Remember that rule number one of the Carreon Effect is that, when someone calls you out on your ridiculous position... just keep digging. And the man behind the effect apparently would like to make sure that his name really does set the gold standard in "just keep digging." Yes, that's right -- the man, the myth, the sheer wackiness of Charles Carreon is back. Except, that is, if you're trying to serve him for bogus threats against you. You may remember Charles Carreon for his famous lawsuit against the Oatmeal and a variety of unrelated other organizations, followed up by threats against parody accounts (doubly amusing, given Carreon's own fondness for parodying others).
While Carreon eventually dropped his lawsuit against Matthew Inman at The Oatmeal, it wasn't before one of the parody bloggers he had threatened filed for declaratory judgment, claiming that his blogging was legal. Carreon quite clearly was threatening the blogger, and had even suggested that he would wait until the attention died down to sue -- which clearly gives the blogger grounds for seeking a declaratory judgment. That, of course, is a separate lawsuit, initiated by the blogger, so Carreon can't just drop it. But what he can do, apparently, is everything possible to avoid being served. The judge's own summary of the situation (via Popehat):
Plaintiff seeks a declaratory judgment that his satirical website does not infringe the trademark defendant has in his own name. Prior to filing a complaint, plaintiff's counsel was in contact with defendant via email. After filing the complaint, defendant and his wife publicly
discussed the pending litigation. Plaintiff's counsel mailed defendant a request for waiver of summons to his address in Tucson, Arizona, which defendant did not execute. Instead, the entire envelope was mailed back to plaintiff, unopened, inside a second envelope. This same sequence of events was repeated after plaintiff filed an amended complaint. At plaintiff's request, the Court issued a summons, and plaintiff hired an Arizona process service company to serve the summons at the residential address. On the first visit, the server announced himself and was told “No thank you,” and left with the papers. On the second and third visits, nobody answered. The process service company then tried to serve the summons and complaint by certified mail, but the package was never claimed.
Of course, during this time that Carreon was hiding out from officially being served, it didn't stop him from continuing to find ways to intimidate the blogger in question. Again, from the judge:
During this time, defendant contacted the general counsel of Walgreens, plaintiff's employer, stating plaintiff had used Walgreens' computer equipment or internet access to create the allegedly actionable website, and implying he might make Walgreens a party to the litigation under a theory of respondeat superior. The demand letter sent to Walgreens contained the same Tucson, Arizona address and email address that plaintiff had been using to attempt service on defendant.
Following that, the blogger's lawyers once again emailed Carreon a copy of the summons, complaint and amended complaint -- including sending it to the address Carreon used to threaten Walgreens... and Carreon ignored that too.
Unfortunately, Carreon seems to be working the system effectively. Because even with all of these obvious attempts to avoid having to actually deal with the lawsuit against him, the judge is asking the blogger and his lawyers to "try harder:"
The process server could easily wait outside the fence for defendant to enter or leave the residence and could then leave the papers in the defendant's presence. Alternatively, the process server may choose to wait near a location defendant is thought to frequent, such as an office or grocery store. If the defendant still refuses to accept the papers, it will be considered sufficient if the “server is in close proximity to the defendant, clearly communicates intent to serve court documents, and makes reasonable efforts to leave the papers with the defendant.”
And with that, the judge refuses to allow the emails to constitute proper service. Public Citizen, who is handling the case pro bono, is asking for donations to help pay for hiring someone to "sit outside Carreon's house until Carreon appears," noting that he's "carrying through on his promise to run up the cost of litigation."
It's unclear what Carreon thinks he's accomplishing here, as he's going to have to face these charges eventually. But, as once again seems clear, his response is to... just keep digging.
Charles Carreon dropped his highly questionable case against Matthew Inman, IndieGoGo, the American Cancer Society and the National Wildlife Fund last week. It was pretty clear he was going to lose (and in a big, bad way). However, he claimed "victory" because, to avoid further complications, Inman made sure that all the money went directly from IndieGoGo and/or Paypal to the charities, so there was never any question of what he might do with the money. Of course, as part of his original pitch, he had promised to photograph all of the money raised as cash and send it to Funnyjunk. Inman got around the rules by taking out the same amount of money from the bank, and photographing it in a variety of different poses, some of which I'm assuming Inman won't mind if we reproduce here.
First up, the money in a duffel bag and laid out on a table, including a shot of Inman in front of it.
Then there's the fun stuff, including arranging the money to show a few special messages, mainly directed at Charles Carreon, even if the original focus was on FunnyJunk.
And all of it concludes with a package which is apparently being sent to Charles Carreon:
I will admit to being a bit confused about one key thing. Inman had originally promised that the photo and the drawing were to be sent to FunnyJunk. Of course, in all of this mess, it didn't seem like FunnyJunk officially said anything, and I don't recall FunnyJunk's owner ever being identified. Instead, everything shifted over to being about Carreon, due to Carreon's behavior. Remember, even though the threats were technically "from" FunnyJunk, the eventual lawsuit was from Carreon alone. We had noted that Carreon appeared to be wrong in claiming that the drawing of the mother and the bear was about his mother, when the text of the campaign seemed clearly to be indicating the mother was "FunnyJunk's" mother. Of course, if no one knows who FunnyJunk actually is, perhaps it's reasonable to ship this stuff to FunnyJunk's "lawyer," which would be Charles Carreon.
