Hacker News Reader

Comment by jenius | Hacker News Reader

This is an absolute domination. Not only is it far more thorough than Carreon's original statement and quite clearly dismantles every single point he makes, but it's a very reasonable and human-readable letter that contains a number of well informed possible outcomes and suggestions for courses of action that funnyjunk can take.

Honestly at this point the best think funnyjunk can do is publish an apology. This whole issue has been extremely public and has not only completely ruined funnyjunk's reputation (if they ever had one), but also made Carreon (who seemed previously to be a relatively respected lawyer) look like an absolute idiot and a scumbag for his frankly stupid and uninformed research and attempts to take down a charity initiative.

Sometimes you have to realize that you have been absolutely dominated and just drop your pride and give in before it gets any worse. This is one of those situations.

View on HN

I've worked w/Venkat before. He's always this good... He's the kind of lawyer, like grellas and Douglas Choi at http://tangolaw.com that makes you excited about the artful practice of law. When done well, responses like this are like a perfect movie review - so well crafted that the review itself becomes art.

"He's always this good... ...When done well, responses like this are like a perfect movie review"

How is his win record or success with settling or preventing lawsuits? In the end isn't that the thing that matters? (I ask the question regardless of the outcome of this particular event).

That is A thing that matters, but I think a lawyer that's committed to playing fair is important, even if the opposition doesn't think so.

i think of three skills of a good lawyer (at least the skills i value):

a) skill at writing clear, concise contracts.

b) skill at understanding acceptable tradeoffs - do we really need to spend extra legal time on X? what are the consequences if we do or don't?

c) skill at responding to and diffusing adversarial situations like this

That is, I suspect, a metric as useful as bugs fixed.

Good lawyers take tough cases you're more likely to lose. With that measure you're as likely to find someone's who cherry picks slam dunks as a genuinely good lawyer.

In that vein, you may also enjoy Blue Jeans Cable's response to Monster:

http://www.bluejeanscable.com/legal/mcp/index.htm

lol, its as if this came from some movie where a some new up and coming fighter unknowingly messes with a retried but still sharp ex-champion, and instantly gets his ass handed to him.

In addition to an apology, I think FunnyJunk could turn this pr loss into a win by: making some face saving joke about the bear love thing, matching donations to charity, and explaining why they think user generated content on the web is important and the responsibility to police it isn't theirs.

I doubt that is worth $100k to FunnyJunk, though.

Almost $170k now: http://www.indiegogo.com/bearlovegood

Maybe we have different ideas of what legal brilliance is. I thought that letter was at least 4 pages too long and excessively pedantic for what it is trying to say. The letter also spends too much time reaching conclusions rather than actually applying the law. Overall, it was about the same quality (from a legal and linguistic viewpoint) as Mr. Carreon's initial letter.

Moreoever, as to Mr. Carreon: Mr. Carreon has managed to make himself look like an expert on internet law to millions of potential clients through multiple media appearances. Mr. Carreon does not work for techies; he works for people who still think computers are magical black boxes. He's almost certainly okay with techies thinking that he is an absolute idiot.

Not only that, but Mr. Carreon has managed to make his client look sympathetic in front of the same audience (i.e., any potential jurors if the case goes to trial). Techies will find the drawing of the mom seducing the bear harmless (in part because it is, relative to the stuff we see coming out of reddit and 4chan on a daily basis), but ordinary people will look at that drawing and be horribly offended.

As to the IndieGoGo interference: by raising that issue, Mr. Carreon has suggested that IndieGoGo's TOS is toothless. It places IGG in a bind: if the Oatmeal did violate the TOS, then IGG must take down the fundraiser or lose the ability to use its TOS as a sword/shield in future litigation.

Mr. Carreon's job is not to look good, it is to represent his client in potential litigation. From a litigation standpoint, he's definitely got the upper hand so far.

(I am not commenting on the merits of his client's case, because I simply do not care enough about either party based on what is currently known about them to put in the effort to analyze the current or potential claims and outcomes.)

>that letter was at least 4 pages too long and excessively pedantic for what it is trying to say.

Agreed, but a great deal of the legal system is pedantry and redefining of common words to mean something else than what the dictionary says. That's how the game is played.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com