So let's say Funnyjunk stops threatening and decides not to sue. What have they lost?
* Legal fees for sending a couple of threating letters.
What have they gained?
* A full-page spread in The Oatmeal advertising the fact to all readers of Slashdot, HN, and many other social media sites that Funnyjunk exists, carries user-submitted comics such as would be interesting to readers of The Oatmeal, and are friendlier to content submitters than they are to the DMCA.
* Massive SEO links. Four out of the first six search results for "the oatmeal" from DDG refer to Funnyjunk. Funnyjunk has an entire section on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oatmeal#FunnyJunk_legal_dis... and an entire article dedicated to the dispute.
Now most of us want to believe "But this is negative publicity and Funnyjunk couldn't possibly want that". But before you conclude that, consider how little people are going to remember about this incident in just a few weeks. For example, do you remember even today the name of the Funnyjunk CEO or of his lawyer? I don't, but I remember Funnyjunk whereas I had never heard of it at all before. I've even been to their site several times now (following up on links posted at The Oatmeal).
I hate to say it, but this was brilliant and The Oatmeal fell for it.
* FJ is a site that's been around for years and has had a steady falloff of users and who's popularity has been waning since 2006. This looks to me like an act of desperation, not a brilliant gorilla marketing tactic.
* Threatening a lawsuit against The Oatmeal, who in turn responds with charity and humor does not make FJ seem cool.
* DDG is obviously returning some pretty bad relevance, considering a search for "the oatmeal" on Google doesn't return a single reference to FJ except in the News section talking about what huge dicks they are. This is not positive SEO. Also, when I search DDG in an empty session, I only get 2/6, not 4/6, so either they've already fixed this oversight or you're getting some unique results because of your history.
* FJ does not get DMCA protections. As pointed out in the above letter, they don't have a DMCA agent on file, which means that even though Inman isn't going to go after them, as a result of this bogus legal threat against him, they've just painted a big bullseye on themselves. Anyone who feels like they want to pile on and get some free money out of FJ can now point to their works being online and sue. Someone less courteous could extract up to $150,000 per infringement, especially since there is clearly commercial intent behind this "unauthorized sharing".
I hate to say it, but you've completely read this situation wrong, and if anything, The Oatmeal has come out with vastly more positive press from this than FJ ever will.
> FJ is a site that's been around for years and has had a steady falloff of users and who's popularity has been waning since 2006. This looks to me like an act of desperation, not a brilliant gorilla marketing tactic.
What's that based on? Their traffic has almost tripled in the last year. They publish their traffic statistics, as you can see here: http://funnyjunk.com/stat/
Yesterday they had 23,282,449 page views. 1 year ago today they had 9,978,711 page views.
I'm not so sure. FunnyJunk does need attention to be successful, but more than that, it needs participation. There has been considerable dissent in the FJ community and if that mounts, it could easily kill the necessary critical mass you need to keep a "user submitted content" site alive.
I don't think The Oatmeal "fell" for anything. They got even more publicity than FJ-- and it was all positive. Seems more like a classic "pick a fight and everyone wins" situation.
This is an interesting argument but I'm not sure I completely buy it. For a similar example, the Gizmodo/iPhone 4 fiasco definitely led to increased awareness and pageviews for the site. However subsequently their reputation took a hit and they no longer had a good relationship with Apple which hurt their ability to cover future product releases. I don't have any data to really back this up but I imagine in the long term it reduced readership for the site. Funnyjunk is way less known than Gizmodo (I had never heard of it until this recent story), so maybe the increased traffic will have a positive effect in the long term. However I don't think that's a smart or sustainable way to build an audience for any website.
"their reputation took a hit and they no longer had a good relationship with Apple which hurt their ability to cover future product releases."
That's a little different. That is more like "keep your enemies closer" type situation. Different strategy it's like a news outlet pissing off the White House in order to have a sensational story and then having access cut off.
* Legal fees for sending a couple of threating letters.
What have they gained?
* A full-page spread in The Oatmeal advertising the fact to all readers of Slashdot, HN, and many other social media sites that Funnyjunk exists, carries user-submitted comics such as would be interesting to readers of The Oatmeal, and are friendlier to content submitters than they are to the DMCA.
* Massive SEO links. Four out of the first six search results for "the oatmeal" from DDG refer to Funnyjunk. Funnyjunk has an entire section on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oatmeal#FunnyJunk_legal_dis... and an entire article dedicated to the dispute.
Now most of us want to believe "But this is negative publicity and Funnyjunk couldn't possibly want that". But before you conclude that, consider how little people are going to remember about this incident in just a few weeks. For example, do you remember even today the name of the Funnyjunk CEO or of his lawyer? I don't, but I remember Funnyjunk whereas I had never heard of it at all before. I've even been to their site several times now (following up on links posted at The Oatmeal).
I hate to say it, but this was brilliant and The Oatmeal fell for it.