While the main event in the Charles Carreon vs. Matthew Inman saga may officially be over, a few issues do remain, including (most importantly) the lawsuit for declaratory judgment against him -- which he can't just dismiss. That said, there's also something... bizarre going on. And we're not talking about the Jonathan Lee Riches' filing (Riches, if you're unaware, is famous for filing ridiculous lawsuits -- even to the point that he filed a lawsuit against Guinness for putting him in their record book as the winner in the "most lawsuits filed" category). At this point, Riches filing a lawsuit is just not newsworthy any more.
Instead, what's more bizarre is a lawsuit filing claiming to be from Matthew Inman against Charles Carreon and his wife -- but which is almost certainly fake. We learned about this from Ken at Popehat, who notes that this supposed "Inman" filing is in "the bizarre and farcical style of Riches," though he's not sure if Riches is actually behind it. That said, he also notes that whoever filed this may soon be in a world of trouble:
However, whoever did it, I submit they've crossed a line they may regret. Filing a frivolous and farcical lawsuit as performance art in your own name is one thing. Filing it falsely under someone else's name is a false statement to the courts. It is very arguably a federal felony under 18 U.S.C. section 1001. I often write here about abuse of 18 U.S.C. section 1001 by the government, but I'm going to have to chew over whether or not this ought to be charged as a crime or not.
The filing itself (embedded below) is truly bizarre. It claims that he (Inman) flew to Tucson to meet with Carreon, where Carreon demanded $1.1 million -- paid in weekly installments of $9,999.99 to a Swiss bank account. Seriously (well, no, not seriously, but that's what's in the filing):
Plaintiff received a telephone call on 6/28/2012 from defendant Charles Carreon, who asked me to fly down to meet him in Tucson Arizona to discuss settling a lawsuit that the defendant filed against me in Federal court in California, and he told me to meet him at the Denny's for breakfast on 6/29/2012 at 8am, so I went to Tucson, and the defendant was waiting in the Denny's booth for me, and The defendant demanded $1.1 million dollars in cash from me to be deposited in weekly installments of $9,999.99 to his offshore swiss bank account, to stay under the $ 10,000 dollars to avoid reporting it for tax purposes, and if i did that he will drop the lawsuit against me. Charles Carreon had his wife Tara lyn Carreon with him and she also told me that i must pay $ 50,000 dollars for her breast enlargements, her tummy tuck, and a years supply of anti aging cream. I told both defendants " no way" " this is complete blackmail" and I told Carreon that I'm reporting him to the Bar association for attorney ethic violations, and to the local police, and Charles Carreon went biserk and irate on me and took my bowl of oatmeal and threw it in m face, Tara lyn Carreon was originally using her feet under the table and secretly massaging my groin with her toes while mr. Carreon was trying to black mail me, so after oatmeal splattered my face, then Tara Carreon kicked me in the groin under the table, everything swelled. Mr. Carreon also poured hot mrs. butterworth maple syrup on my head to humiliate me, the defendants then got up , and Carreons left with a stern warning that they will see me in court, Mr. Carreon told me to enjoy my oat meal. I've suffered emotional distress since and the oatmeal caused stains to my men's wear house suit , and i seek damages including travel expenses to Tucson, Cleaning bills from Oatmeal stains, and medical treatment for hurt groin. I respectfully pray this honorable court will grant my motion for relief.
So, uh, yeah. I do love the creative "sentence" structure used. In particular, the sentence beginning "I told both defendants..." which technically runs on until "everything swelled." When it first mentioned that Inman was eating "oatmeal" I thought it was marginally clever, but it seems to have gone back to the Oatmeal joke three too many times. Either way, this is pretty obviously a bogus filing, but it really was filed in court, and whoever did so may end up regretting it. But, in the meantime, it's a bizarre coda to put at the end of an already bizarre story.
Well, we may have found at least a temporary answer to the question of "just how far will Charles Carreon dig?" According to Mark Lemley, one of the lawyers representing IndieGoGo against Carreon, Charles Carreon has just dismissed his lawsuit. One hopes this means that he's finally realized that this entire process was a mistake. A broad apology for massive overreaction after massive overreaction from Carreon (and his wife who apparently referred to us at Techdirt as a "nazi scumbag") might be nice, but if it's just a general admission that he had gone too far, that seems good enough. Of course, given how far he went, and his repeated insistence on not giving up, I do wonder if this is really the end of all of this. Somehow I doubt it. This is a voluntary dismissal, which means he could refile. But, for a brief moment, it appears that he's stopped digging.
