDOSed his website.
- jsprinkles 14y agoFunnyJunk is apparently responding quietly on their site, as just searching for the word 'oatmeal' results in no search results (that wasn't the case when this blog post went up). According to people I know that use the site, you cannot add comments with the word 'oatmeal', either. They also deleted every single linked image he exhaustively listed. I have a hard time resolving litigation like this with the fact that the truth can change in minutes, as Web sites are fairly easy to edit. It's just scary.
- mrpollo 14y agoGoogle cache still has all of the content indexed example: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:e8h2n1hQZBgJ:www.funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/1484220/Coffee/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:e8h2n1h...
- rufibarbatus 14y agoLooks like FJ's been excluded from the Internet Archive. Is there a trustworthy caching authority, you know, for this kind of situation?
- arethuza 14y agoInteresting question - you could take automated screenshots, save them in a lawyer-friendly format (e.g. PDF) and then add a certifying signature with a secure timestamp (perhaps adding the raw pages and images from the site as attachments to the PDF as well). If the target market was lawyers you could probably charge a chunk-o-money for it as well... NB I have no idea whether such a service already exists.
- jjcm 14y agoHow does this bode in the terms of destroying evidence? Is there any legal ramifications of doing this after you've engaged in legal action?
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- ChuckMcM 14y agoI wonder if you can complain to the bar. Seems like a number of lawyers have taken up the "shakedown" model and been penalized for it. You should be able to complain to. The bar that this lawyer reflects badly on the profession for not doing his research.
- sk5t 14y agoOne can be branded a "vexatious litigant," although one has to keep at it for a while for that particular achievement.
- drostie 14y agoOne thing which I remember seeing once was that Lawyer A had emailed site B with some threat of a lawsuit, and B's lawyer immediately filed in court for a declaration that A's threat was frivolous and harrassing, so that B should get some sort of automatic damages if A ever sends another communication on the same topic again. I wasn't sure what legal principles were involved, or whether that declaration was granted, but the whole idea was pretty kickass; "this is so obviously something which you can't sue me for that I'm going to have a court shove that fact up your rear end."
- KenCochrane 14y agoI'm surprised that people haven't started contacting funnyjunk and telling them how much of a tool they are. Here are some good links, if you are want to do more. http://www.funnyjunk.com/contact/ http://www.funnyjunk.com/contact/ http://www.funnyjunk.com/abuse/ http://www.funnyjunk.com/abuse/ http://www.funnyjunk.com/copyright/ http://www.funnyjunk.com/copyright/
- jsprinkles 14y agoWith honesty, what good will that do?
- RobAtticus 14y agoWhy prolong the conflict? The Oatmeal wants to move past all this. Emailing FJ is just going to cause them to be agitated and therefore continue to pursue their action, prolonging the headache. It might even be counterproductive if they can use the mass of emails as "proof" that their reputation has been damaged. Let's not take a funny/clever retort by TheOatmeal and ruin it by being jackasses.
- pasbesoin 14y agoThe legal herd definitely is in need of thinning. (I mean, career changes, of course -- to flipping Kodiak burgers.) I'm glad parody and appropriately sharp (in more than one way) commentary have not been wiped off the Internet, yet. Hopefully, not ever.
- ruswick 14y agoAlthough the lawsuit is bullshit, I would probably be really happy if the oatmeal were to get sued out of existence. I try to stay away from it as much as possible, but of the handful of things I've seen there, they were all trollish and entirely incorrect. The site is just more Internet scum and it going away would probably be for the best.
- GiraffeNecktie 14y agoUm. Seriously? A unique individual with one of the most brilliant, funny, audacious and original voices on the Internet and you'd like to see him sued out of existence? Because uh ... the Internet's not big enough or what? Wow. Just wow.
- nostromo 14y agoHaving a rival is pure press (and SEO) mastery. Seriously. It reminds me of the genius rap rivalries of the 90s and 00s which left both rivals better off in every way (press, album sales, fame). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_hop_rivalry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_hop_rivalry
- dmix 14y agoThe entire modern TV media industry has learned how much money/fame can be earned from exploiting overblown controversy It's the substance of about 90% of non-fiction TV shows these days.
