"I Stole Your Cartoons and Now I'm Suing You"

Above image copyright Matthew Inman.

I don't know Matthew Inman who draws the Web comic The Oatmeal. He has a lot of fans.

He discovered last year that a site called FunnyJunk had many of his comics hosted on its Web site without his knowledge. Unfortunately, these things happen to cartoonists all the time.

But there's a twist:

FunnyJunk took down some of the images.

But ...

Charles Carreon, who owns who is a lawyer for FunnyJunk, decided Mr. Inman owes FunnyJunk.

Read Matthew Inman's "FunnyJunk is threatening to file a federal lawsuit against me unless I pay $20,000 in damages."



Related: an alleged Internet scam from 2009 that sounds like this: I Stole Your Images and Now I'm Suing You (see below email):

EDIT: July 3, 2012: Electronic Frontier Foundation: Charles Carreon Drops Bogus Lawsuit Against The Oatmeal Creator

"'Matthew Inman spoke out against Carreon's threat of a frivolous lawsuit, in a very popular and very public way,' said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. 'This was nothing more than a meritless attempt to punish Inman for calling attention to his legal bullying. We called him out on this in our briefs, so it's no surprise that Carreon was left with no choice but to dismiss.'"