Oatmealer rubs Operation Bear Love cash in troll's face

The strange saga of the Oatmeal creator and the litigious troll has come to an end, with the public display of $211,223.04 arranged in a large FU. Cartoonist Matthew Inman collected the money after receiving a letter from a lawyer representing FunnyJunk over comments Inman made in his blog a year ago about the comics …

[Destroy All Monsters]

I had to re-read this thrice to understand who did what to whom. Am I getting old?

[Beaver6813]

Basically, FunnyJunk were using material from the Oatmeal without permission. Inman (guy behind Oatmeal) retaliated by pointing it out on his blog and drawing some amusing pictures of the people behind FunnyJunk. Funnyjunk threatened to sue for 20,000 and wanted the material removed. Inman said no and instead will raise 20,000 for charity.

Eventually EFF signed up to defend him and the people behind FunnyJunk backed down. At this point 200,000 had been raised for charity.

[Ru]

Popehat has some reasonable summarisation and stuff here (start at the bottom).

The reg had an article the other day, see here.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Distributed Internet Reputation Attack (DIRA): noun, an attack against the reputation of an individual that harnesses the distributed efforts of large numbers of both human and digital Internet zombies to proliferate unmanageable quantities of disparaging information in an effort to alter the conduct of the individual or entity.

Some nice stuff in there, including the above gem from this lawyer's new website.

We used to have something similar many years ago called the "stocks".

It used to work quite well from what I hear.

[TeeCee]

@Ru

Thank you for that. I read the Popehat reports, the linked EFF pieces and followed a few others too. Unfortunately, my browsing was brought to a sudden halt by the discovery of the link to the original source of the "Go Shit In A Hat" defence, which would appear to be the American legal equivalent of referring a litigant to the response previously given in Arkell v. Pressdram.

Had to stop there. Poorly suppressed giggling attracts too much attention.

[Anonymous Coward]

His comic on "When Web Design Goes Straight to Hell" was so funny...and true. Also, his analysis on why he thinks Printers were sent from hell is great.

Are you sure that picture is not the Ouya team spelling out a message to Sony and Microsoft with the money they've raised on Kickstarter?

[Tom Maddox]

And all without the DMCA

WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW, ORLOWSKI?!

[Steven Raith]

Re: And all without the DMCA

Maddox, you made me snort tea.

Cheers!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: And all without the DMCA

> WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW, ORLOWSKI?!

It seems to me that dragging this scumbag lawyer's name through the mud all across the Internet is a much more effective deterrent than the rather clerical DMCA method, even if it was effective in the Netherlands (which it's not).

Call these b*stards out is what I say.

Righteous.

[Jim Carter]

Re: And all without the DMCA

Which scumbag, Orlowski?

[Mephistro]

Re: And all without the DMCA

"Which scumbag, Orlowski?"

Please fellow commentards, thread carefully! By repeating so many times the names of Orlowski and Carreon in this thread someone could get the wrong impression that we want to google-bomb Mr. Carreon.

So please try not to write again 'Carreon' nor 'Orlowski' in this thread.

Remember: No Carreon! No Orlowski!

You're welcome!

[Fibbles]

Re: And all without the DMCA

Err... the DMCA was used by The Oatmeal. A DMCA notice needs to be served for each infringing image though. If FunnyJunk users keep uploading The Oatmeal's comics then he has to keep serving DMCA notices, essentially a never ending task.

If anything this shows that the DMCA in it's current guise isn't strong enough to defend the copyright of small content creators. Not that I'd advocate strengthening it though as it's already abused by big content creators.

[SilverWave]

Thanks for that :-D *tears of laughter*

>ORLOWSKI

snort

[Katie Saucey]

Bears

Well I guess it's an OK bear pic. I always used to like the way Gary Larson did them.

[Ian Ferguson]

I hope he's either very honest, or has a lawyer auditing his fundraising. That's an awful lot of money given to a man who withdraws it in cash and SAYS he's going to donate it to charity.

[Invidious Aardvark]

Philanthropy > Douchebaggery

As someone who has followed this on Popehat, I can allay your fears:

1) Around half of the money that was raised was sent directly by IndieGoGo to the charities.

2) The rest of the money was sent by cheque (or check, for our public wig American friends). This is backed up by a sworn statement from Oatmeal's attorney.

3) The money pictured is actually Matt Inman's own money, the money raised by the Bear Love campaign having already been deposited with the charities as promised to avoid the charming Mr Carreon making an issue of it as part of a frivolous suit he filed pro se, and which he has since dismissed.

Beer because it's already Friday here and because Mr Inman deserves a toast for his excellent efforts.

[Matt Williams]

Inman withdrew his own money for the photo.

[Tom 13]

While I concur on the account/lawyer point,

that's not because I think the guy is absconding with the cash, but because there are so many people like you around who feel free to impune his honor.

[Andy 68]

That's what he said he was going to do *last week*...

Look at the first words on the article linked to "As promised, here's the photo of $211,223.04 ..."

The photos also have a small handful of coins - hard to make a round 20k with those

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor reporting

Of what has actually been a stonkingly good rogue-lawyer v. cartoonist and, eventually, v. The Internet, story. What's more, there is no guarantee that it is all over yet.

Whther people like The Oatmeal or not, it's worth reading up a bit more on this, and I seriously recommend the Popehat blog already linked to in earlier somments.

I promise you that the words Censorious Douchebag will never seem the same again :)

[dotdavid]

FU?

As in Kung Fu? Surely FY would have been more appropriate? ;-)

[Will Godfrey]

This is seriously out of date.

Carrion {heh} and his crazy wife are still pulling stunts and trying to cause problems for the Oatmeal.

I recommend a browse through Ars Technica.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: This is seriously out of date.

Yep. It's not all over until the fat/thin/whatever lady stops singing.