The Oatmeal Fights Legal Threat, Raises $20,000 in an Hour

Matt Iman (guy behind TheOatmeal), was co-founder &#38; original CTO of SEOMoz and left after his side project (Mingle2) blew up in popularity and was acquired.<p>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.<p>Fun to look at this through understanding that he's a SEO guru and viral-marketing genius.<p>Perfect David vs. Goliath headline, tons raised for charity so he comes out looking flawless, 3220 new inbound links for theoatmeal, etc.<p>Wow.<p>via <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/my-departure-from-seomoz" rel="nofollow">http://www.seomoz.org/blog/my-departure-from-seomoz</a><p><a href="https://www.google.com/search?sugexp=chrome,mod=15&#38;sourceid=chrome&#38;ie=UTF-8&#38;q=theoatmeal+#q=theoatmeal&#38;hl=en&#38;safe=off&#38;tbo=1&#38;output=search&#38;source=lnt&#38;tbs=qdr:d&#38;sa=X&#38;ei=babWT7neCIOw2wWMmcy0Dw&#38;ved=0CAUQpwUoAg&#38;bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&#38;fp=c302becae0d93110&#38;biw=1163&#38;bih=593" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?sugexp=chrome,mod=15&#38;sourc...</a>

Having a rival is pure press (and SEO) mastery. Seriously.<p>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). <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_hop_rivalry" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_hop_rivalry</a>

I 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.

Mirror of The Oatmeal's post (annotated letter from the lawyer), since the site is down or slow right now:<p><a href="http://rorr.im/reddit.com/r/funny/comments/uwp0d/8d937aaedad38e133310e4672a0c4291.html" rel="nofollow">http://rorr.im/reddit.com/r/funny/comments/uwp0d/8d937aaedad...</a>

I'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.<p>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).<p>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.<p>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.

For a guy with 90s clip-art on his letterhead, he's had more experience than I expected <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Carreon" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Carreon</a>

The legal herd definitely is in need of thinning. (I mean, career changes, of course -- to flipping Kodiak burgers.)<p>I'm glad parody and appropriately sharp (in more than one way) commentary have not been wiped off the Internet, yet. Hopefully, not ever.

Is there any chance that FunnyJunk has played the Oatmeal for promotional purposes here?

Ironically The Oatmeal is down. Presumably because so many people want to give him money that they've DDOSed his website.

My guess is FJ and Oatmeal are both getting massive traffic thanks to this little battle.

Pot meet kettle<p><a href="http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones" rel="nofollow">http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones</a>

They can't be serious with this legal "threat". They don't have a leg to stand on.

FunnyJunk 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.<p>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.

Y'see, this is why The Oatmeal guy is a comic genius. He understands that while<p><i>"drawing of your mom seducing a bear"</i><p>is funny,<p><i>"drawing of your mom seducing a kodiak bear"</i><p>is hilarious.

While 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.

I'm surprised that people haven't started contacting funnyjunk and telling them how much of a tool they are.<p>Here are some good links, if you are want to do more.<p><a href="http://www.funnyjunk.com/contact/" rel="nofollow">http://www.funnyjunk.com/contact/</a><p><a href="http://www.funnyjunk.com/abuse/" rel="nofollow">http://www.funnyjunk.com/abuse/</a><p><a href="http://www.funnyjunk.com/copyright/" rel="nofollow">http://www.funnyjunk.com/copyright/</a>

Although the lawsuit is bullshit, I would probably be really happy if the oatmeal were to get sued out of existence.<p>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.<p>The site is just more Internet scum and it going away would probably be for the best.