This Friday, July 15th I'll be at the Cheezburger field day,
which will be chock-full of LOLcat people and other internet folks.
I'll be giving a short presentation and then doing some Q&A with the audience.
Also, if you come and find me I might even draw you a fancy little picture,
or at the very least you can listen to me pretend like I know things about baseball.
Full details here.
I thought I'd help him out with his English. Click to read
A few days ago I posted about FunnyJunk.com stealing my comics and asked my readers for advice.
The owner of the site responded in two ways:
1. He sent this mass message to every member of his site:
As you can imagine, my inbox and Facebook page were slammed with thousands of messages from FunnyJunk users who believed that I was trying to get their community shut down.
I think they set the land speed record for the highest number of "OMG ur a gayfagness!!!11" Facebook comments in a single day.
I politely responded with this letter.
2. He removed all the stolen material.
This includes all the content from David Thorne, Perry Bible Fellowship, Hyperbole and a Half, and so on.
Unfortunately, he only deleted posts which have "The Oatmeal" in the title.
This means that all the content which was properly attributed got wiped out and all the comics
that have no mention of me are still there,
which is basically my entire website.
To the admin of FunnyJunk: I put together a list of all my comics which you can download here and use to remove the remainder of the stolen material.
To the users of FunnyJunk:
I never had plans to sue FunnyJunk and get it shut down; I just wanted my stolen comics removed --
your admin is a moron who chooses his words about as carefully as a mule chooses where to take a shit.
Hugs and kisses,
-The Oatmeal
Here's how FunnyJunk.com's business operates:
I first contacted them about a year ago after I found a handful of my comics uploaded on their site with no credit or link back to me. They took down the offending images, but since then they've practically stolen my entire website and mirrored it on FunnyJunk:
Most of the comics they've stolen look like this -- no credit or link back to me. Even with proper attribution, no one clicks through and FunnyJunk still earns a huge pile of cash from all the ad revenue.
Should I send them a cease and desist? One of my readers wrote in and mentioned that Cyanide and Happiness did that very thing, but from what I can tell it hasn't had much effect. There's still hundreds of C&H comics hosted on FunnyJunk.com, as well as thousands from other artists:
Here's their only attempt at original humor:
And it's not just FunnyJunk.com, there's a small army of sites out there like this whose business model runs this way. Another one is DamnLOL.com, who managed to rack up 670,000 likes on Facebook by hosting stolen content and covering their website with "like this on Facebook" buttons. It seems like this "Host-stolen-content-until-someone-complains-meanwhile-earning-ad-revenue" business model is booming right now. It's basically the new Ebaumsworld.
I realize that trying to police copyright infringement on the internet is like strolling into the Vietnamese jungle circa 1964 and politely asking everyone to use squirt guns.
I know that if FunnyJunk disappeared fifty other clones would pop up to take its place overnight,
but I felt I had to say something about what they're doing.
Perhaps you should too *update* read below.
The admin of FunnyJunk has responded, details here.
Starting today I'm selling copies of my book, 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth directly out of The Oatmeal Shop. I'm selling it for $14.99, which is the same price you'd pay if you bought it in a physical bookstore (although that doesn't include shipping).
As always, each copy also includes this pull-out poster.
Signed in fermented yak blood
Is it cheaper to buy from Amazon or Barnes and Noble?
Yes, but I can't afford to compete with those businesses on price, so in exchange
for paying full retail for the book I'm signing all the copies that are sold directly.
I'm selling it at the suggested retail price ($14.99) plus shipping.
Is it faster to order from you that other online retailers?
Probably not. Amazon and B&N have armies of employees who ship merchandise quicker than
Santa's elves on crystal meth, and my shop is run entirely by a couple of my family members.
(my mom and sister ship everything and do customer service, so please be nice to them if you have an issue with your order)
Are you shipping internationally?
Yes, although shipping can be a bit expensive depending on which country it goes to.
Again because it's a signed copy hopefully you'll think of it as a big greasy hug from The Oatmeal and
forgive the shipping costs.
I also started selling Bobcats greeting cards.
They're sold as a pack of seven, envelopes are included and shipping is free.
I added a sticker pack that includes 14 various cat stickers, including stuff from The Bobcats, Cat Vs. Internet, and How to Pet a Kitty.
The pack costs $6.00 and shipping is free.
View the rest of the cat stickers here.
Lastly, I added a few more stickers to the Oatmeal sticker pack, including Less Complaining, More Sexy Rumpus, Sriracha, and a Gayroller 2000. The new pack contains 22 Oatmeal stickers for $7.00 and shipping is free.
