Carreon Admits His Original Threat Letter Was A Mistake, But Keeps On Digging Anyway

Surprises

from the stop-digging,-charles dept

Another day, and still, Charles Carreon keeps digging. In case you just woke up from a coma, here are all the earlier posts on Carreon. The latest is both a bizarre semi-backtrack, as well as another case of him feverishly continuing to dig that Carreon Effect hole deeper and deeper.

The “backtrack” comes to us via Popehat, pointing us to an interview with Carreon in which he admits that the letter he sent to kick off this whole mess… was a mistake. Yes. You read that right:

Ironically, the threat of the first lawsuit [Funnyjunk suing Inman] never materialized. Carreon admits he was misinformed: Before demanding the $20,000, which was based on FunnyJunk’s “estimate of advertising losses sustained due to the taint of being accused of engaging in willful copyright infringement,” Carreon was told that all Oatmeal comics had been taken off the FunnyJunk site, even though they hadn’t. “If I had known… no demand would have gone out,” he says.

You would think that, upon realizing this — that the entire premise of his letter which kicked off this entire thing was wrong — he would think better off pursuing a separate strategy in response to the backlash for what he now admits was in error. But, no. Also, as Ken at Popehat points out, saying these things could be construed as “revealing a confidential attorney-client communication between himself and FunnyJunk in order to make himself look less ridiculous.”

And then he continues to dig, dig, dig, dig dig.

You see, in another interview (dude gets around), this time with Ars Technica, Carreon trots out his latest bizarre theory of liability for Matthew Inman. In the lawsuit, he claimed that he thought Inman might keep everything raised above the target goal of $20,000, even though Inman never made any suggestion that was true, and in fact, Inman had said quite clearly (way before Carreon’s rampage and lawsuit) that he was going to donate 100% of everything raised to charity. But Carreon says it doesn’t matter:

“It sounds like he stands to make $180,000,” Carreon said. “He’s the authorized agent of IndieGoGo. I know this shit is hard to put together. That’s why we hire lawyers, because we read the statute and we take the risk.” (“Inman’s commitment after the fact is not evidence of his original intention,” Carreon clarified later by e-mail).

It should be noted, of course, that it does not appear that Carreon has “hired a lawyer” since he filed the case pro se (representing himself). The whole “authorized agent of IndieGogo” thing seems to be an astoundingly weak attempt to twist what IndieGoGo does and what Inman did to fit it under the California law on commercial fundraisers.

But, here’s where Carreon goes really far out on a limb. On the very same post where Inman tells everyone that 100% of the money is going to charity, he also points out that he is going to add some other charities to the list. Nearly everyone thinks this is a really good thing. More money going to more charities. Awesome. But, no, not to Carreon. Apparently this is evidence of a nasty “bait & switch”

“Inman’s idea to add two more charities is another act that shows the risk of money being raised for one purpose to be diverted to another. For example, I raise money for an Israeli charity to pay for trips to the Holy Land, but then decide that half the money should go to Palestinian orphans, or more disturbingly, to Hezbollah, which also has a charity wing. It’s one more reason why IndieGoGo should not contract with agents like Inman who do not know that ‘adding charities’ to a campaign is obviously ‘bait and switch’ false advertising.”

Yeah, because everyone is just so sure that Inman’s now going to add two charities that involve speeding up cancer causing agents and killing off bears to counter his original two charities.

Filed Under: charity, charles carreon, matthew inman, streisand effect, the oatmeal
Companies: funnyjunk