Update: Carreon is apparently declaring victory, claiming that the lawsuit gave him what he wanted. Uh, yeah. He sued to make sure that Matthew Inman and IndieGoGo did exactly what they said they were going to do... and then when they did exactly what they promised to do, he claims that's a victory? At best, he did two things: had Inman limit the donations to just two charities rather than four, and made Inman take some of his own money out of the bank to photograph it (as promised) for Funnyjunk, rather than use the actual money raised during the IndieGoGo campaign. If his goal there was to force that to prevent embarrassment I don't see how that's a victory. Does anyone honestly believe that Carreon came out of this with a better reputation than if he'd just let the original plans happen? Carreon could still face requests for legal fees from those he sued, though it wouldn't surprise me if they all just dropped it. Carreon seems to think the newfound attention he's received is a good thing, which just shows how completely out of touch he is. As Ars Technica notes:
But if the defendants pursued attorney's fees, the attention might be worth it for Charles Carreon. After asking for comment on his voluntary dismissal of charges, Carreon lilted over the phone, "I'm famous, I'm notorious." Which, from the looks of it, is exactly what he wants.
There are times that it's worthwhile to be notorious. And there are times that it's not. This is the second one.
Another day, another story about Charles Carreon digging himself a deeper and deeper hole. This time, it starts with him threatening to sue both the person who set up the parody site charles-carreon.comand Register.com, where the domain was registered. Register.com failed to live up to its own "privacy" promises regarding registration info, and exposed the name and personal info of the person who registered the site after receiving a letter from Carreon, despite direct promises to the person's lawyer. After another phone call in which the lawyer, Paul Levy, warned Register.com that it faced breach of contract charges, it made the info private again.
However, Carreon continued to threaten the blogger, leading to a rather bizarre exchange between Carreon and Levy, which relates to some history that Carreon has had with Levy's organization, Public Citizen, and a case we wrote about last year, involving a website run by Carreon and his wife. In the end, the owner of charles-carreon.com felt sufficiently threatened by Carreon's claims that s/he has decided to file for declaratory judgment to stop Carreon from suing. Part of the reason for seeking declaratory judgment was Carreon's direct threat to go after the blogger at a later date in various jurisdictions. He also threatened to use the DMCA takedown process to try to censor the site, because it uses a photo he claims copyright over. There's significant irony in the fact that Carreon is now threatening to abuse the DMCA process to stifle speech -- when what kicked this whole thing off was his DMCA-based defense of Funnyjunk and its failure to remove copyright-covered images.
Carreon's threat-letter response to Levy is something to behold, and can be viewed towards the bottom of the filing (pdf and embedded below). Here's a key part:
As far as when and where I will sue your client, be certain that it will occur if your client does not cede the domain, and advise her of ten things:
There there is essentially no statute of limitations on this claim, and the prima facie laches defense would not kick in for at least three years.
That venue in this action can be validly laid in at least three places, maybe four, if she doesn't live in Arizona, Florida, or California.
That I am capable of employing counsel to handle my claim against her, who will incur attorneys fees and seek recovery of the same. I filed pro se against Inman simply for sake of convenience and the need for speed, and not from a lack of resources.
That the law in this area cannot be predicted with certainty, will evolve substantially over the next three years, during which I will be using digital forensics to establish actual trademark damages in addition to seeking the maximum cybersquatting penalty of $100,000.
That a judgment that recites that the domain was obtained by fraud upon the registrar, in the form of a misrepresentation that she did not know of my trademark on the name, might well be non-dischargeable in bankruptcy.
That a judgment can be renewed indefinitely until collected, and that California judgments accrue 10% interest, which can compound once ever ten years by capitalizing the accumulated interest.
That you cannot guarantee that Public Citizen will provide her with free legal services on June 1, 2015, when I may very well send the process server 'round to her door.
That I have the known capacity to litigate appeals for years (check my Westlaw profile, and of course, the drawn out history of Penguin v. American Buddha, now in its third year, having passed through the Second Circuit and the NYCA, and still hung up in personal jurisdiction in the SDNY).
That the litigation, being of first impression in virtually every Circuit, grounded in a federal question, involving a registered trademark, and dispositive of many open issues in the field of Internet commerce and speech, might very well continue for a decade.
That Public Citizen might well be unable and/or unwilling to provide her with representation until the resolution of such an extended course of litigation.
He goes on to chide Levy and Public Citizen for "leaping to the defense of someone who is in league with a person who has harnessed the lowest impulses of puerile, vituperative Internet youth to generate a Charitable Fund that has been used to bribe two major charities into tacitly endorsing a campaign that is utterly devoid of charitable purpose, and is a mere cover for a hate campaign."
Uh, yeah. At best, this demonstrates that Carreon still has no clue about what's happening. He still thinks that there's some big campaign against him, and he's still lashing out without realizing that every time he does so he just draws more negative attention to himself. Most people tend to learn that when doing something makes the situation worse, they shouldn't keep doing it. Carreon seems unable to make that basic connection. The rather blatant threats against the blog owner -- to go after her in multiples jurisdictions and at a later date when Public Citizen might not be able to take her case -- are examples of the exact wrong way to handle something like this. It's an old-fashioned lawyer attitude: take an extreme position that you can back down from later. But in this case, it just seems to display -- quite vividly for the judge -- Carreon's true intentions: to be such a nuisance that people stop mocking him. One of these days, he may discover that each time he does that, he's only encouraging more and more ridicule.
