Internet Laywer Personally Sues Everyone Associated with Oatmeal Fundraiser

In case you haven't heard, much-loved webcomic The Oatmeal is under threat.  

About a week ago, content aggregation website FunnyJunk hired Internet lawyer Charles Carreon to threaten The Oatmeal with a lawsuit.  Here's the basic rundown:

- About a year ago, Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal noticed that a troublingly large number of his original comics appeared on FunnyJunk without attribution.  Instead of jumping to the sanctuary of the legal system, he wrote a blog post about it.  In that blog post, he noted that FunnyJunk's MO seemed to be stealing other people's work and making money off of it.

- FunnyJunk removed some of Inman's content, but not all of it.  The content that was left unremoved was also the content that had no reference at all to Inman or his website, The Oatmeal.

- Inman decided to ignore it.

- About a week ago, FunnyJunk hired Carreon to threaten Inman with a lawsuit over the allegedly malicious false statements Inman made in his blog post -- namely, that FunnyJunk's MO was to steal other people's work and make money off of it.

- Carreon threatened Inman with a lawsuit and offered up a settlement opportunity to the tune of $20,000.

- Inman laughed, posted it on his blog, and then set up a charity fundraiser through IndieGoGo to raise the $20,000 so he could...take a photo of it, send the photo to Carreon & FunnyJunk, and then donate half of it to the National Wildlife Federation and half to the American Cancer Society.

Inman also drew a cartoon of Carreon's "mom seducing a Kodiak bear," and offered to send that along as well.

Now, Inman's fundraiser has thusfar been a tremendous success -- he reached the $20,000 goal in just 64 minutes, and so far has raised almost $200,000 in just one week, with one week left to go.  Inman has updated his fundraiser to note that he still plans to send all of the money to charity, and will be adding two more charities to the list.  This wild success isn't really a surprise -- after all, the Internet loves The Oatmeal, hates annoying lawyers and ridiculous lawsuits, and appreciates charity fundraisers.

Of course, The Oatmeal's success also means Carreon's...not success.  Carreon says he's been bombarded with emails ranging from unsympathetic to obscene, and that he doesn't appreciate his mother being referred to as an obese bear-seductress.  

So Carreon has decided to personally sue.  And he's not just suing Inman and The Oatmeal.  Nope, he's also suing IndieGoGo (the fundraising service), The National Wildlife Federation, and The American Cancer Society.  [Read his full suit here.]  

According to Carreon, Inman and the two charities are not working within the California law governing charitable contributions -- namely, that they are not following the laws regarding commercial fundraisers.  What Carreon forgets, of course, is that "commercial" means that someone is working for compensation -- while Inman has stated he is in fact not working for any compensation and all of the money will go to charity.

But, as The Register points out, it's possible the two charities won't appreciate the press time, and might therefore pressure Inman to back down.

Anyway, that's where we're at.  Inman has raised almost $200,000 for charity, and Carreon is suing charities.