Lawyer tries and fails to shut down The Oatmeal's charitable fundraiser

[News]

The Oatmeal's rendition of Carreon's mother attempting to bed a bear.
The Oatmeal/Matthew Inman


Lawyer Charles Carreon's attempt to shut down Web cartoonistThe Oatmeal's taunting charitable fundraiser has been denied, according to Indiegogo, the service used to collect the money. Carreon, who threatened to sue The Oatmeal (alias Matthew Inman) for defaming FunnyJunk.com if he didn't pay Carreon $20,000, has complained that the fundraiser violated Indiegogo's terms of service.

Carreon demanded the money as penance for a blog post that Inman wrote stating that humor site FunnyJunk was stealing content from The Oatmeal, Inman's website. Inman responded by pledging to raise the money Carreon requested, and then to donate it in equal parts to the National Wildlife Foundation and the American Cancer Society (also known as "Operation BearLove Good, Cancer Bad").

Carreon received antagonistic e-mails and was sent many copies of Inman's drawing of Carreon's mother attempting to seduce a Kodiak bear by fans of Inman, to his shock and surprise. The lawyer subsequently removed his contact info from his website. Carreon told MSNBC that he believed that the fundraiser violated Indiegogo's terms of use, and "sent a request to disable the fundraising campaign."

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[MikeC]

I have to deal with similar issues at nV News, which are always counter productive. Last week I was threatened with the following DMCA takedown notice.

From: David White [david.white@branded3.com]
To: mikec@nvnews.net
CC: legal@first4lawyers.com

Hello,

We recently sent you an email requesting the removal of a link on the page

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/member.php?u=119094

Our client www.first4lawyers.com no longer wants this link to appear on your pages so has requested removal of this link from those pages.

If the links are not removed as soon as possible then we may have to take further action such as requesting a DMCA takedown notice or reporting the links to Google.

If you need to authorise this with our client before the links can be removed you can email them directly at legal@first4lawyers.com to authenticate this request.

Thank you for your time

David White

My latest response on their request:

Hi David,

I’ve been receiving these types of inquiries from other web sites and wanted to get back in touch with you and your client as well.

The link your are referencing is from a profile page that belongs to a legitimate user, as opposed to an automated “bot”, that signed up for my forum. I have a series of challenge questions that prevent automated bots from registering.

I included the page source at the end of this email, which you can view as well by using the view source option in your browser when visiting the page.

I was unable to find a reason why your client would want to send us a DMCA takedown notice other than to cause me personal harm and grief. The similar inquiries I am receiving are not threatening me with a DMCA takedown request. They explain why they wish to have the link or page removed and I take care of it.

Microsoft recently sent me a DMCA takedown request, which was based on a false accusation, but I removed the page anyway since Google harmed my site by blocking of it. I also used Google Webmaster tools as the mechanism to communicate with Microsoft, which was a mistake on my part.

I made use of the services of chillingeffects.org to and am sending Microsoft a counter-notice.

http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca/counter512.pdf

However, I appreciate that you and your client contacted me first. Microsoft never contacted me before issuing a takedown notice. Were you aware that the company Microsoft uses, sends over 300,000 takedown notices a month?

The user profile page links to your client’s web site and the also signed up with a gmail email address that contains first4lawyers in the address. If these are the reasons your client wants the links removed, I will gladly do so by deleting the user from my forum, as a sign of good faith to avoid getting involved with a DMCA takedown notice.

I can remove the signature, which would remove the links to your client’s web site, but I would rather delete the user account.

Otherwise, I would appreciate a reason why your client wished to have the links removed before you issue a DMCA takedown notice.

Regards,
Mike Chambers, nV News