Oh, and in the meantime, as for his attempt at getting a temporary restraining order to stop the money raised from being distributed, the judge has asked for proof that the charities have received the money -- as has been stated by IndieGoGo and Matthew Inman. If that is shown to be true, it seems likely that the judge will find no reason to consider the TRO request any more, since it's meaningless.
Well, they don't call it the Carreon Effect for nothing. The lawyer who keeps on digging has decided to... keep on digging. Last week he filed an amended complaint pretty quickly after his original complaint -- specifically with the goal of adding California's Attorney General to the case. Why? Well, as we noted in our original post about his lawsuit, Carreon himself donated to Inman's campaign, in what appears to be a ridiculously weak attempt to get "standing" to sue, but he may be realizing that said "standing" is unlikely to hold up in court -- so perhaps he thinks that dragging the AG into the case will actually make the case go somewhere. Of course, it's also worth noting that Carreon finally realized that "incitement to cybervandalism" was a dead end, and dropped that charge. Of course, as with nearly all things Carreon these days, the weakness of almost everything in the case likely dooms the entire thing (and may leave Carreon wishing he had just decided to do something else).
That's because a few days later, Carreon filed for a temporary restraining order trying to get IndieGoGo not to give the money raised to Inman (in order to fulfill his plan of taking a photo with the money before giving it to the two charities in question), but rather demanding that IndieGoGo give the money directly to the charities. Yes, his entire argument is basically that he wants to skip the part where Inman gets to take a photo with the money, which he seems to think would mock him (even though it was always designed to mock Funnyjunk, not Carreon).
Thankfully, both IndieGoGo and Inman have hit back on the whole thing pretty hard. IndieGoGo, I'm thrilled to learn, has brought on one of my favorite law firms, Durie Tangri, to represent him, and both Ragesh Tangri and Mark Lemley appear to be helping out. When those two are involved, you know the response is going to be good, and this one does not disappoint (pdf and embedded below). Among other things, they point out that Carreon's request for a temporary restraining order is moot, because the money has already been distributed -- but also that Carreon already knew this and waited to file the TRO:
Carreon did not file his papers until June 30... By the time he filed them, he had been
informed that the money already had been transferred.... At Inman’s request,
his share of the money contributed to the BearLove campaign was sent by check to the American Cancer
Society and the National Wildlife Fund, in equal amounts, on June 29.... As explained below, Carreon was aware at least as early as June 15 that the
money was liable to be transferred at any time beginning June 26 and at all events no later than Monday
July 2. He nevertheless made no effort even to file for a TRO until the close of business on June 28.
And, while he notes that the ECF system was down at that time, he offers no explanation for not having
sought to file his TRO application well before June 26 – which he knew to be the earliest date the money
could have been transferred – so that the Court could have adjudicated it before the time period during
which the money was due to be transferred began. Nor does he offer an explanation for having failed at
least to bring the application to the Court’s attention by means other than ECF on Friday June 29.
The simple reason for that is that there never was an emergency here, or any serious threat to
anyone or anything. Carreon’s application is gamesmanship. When Carreon filed his original complaint
on June 15, he knew that funds would be disbursed within five business days of the close of the
fundraising campaign, which was set for June 25. Indeed, on June 26, in conversation with Indiegogo’s
counsel, he admitted that he was aware that the funds could be disbursed at any time between the time of
that conversation and Monday July 2.... Yet Carreon waited nearly two weeks after
filing his complaint to present the court with his TRO request at the eleventh hour. Had there been any
threat of real harm, Carreon would have made this application with more than hours to spare
Furthermore, the filing rightfully points out that not only are Carreon's claims a huge miss, but the idea that there is any sort of "irreparable harm" (required for the TRO to be issued) to him is laughable. Remember, Carreon donated a grand total of $10 here. Paying that back would solve any "harm" if there were any. That's not irreparable. It's the very definition of reparable. If there were harm. Which there is not. So of the "irreparable harm," Carreon fails to show that it is irreparable (because it is not) or that there is harm (because there is not).
First, Carreon cannot demonstrate
irreparable harm to anyone, and certainly not to himself. A temporary restraining order is a drastic
remedy, intended to prevent the grave and irreversible consequences of some imminent event. Here, the
only imminent event was the disbursement of just over $95,000 to the National Wildlife Fund and the
American Cancer Society (not $200,000 as Carreon’s application mistakenly states), fulfilling Inman’s
promise to donate the money to those organizations – the very outcome that Carreon claims to desire.
Indiegogo will retain roughly $8,800 as a processing fee. Carreon’s total contribution was $10. Should
it later be determined that any harm flowed from these events, that harm would be readily compensable
with an award of monetary damages or restitution.
Second, Carreon has not demonstrated and cannot demonstrate a likelihood of success on the
merits. His claims against Indiegogo are barred by section 230(c)(1) of the Communications Decency
Act (“CDA”), which protects from liability a provider of an interactive computer service that merely
publishes information provided by another information content provider. And his claims under the
Supervision of Trustees and Fundraisers for Charitable Purposes Act, Cal. Government Code sections
12580 et seq., are likewise barred because that statute does not create a private right of action that would
afford Carreon standing to sue for its violation.
