The Oatmeal vs Funnyjunk aka BearLove Good, Cancer Bad

[Lizardon]

Most of you are probably aware of the comedic web comic The Oatmeal. I thought I'd try and raise some awareness of what's been going down since I couldn't find a thread already about this. Last year the writer, drawer and coder for The Oatmeal Matthew Inman wrote this blog post [http://theoatmeal.com/blog/funnyjunk] criticising Funnyjunk for uploading and making money of his comics and the comics of others without credit. Which lead to owner of Funnyjunk rallying his users to spam The Oatmeal with various hateful messages.This was The Oatmeals post after that [http://theoatmeal.com/blog/funnyjunk2]

So after that it all seemed to have been ignored with The Oatmeal resigned to the fact that it can't stop sites like this from stealing the comics.

Until a few days ago he was served papers informing him that the owner of FunnyJunk is going to file a federal lawsuit against him unless he pays $20,000 in damages.

In typical Oatmeal style, he annotated the letter [http://theoatmeal.com/blog/funnyjunk_letter] pointing out the stupidity of some of the claims. I particularly like the parts where it claims that by having "Funnyjunk" appear so much in his post he made it so a Google search for "Funnyjunk" would yield that blog post as the top result, and that the ASCII pterodactyl in the source code (present in all Oatmeal pages) is evidence of the malicious nature behind the blog post.

So instead of finding $20,000 to give to the people who steal from him, Matthew has a better plan. It's called Operation BearLove Good. Cancer Bad.
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 drawing of you mom seducing a Kodiak bear.

4. I'm going to take the money and donate one half to the National Wildlife Federation and the other half to the American Cancer Society

A donation page has been set up here:
http://www.indiegogo.com/bearlovegood
The $20,000 was raised after an hour and it is currently at $117,000.

So if you love The Oatmeal, or don't like how sites like Funnyjunk make money of other peoples work, or you want to support the sexy bears, or if you just think cancer is shitty, donate now.

Operation BearLove Good. Cancer Bad. Now Commencing.

 

[EeveeElectro]

Team Oatmeal!

Wow, nearly $120,000?! I looked yesterday and they had $950!
Even people on FJ seem to be siding with Oatmeal.

It'll probably blow over soon when the FJ owner realises he hasn't got a leg to stand on.

Oh well. Good on Iman for raising this money, he seems like a nice fella. Should maybe consider doing stuff like this more regularly to raise money.

 

[TimeLord]

Wow, after reading that whole thing on the Oatmeal about this it seems FunnyJunk are going to get steamrolled by the support the Oatmeal is getting judging by the donation levels! Good for him for getting the support on his side and for raising all that money for cancer.

And.. You know... BearLove

 

[hazabaza1]

So does that mean that the Oatmeal owner knows Admin's name?
That could start a pretty good shitstorm.

 

[DoPo]

I saw this about an hour ago (I really missed in on Twitter yesterday...and today) and came here to make a thread because I didn't see any earlier. Only to find that I've been ninja'd still.

But yeah, I found it hilarious. The Oatmeal is really great as always. Although, it must be somewhat uncomfortable to show off his awesomeness because of some dickheads. Oh yeah, also the FunnyJunk lawyer thought that was a picture of his mother. Make what you will of that.

 

[strangemoose]

i used to go to funnyjunk but then it evolved into a wanna be /b/ its just awful, this comes from a guy who has been going to funnyjunk since 2007

 

[ChupathingyX]

I never frequent either sites but that was a funny read.

I would also like to point out that "pterodactyl" is not a dinosaur.

Just sayin'.

 

[Nerexor]

I support this. Funnyjunk is clearly being retarded here, as is the lawyer representing them. Funnyjunk did something illegal, the oatmeal asked them to stop and ranted about it. Now FJ is demanding compensation (to the tune of TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS!!) because the Oatmeal ranted about them doing something illegal and they refused to stop.

While the Oatmeals reaction may be ridiculous, it only serves to reflect how the lawsuit in questions is equally ridiculous.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

I have a feeling though, if this were to escalate into something bigger and truly end up in court, Funnyjunk doesn't stand a chance. What judge in their right mind would see their argument as anything more than sour grapes?

The Oatmeal does have some pretty overwhelming fan support, he could probably crash Funnyjunk just by telling all of his readers to go to there site at the same time.

 

[DANEgerous]

Awesome, every one on FJ hated it's founder before i was perma-banned from FJ for no damn reason other than hideously botched programing that raised 3 mouths of posts and randomly banned and unbanned accounts and i must say it was rare that any of their top pictures not be a picture some one screen caped than posted.

I hope they get owned.