- wickedchicken 14y ago> which left both rivals better off in every way yeah, tupac is rolling in money right now
- mikerice 14y agohis estate is
- beedogs 14y agosorta beside the point. the whole "being dead" part sort of precludes him from spending any of that rap beef money.
- dsl 14y agoOnly if you believe he is really dead. Apparently you didn't attend Coachella?
- davidw 14y ago> One is reminded of what Big Mama Thornton once said about Elvis Presley. Big Mama had created the song "Hound Dog" and earned $50, but Elvis got the hit and countless millions. Asked how she felt about that, Big Mama replied, "Honey, I'm still here to spend my fifty dollars!"
- sparknlaunch 14y agoWhile this is a great story likely to go down in Internet history, it seems a risky strategy. Sure he raised $20k but seems like this will just fuel the fire of the FunnyJunk lawyers. There have been more trivial legal cases than this one - that could go on for a long time.
- crikli 14y agoThe total is now $57K with 15 days left. Matthew is in the position of being able to use the internet as a money spigot if FunnyJunk really wants to escalate.
- pavel_lishin 14y agoThat kind of money isn't consistent, though - raising that much money from one case where people clearly want to side with him, even if he wasn't donating the money to two charities, is much easier than doing it every week to pay off legal expenses.
- trustfundbaby 14y agoI don't you have an understanding of how deep his fanbase is ... he raised that money in one day ... seriously think about that for a second.
- crikli 14y agoNow up to $97k.
- brown9-2 14y agoFunnyJunk's lawyers seem like a huge joke, and I think that the oatmeal has been successful enough to afford adequate representation.
- gwern 14y agoYes, I was a little surprised when I reached the charity step: 'well, what do you plan to do if they actually do sue you? Go ask your fans for another 40k to pay for your defense & appeal and/or damages?'
- paulgb 14y agoFor a guy with 90s clip-art on his letterhead, he's had more experience than I expected http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Carreon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Carreon
- officemonkey 14y agoHaving 90s clip-art on your letterhead means you've been at it since the 90s. :-D
- aresant 14y agoMatt Iman (guy behind TheOatmeal), was co-founder & original CTO of SEOMoz and left after his side project (Mingle2) blew up in popularity and was acquired. He mentions in his departing SEOMoz blog post that the company that acquired Mingle2 wanted "to leverage my viral marketing and linkbait abilities" - back in 2007. Fun to look at this through understanding that he's a SEO guru and viral-marketing genius. Perfect David vs. Goliath headline, tons raised for charity so he comes out looking flawless, 3220 new inbound links for theoatmeal, etc. Wow. via http://www.seomoz.org/blog/my-departure-from-seomoz http://www.seomoz.org/blog/my-departure-from-seomoz https://www.google.com/search?sugexp=chrome,mod=15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=theoatmeal+#q=theoatmeal&hl=en&safe=off&tbo=1&output=search&source=lnt&tbs=qdr:d&sa=X&ei=babWT7neCIOw2wWMmcy0Dw&ved=0CAUQpwUoAg&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=c302becae0d93110&biw=1163&bih=593 https://www.google.com/search?sugexp=chrome,mod=15&sourc...
- chris_wot 14y agoI'm not sure I'm seeing any issue here. OK, so he was good at SEO. The fact is that he has always been very happy to have his comics republished, so long as they link back to the original site. Can't be fairer than that. Funnyjunk didn't do that. However, he didn't take legal action. He wrote a blog, and exercized his right to free expression. Nothing about the blog was factually incorrect. The links are dead because the images have been taken down. To be honest, he does come out looking flawless! If someone can point out what he's done wrong, I'm very curious. Certainly the letter he recieved from the lawyer is absurd... Starting from the top: 1. "FunnyJunk, LLC. ("FunnyJunk"), a competitor of TheOatmeal.com in the field of online humor". Where can you go with this? TheOatmeal isn't competing with them. 2. He took an old blog post from last year, then stated that the screenshot was "taken long ago". As is pointed out in the annotated letter, this means nothing. 3. Google cache shows that they had hundreds of images, many of them with the attribution removed. ... more points, but is it necessary?