There's also the fact that IndieGoGo never touches any of the money that is paid via PayPal, meaning it couldn't have stopped it from going to Inman in the first place. The filing points out that this is clearly stated in IndieGoGo's terms of service -- something that Carreon claims to have read and which he cited in his own filing. IndieGoGo also points out that Carreon makes a bunch of crazy statements in his TRO request, including the idea that Inman might get a huge tax writeoff from all of this. As IndieGoGo's response points out, Carreon is "not remotely qualified" to make such an analysis, not the least of which because it's so obviously wrong to... well... anyone with even the slightest amount of common sense. The only way that Inman would get the writeoff is if the money was counted as income to himself, and, as the IndieGoGo filing notes, the supposed "benefit" from the writeoff "would be offset by at least an equivalent increase in income, thus leaving Inman at break-even or worse."
And then there's Inman's response (pdf and embedded below), also discussed by the EFF who wrote it along with (occasional Techidrt contributor) Venkat Balasubramani. It hits back equally hard (if not harder). Any filing that starts out with the following sentence is a filing you just know is going to be good:
Plaintiff Charles Carreon’s application for a temporary restraining order... is
notable as much for its lack of context as its lack of merit.
The filing makes the basics clear: this is a "blatant -- and baseless -- attempt [by Carreon] to retaliate against a critic with whom he is
engaged in a very public dispute." It goes into lots of details, nearly all of which seem to demonstrate Carreon's grasp of the law here is weak at best (some might argue "non-existent" at times). My favorite bit:
Likewise, the First Amendment does not permit the law to hold, as Mr. Carreon claims, that
the phrase “Fuck Off” “cannot be lawfully associated with tax-exempt charitable solicitation in the
State of California.”
Following that, the filing actually cites a previous court ruling on how "one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric."
The bigger point, is that Carreon seems to repeatedly just make stuff up. He claims that Inman misrepresented that donating to the campaign would be tax deductible, even though he did no such thing -- and, in fact, IndieGoGo is pretty clear about when projects are not tax deducible. Yet, Carreon pretends that he expected "his" donation to be tax deductible. Separately, as Adam Steinbaugh points out, Carreon makes this claim (that he expected his donation to be tax-deductible) in a highly questionable way -- especially since his "donation" came just hours before the lawsuit he filed -- and demonstrates pretty clearly that Carreon was already intending to file the lawsuit, and that the donation was just a weak attempt to get standing. The EFF's filing points out how courts tend to look poorly on plaintiffs who do something solely for the purpose of trying to create standing to sue -- because it pretty clearly suggests they were not wronged or deceived, but willingly partook of a situation they fully understood in order to seek standing in a lawsuit.
Basically, Carreon just seems to keep digging. He's trying to drag California's Attorney General into the matter, because he's at least realizing that his own standing is pretty weak, but this TRO request seems to just reinforce the idea that this whole thing is about Charles Carreon being petty and petulant in trying to mess up Inman's attempt to make a statement about the money. Carreon, once again, would be well-served to take some time off and think about what he's doing, rather than reacting by insisting he's going to show the world who's boss. Each move he makes just makes him look even worse.
Another day, and still, Charles Carreon keeps digging. In case you just woke up from a coma, here are all the earlier posts on Carreon. The latest is both a bizarre semi-backtrack, as well as another case of him feverishly continuing to dig that Carreon Effect hole deeper and deeper.
The "backtrack" comes to us via Popehat, pointing us to an interview with Carreon in which he admits that the letter he sent to kick off this whole mess... was a mistake. Yes. You read that right:
Ironically, the threat of the first lawsuit [Funnyjunk suing Inman] never materialized. Carreon admits he was misinformed: Before demanding the $20,000, which was based on FunnyJunk's "estimate of advertising losses sustained due to the taint of being accused of engaging in willful copyright infringement," Carreon was told that all Oatmeal comics had been taken off the FunnyJunk site, even though they hadn't. "If I had known... no demand would have gone out," he says.
You would think that, upon realizing this -- that the entire premise of his letter which kicked off this entire thing was wrong -- he would think better off pursuing a separate strategy in response to the backlash for what he now admits was in error. But, no. Also, as Ken at Popehat points out, saying these things could be construed as "revealing a confidential attorney-client communication between himself and FunnyJunk in order to make himself look less ridiculous."
And then he continues to dig, dig, dig, dig dig.
You see, in another interview (dude gets around), this time with Ars Technica, Carreon
trots out his latest bizarre theory of liability for Matthew Inman. In the lawsuit, he claimed that he thought Inman might keep everything raised above the target goal of $20,000, even though Inman never made any suggestion that was true, and in fact, Inman had said quite clearly (way before Carreon's rampage and lawsuit) that he was going to donate 100% of everything raised to charity. But Carreon says it doesn't matter:
“It sounds like he stands to make $180,000,” Carreon said. “He’s the authorized agent of IndieGoGo. I know this shit is hard to put together. That’s why we hire lawyers, because we read the statute and we take the risk.” (“Inman's commitment after the fact is not evidence of his original intention," Carreon clarified later by e-mail).