 

[Aedes]

You missed some of the news already as [a href="http://digitallife.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/12/12187665-cartoonist-turns-lawsuit-threat-into-100k-charity-fundraiser"]FunnyJunk's lawyer tried to take the fundraising down[/a] from what I could read there thus making that lawyer some kind of super villan cause who would want to take down a fundraising for bears and cancer?

I find TheOatmeal's approach on the issue rather amusing.

 

[The Funslinger]

Wow, after reading that whole thing on the Oatmeal about this it seems FunnyJunk are going to get steamrolled by the support the Oatmeal is getting judging by the donation levels! Good for him for getting the support on his side and for raising all that money for cancer.

And.. You know... BearLove

And that's only a good thing. I've never been on funnyjunk more than once or twice, decided I didn't like the interface, and left. That said, all the hate it seemed to get was beyond me.

HOWEVER.

The gist of the OP is basically "stop stealing our original work, presenting it without credit or permission and making money off it"

"No, if I want to steal content illegally, I will. I'm suing you for distressing me by threatening my freedom!"

Fuck off, FJ.

That said, all the inter-meme site wars are totally pointless. You're all as shitty as each other, guys.

 

[felbot]

i was gonna donate but then i thought "how would this succed, at all, its far to ridiculous".
i was wrong, so very wrong.

 

[James Ennever]

I wonder how he is going to photogragh the money now.....I hope he takes 10k or so just to cover his leagal costs and also to improve his site, I hardly think that it is unreosonable after how much money he has raised.

 

[Dragonblade146]

As an old regular of FJ, having gone there more then over 6 years.. and a regular of Oatmeal.. I've almost NEVER seen his comics posted on FJ. I'll see one or two, here and there. But thats about it. And how about Reddit? or 9Gag? I've seen a lot of his comics there as well, why is he targeting FJ and not everyone else when they post them too?

Granted don't get me wrong here, I'm not defending Funnyjunk, even if its my home its slowly gone down hill and I'm always willing to admit that. But still, this whole thing is blown out of proportion I think.

 

[Lizardon]

You missed some of the news already as [a href="http://digitallife.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/12/12187665-cartoonist-turns-lawsuit-threat-into-100k-charity-fundraiser"]FunnyJunk's lawyer tried to take the fundraising down[/a] from what I could read there thus making that lawyer some kind of super villan cause who would want to take down a fundraising for bears and cancer?

I find TheOatmeal's approach on the issue rather amusing.

Wow the lawyer sounds really out of his depth here.

"I really did not expect that he would marshal an army of people who would besiege my website and send me a string of obscene emails," he says.

"I'm completely unfamiliar really with this style of responding to a legal threat - I've never really seen it before," Carreon explains. "I don't like seeing anyone referring to my mother as a sexual deviant."

Especially the first point, because that is basically what Funnyjunk did to The Oatmeal last year.

I have no idea why the fundraiser can be taken down. Isn't the point of crowdfunding sites is for people to pledge money for whatever project the creator needs money for. Sending a photo of a pile of money with a picture of a woman seducing a bear is a perfectly valid, if somewhat bizarre, project.

 

[Lizardon]

As an old regular of FJ, having gone there more then over 6 years.. and a regular of Oatmeal.. I've almost NEVER seen his comics posted on FJ. I'll see one or two, here and there. But thats about it. And how about Reddit? or 9Gag? I've seen a lot of his comics there as well, why is he targeting FJ and not everyone else when they post them too?

Granted don't get me wrong here, I'm not defending Funnyjunk, even if its my home its slowly gone down hill and I'm always willing to admit that. But still, this whole thing is blown out of proportion I think.

Why he singled out Funnyjunk is that they were making money out of his comics, and material from other online comics (XKCD, SMBC, C&H etc). Reddit isn't covered in advertising like Funnyjunk is, and they don't tend to crop out the original web address form the bottom of the image. In his original post, he wan't really being malicious, he was really asking what he could do and he just felt like something should be said.

I realize that trying to police copyright infringement on the internet is like strolling into the Vietnamese jungle circa 1964 and politely asking everyone to use squirt guns. I know that if FunnyJunk disappeared fifty other clones would pop up to take its place overnight, but I felt I had to say something about what they're doing.

He does also mention DamnLOL as doing the same thing.

It was Funnyjunk who decided to target him for his blog post a year later. Having a name calling match over the Internet is one thing. Getting lawyers involved and suing someone is taking it a bit to far.

 

[Dragonblade146]

As someone who frequents Funnyjunk, I would just like to play devil's advocate and point out that The Oatmeal's original claim that Funnyjunk was "mirroring" his comics was very stupid. All content is community-uploaded and Admin can't afford to pay for moderators. Additionally, Admin put in place measures for the community to self-moderate copyrighted content.

Couldn't have worded it better myself.