- Encosia 14y agoI don't think aresant was implying any malfeasance on Matt Iman's part.
- cpunks 14y agoMy guess is FJ and Oatmeal are both getting massive traffic thanks to this little battle.
- jontas 14y agoI'd love to take that $20-40k and put it towards a company that does nothing but monitor websites like Funny Junk and issue takedown notices on the behalf of the content owners. Companies like this probably exist, but I'm sure they don't come cheap and are used primarily by the big players (eg music labels, movie studios). I think it is great that Matt is donating the money to charity. However, the idea of putting the money towards some kind of community focused content monitor struck me as an interesting alternative. I also wonder to what degree something like this could be automated. I know sites like YouTube monitor their own content, but what if Matt could upload all his images, verify his ownership in a legally meaningful way, and then automatically monitor Funny Junk and issue takedown notices in real time.
- Jimmie 14y agoI'm curious about this too. Use something like Tineye and check new Funnyjunk submissions against The Oatmeals image archive. Aside from the hardware it's a tiny amount of work for 1 human to monitor the results.
- a_bonobo 14y ago...until the company starts to monitor sites like Reddit and Imgur and suddenly, all the re-hosted stuff that lands on Reddit on a daily basis leads to the "good" Imgur being sued by the machine that formerly was used to combat the "evil" Funnyjunk.
- Jimmie 14y agoSued? No they'd be served with DCMA takedown notices. Which is perfectly fine in my book. If the content creators don't want their content on Imgur then they should be able to take it down. Nothing is preventing people from linking directly to the content creators site, redditors are just apathetic and would rather just click through imgur links.
- snowwrestler 14y agoConsider the offsetting financial incentives here. Sites like FunnyJunk can be created by a small team, allow the upload of a ton of copyrighted content by users, and then run ads next to copyrighted content. Boom, instant money, and if they do well, maybe an acquisition (see: YouTube). All they have to do is keep up with DMCA takedowns, which are few and far between from small content producers like The Oatmeal. Meanwhile, if you want to build a company to automate content protection, you have to go find deep-pocketed content creators from day one. I don't know of any way to run ads against the creation of DMCA takedowns. So the financial incentives are totally asymmetric. It's way easier and more lucrative to create a platform for infringing content, than for protecting it. Until that changes, small creators like The Oatmeal will get victimized.
- beedogs 14y agoThey can't be serious with this legal "threat". They don't have a leg to stand on.
- Tyrannosaurs 14y agoThe guy is a lawyer and seems to think that they do. If you read his letter it's very specific, he's not saying that the material isn't there, he's taking issue with the suggestion that funnyjunk is willfully violating the Oatmeal's copyright (as opposed to just not responding fast enough in pulling it down). That's the complaint - the suggestion that it's intentional. Just because you've been wronged, it doesn't give you carte blanc to say what you want about the person doing it. You're safest sticking to the absolute barest facts with no editorialising or commentary. I have no problem in seeing that there might be a valid case here. I don't like it and it sucks, but in the eyes of the law there might be something. (Obviously all this ignores the possibility that he's just rattling the cage and seeing if there's $20,000 of easy money there based on Inman running scared. It might be significant that neither the requests being made in terms of removing the material nor the amount (compared to potential legal fees in fighting the case) are that onerous).
- woodall 14y agoPot meet kettle http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
- guice 14y agoLooking for legal options ... getting duped by iTunes descriptions ... forced to look for pirate options. Hosting somebody else's images without arbitration. Then fall to name-calling when the owner asks for them to be taken down. I fail to see the connection here. Care to explain?
- woodall 14y agoTheft is theft is theft.