It should be noted, of course, that it does not appear that Carreon has "hired a lawyer" since he filed the case pro se (representing himself). The whole "authorized agent of IndieGogo" thing seems to be an astoundingly weak attempt to twist what IndieGoGo does and what Inman did to fit it under the California law on commercial fundraisers.
But, here's where Carreon goes really far out on a limb. On the very same post where Inman tells everyone that 100% of the money is going to charity, he also points out that he is going to add some other charities to the list. Nearly everyone thinks this is a really good thing. More money going to more charities. Awesome. But, no, not to Carreon. Apparently this is evidence of a nasty "bait & switch"
“Inman's idea to add two more charities is another act that shows the risk of money being raised for one purpose to be diverted to another. For example, I raise money for an Israeli charity to pay for trips to the Holy Land, but then decide that half the money should go to Palestinian orphans, or more disturbingly, to Hezbollah, which also has a charity wing. It's one more reason why IndieGoGo should not contract with agents like Inman who do not know that ‘adding charities’ to a campaign is obviously ‘bait and switch’ false advertising.”
Yeah, because everyone is just so sure that Inman's now going to add two charities that involve speeding up cancer causing agents and killing off bears to counter his original two charities.
It would appear that lawyer Charles Carreon is not taking the advice of Matthew Inman to take some time off and calm down. He's still going at it. His latest move is a claimed plan to subpoena both Twitter and Ars Technica to find out who created a fake Charles Carreon Twitter account which parodied Carreon's... um... over the top approach to dealing with people making fun of him online. Twitter will get the subpoena, of course, because that's where the account was. Ars' subpoena is because someone signed up for an account on the site claiming to be the guy who ran the fake twitter account. Ars' Nate Anderson contacted that guy by email who said (1) he lives in Sweden, so good luck, Charles and (2) that he stopped parodying Carreon because Carreon's actual statements were so outrageous they didn't need any parody:
"It became clear to me at one point that I could not keep up with Charles," Modelista wrote. "His comments to the press were more damaging to his reputation than any Twitter parody account could ever be. You cannot mock someone who has such a low regard for his own reputation. Before the @Charles_Carreon account was suspended, I was simply linking to his interviews. Satire was not necessary at that point as Charles was providing it."
One wonders what Carreon must think of the parody blog that has been set up to mock him even more mercilessly at Charles-Carreon.com. That one clearly notes that it's a satire account. In the meantime, plenty of people have pointed out that Charles himself seems to have done many of the kinds of things he's now accusing others of doing. Take, for example, his call to waterboard Ben Bernanke. It's clearly satire (though, not particularly good satire in my opinion), but seems just as over the top as anything that Inman or the anonymous Twitter user did to Carreon. Actually, Carreon's piece seems like much more direct incitement. And, seriously, if Carreon should be worried about anyone doing damage to his reputation, he might want to look at the person commenting up a storm on our site (and elsewhere) claiming to be Charles' wife Tara Carreon. She's been much more nasty and angry than anything that was directed at Charles.
On the legal front, the EFF has signed up to help with Inman's defense. I'm wondering if Carreon is even going to be able to find any lawyers to help him out on his case. Once again, we'd suggest that Carreon take a step back, cool off, and think through the massive mistake he's making. If he continues, the term the Carreon Effect might just catch on for real.
Now that the details have come out about Charles Carreon's lawsuit against Matthew Inman, IndieGoGo and the two charities Inman is raising money for (and the details are as nonsensical as we expected), Matthew Inman has written an open letter to Carreon, suggesting that he might want to calm down a bit. He points out that, contrary to Carreon's claims, he did not "incite security attacks" on Carreon. In fact, Inman not only focused his anger at Funnyjunk, but also went further than necessary to keep Carreon mostly out of it:
So when did this transform from Oatmeal VS FunnyJunk to Carreon VS the internet?
I'm going to take a wild shot in the dark here and guess that it's when you announced to a journalist at MSNBC that you were trying to shut down a charity fundraiser which would benefit cancer victims and endangered wildlife.
THAT was the moment when the tide of public opinion focused on you instead of FunnyJunk. I never encouraged anyone to attack, harass, or otherwise contact you.
In fact in my original letter I blurred out your contact information and I linked to your Wikipedia page instead of your website.
If I've directed energy anywhere it's been to the fundraiser page.
He also tells people not to harass Carreon. He goes on to point out, accurately, that this whole thing has probably been humiliating and points out that the lawsuit is quite likely going to get dismissed, but also offers Carreon a possible path to backing out of this mess:
Your lawsuit is meritless and it'll probably just get dismissed, but
I'm guessing you're just going to keep trying
until you find an angle that sticks with a judge.
My advice: take a few weeks off, stop saying crazy shit to journalists, and come back when you've calmed down.
Write an apology to whomever you feel is appropriate, or just don't write anything ever again.
Maybe start your own charity fundraiser as way of apology.
I'd donate.
Also known as "the stop digging" solution. The same one half the internet has been suggesting for the past week. The same suggestion that Carreon keeps ignoring -- leading at least some people to start calling the impulse to keep digging the Carreon Effect. That moniker will likely disappear if he does, in fact, stop digging. But what are the odds of that happening?
Earlier this morning we wrote about Charles Carreon suing Matthew Inman, IndieGoGo, the National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society. At that time, all anyone had was the summary of the lawsuit as written by Courthouse News Service. Now, Carreon has posted the filing to his own website (with portions redacted) and the full version is now available via PACER. I've attached the officially filed version below. Rather than reveal new theories that we had missed in our original analysis, it would appear that our initial thoughts were dead on. This case is just begging to be anti-SLAPPed out of existence, in which case Carreon may find himself on the hook for significant legal fees.
When I was writing about the original case, I went looking through California's regulations on charities, and couldn't find anything that would impact Inman or IndieGoGo and all I came across was this law from this page on the California Attorney's General website. But I couldn't see how that specifically applied to Inman or IndieGoGo, since it seemed to be focused (a) on charities themselves or (b) on professional fundraisers (i.e., people hired to fundraise on a charity's behalf). It did not seem to apply to people who just tried to raise money which they promised to donate to a charity. However, that is the law that Carreon is relying on. Carreon seems to try to twist the definition of a "commercial fundraiser" to make it apply to Inman and IndieGoGo, but it's a pretty massive stretch. Inman isn't doing this "for compensation," so the law doesn't seem to apply to him. IndieGoGo is just the platform, but isn't doing the soliciting or directly touching the funds. The law is designed for an entirely different purpose.
And even if, somehow, a court actually believes that this law applies here, you might wonder how it's possible that Carreon has any standing to sue whatsoever. The fundraiser has nothing to do with him (it was about Funnyjunk, but remember that Carreon is suing on his own behalf, not Funnyjunk's.). Carreon appears to just be suing because he's pissed off. Except, that Carreon thinks he found a loophole. He donated to the campaign himself in order to create standing:
Plaintiff is a contributor to the Bear Love campaign, and made his contribution with the intent to benefit the purposes of the NWF and the ACS. Plaintiff is acting on his own behalf and to protect the rights of all other contributors to the Bear Love campaign to have their reasonable expectation that 100% of the money they contributed would go to a charitable purpose. Plaintiff opposes the payment of any funds collected from the Bear Love campaign to Indiegogo, on the grounds that the contract between Indiegogo and Inman is an illegal contract that violates the Act, and its enforcement may be enjoined. Plaintiff opposes the payment of any funds to Inman because he is not a registered commercial fundraiser, because he failed to enter into a written contract with the Charitable Organization defendants, because the Bear Love campaign utilized false and deceptive statements and insinuations of bestiality on the part of Plaintiff and his client’s “mother,” all of which tends to bring the Charitable Defendants and the institution of public giving into disrepute.
Yeah. Once again, Carreon contributed to Inman's campaign for what appears to be the sole reason of using that as a way to get standing to sue. I'm somewhat stunned.
Also, how can he possibly blame the charities? Well, Carreon's lawsuit fails in that it never actually states a claim against the charities. Seriously. At one point in the explanation of the lawsuit, he does state the following, but never actually includes the charities in any of the actual claims:
Although the Charitable Organization defendants have notified by Plaintiff in writing about the fact that the “Bear Love” campaign alleged infra is being conducted by Inman and Indiegogo in violation of the Act, and that the campaign is being conducted in a manner that could cause public disparagement of the Charitable Organization defendants’s good name and good will, neither the ACS or the NWF have acted to disavow their association with the Bear Love campaign, thus lending their tacit approval to the use of their names to the Bear Love campaign.
Again, just for emphasis, I'll point out that even with this paragraph, Carreon fails to name either charity with any of the actual claims in the lawsuit. He does include them in part of the claim, by stating that they "have failed to perform their statutory duty to exercise authority over the Bear Love campaign," but still fails to directly assert the claim against them. Even if he somehow figured out a way to work them into one of the claims, this particular legal theory of not disavowing "their association" with Inman's campaign leading to "tacit approval" is pretty ridiculous as well, and not something I could see standing up in court.
Meanwhile, Carreon's theory that Inman "disparages the image of charitable fundraising" again seems to stretch all kinds of definitions and understanding of the internet. Basically, he relies on the fact that Inman likes to mock people he doesn't like. But that's entirely unrelated to the issues at hand. Furthermore, despite Inman and Inman's lawyer explaining (in great detail) to Carreon, earlier, that Inman has an ASCII pterodactyl on all pages of The Oatmeal's source code, Carreon spends an inordinate amount of space talking about how awful this is.
Inman has announced his vindictive response to his real and imagined enemies by posting, within the source code of all of the webpages on his main website, www.theoatmeal.com, the following image and text, depicting himself as a pterodactyl that will “ptero-you a new asshole.” A screencapture of the core of the source-code appears as follows:
Following the link to http://pterodactyl.me leads the Internet user to a page on TheOatmeal.com where a video created by Inman and Sarah Donner depicts Inman, in his character as a carnivorous, prehistoric flying reptile that first rips the intestines out of a man's anus, then flogs him with his entrails, then steals a pineapple from a boy, tears his head off, flings it a girl and knocks here head off, then grinds up the girl’s head up in a wood-chipper, blends it with the pineapple, and drinks the grisly cocktail
The filing then shows screenshots from the video in question, which we'll just embed here for your viewing pleasure:
Carreon tries to claim that these images actually incite Inman's followers into action:
Inman’s followers are by and large with technologically savvy young people eager to follow the
latest trend, who embrace Inman’s brutal ideology of “tearing you a new asshole.”
Seriously? Carreon is literally arguing that fans of a silly comic with cartoonishly ridiculous violence leads them to "embrace" this "brutal ideology?" Carreon really ought to spend more time online. Carreon repeatedly makes incredibly weak connections between Inman's cartoons, his online persona and the later hatred directed his way, but without any actual evidence.
Later in the lawsuit, Carreon again claims that Inman's statement that Funnyjunk "stole" images is "false and misleading." Whether or not that's true, it's irrelevant here. Funnyjunk is not a plaintiff in the lawsuit. He also goes off on Inman for "fighting
words, and incitements to commit cybervandalism, none of which are entitled to constitutional
protection." Neither of those make sense. It's nearly impossible to see how Inman's cartoons, as sophomoric as they might be, qualify under the standard legal definition of "fighting words" or any kind of incitement to violence. In fact, Inman has made no references inciting his audience to do anything other than give money to charities (which most people would consider a good thing).
Moving on... we've got the trademark and publicity rights claim. As expected, Carreon is asserting that various actions violate the trademark on his name and his publicity rights. The key is that someone set up a fake Twitter account in his name and tweeted various statements that might make Carreon look silly. Of course, reading some of the tweets, it seems rather obvious that the account is fake. For example, one of them talks about "backtracing" Inman's IP -- a rather obvious reference to the famous ya dun goofed internet meme. Also, as he had suggested in an interview on Friday, Carreon makes interesting leaps of logic in suggesting that Inman himself may have set up the fake account.
Then, finally, we have the "inciting and committing cybervandalism in the nature of trespass to chattels, false personation and identity theft." Here, he claims that the fact that his email address was made public was part of that incitement, claiming that he never made it public:
As noted above, Doe1 or Inman proliferated Plaintiff’s email address via a fake tweet made by “@Charles_Carreon.com.” Plaintiff had not posted the chas@charlescarreon.com email address anywhere on the Internet except where required by law and Internet regulations. (The email address appears on legal papers in PACER filings in cases where required by the rules of this and other U.S. District Courts; however, these filings are viewable only by PACER users. The email address was also used in the Whois registration database for various websites Plaintiff has registered for his benefit, and as by the authorized registrant/agent of various legal clients.) Inman or persons incited by Inman also proliferated the email address and Plaintiff’s home address on social networking websites, again for the malicious purpose of enabling cybervandalism.
Except... court filings are not only viewable to those with a PACER account. Filings with the court, if not under seal, are considered public documents and are often available from a variety of sources, including the Internet Archive and other places as well. Separately, if he didn't use an anonymizer, the whois info that includes his email address is public info. Furthermore, his address is available elsewhere online as well, including (um...) both the websites for the State Bar of California and the State Bar of Oregon. Oh, and the email address is also clearly stated in the version of the legal filing that Carreon posted to his own website. While he redacted his email address in the header, he did not within the text of the complaint. In other words, that address was widely available to the public already.
His second claim of cybervandalism was that someone tried to reset the password on his webhosting account:
On June 13, 2012, at 9:28 p.m., either Inman or one of the persons named as Does 1 – 100 engaged in the act of trespass to chattels, cracking the password on Plaintiff’s website at http://www.charlescarreon.com and requesting to reset the password. Fortunately, the intrusion discovered instantly by Plaintiff who was sitting looking at his computer screen when he received an email from the website software system, and was able to retain control of the website by immediately changing the password using the hyperlink in the email.
First of all, merely requesting a reset password is not "cracking the password." It's requesting a new password, which the user would not be able to act upon unless they had access to Carreon's email (and there is no indication that that happened). In fact, it appears that the password reset system worked as designed, in that Carreon was warned that someone wanted to reset the password. And, actually, the fact that Carreon admits to "using the hyperlink in the email" suggests that that could have been the real hack attempt. You should never change your password using a hyperlink sent to you in an email. You should always go directly to the site yourself and login and make the change. Normally, if you receive one of those reset emails and haven't tried to reset your password, you're supposed to ignore it so that the password doesn't get reset. Clicking on the link and changing a password that way makes one susceptible to phishing attacks.
Finally, Carreon notes that some idiots online have signed his email account up for various spam emails/newsletters. If true, that's pretty stupid on whoever signed him up for those kinds of things, and people really shouldn't do that. But claiming that's "cybervandalism" or anything that can or should be pinned on Inman (again, whose target was Funnyjunk, not Carreon) seems ridiculous in the extreme.
