Category Archives: WTF

Charles Carreon sues charities. I think he’s a dick.

FunnyJunk is a website which publishes funny images. Many of these images are stolen from various sources – including hundreds stolen from TheOatmeal. When Matthew Inman, owner of TheOatmeal called out the owner of FunnyJunk.com for hosting lots of stolen comics, including a lot of Matthew’s material. The owner of FunnyJunk.com deleted some of them, but a large number still remained, some with attribution removed to hide the fact they’d come from TheOatmeal.

Matthew just left it at that, and the remaining stolen comics continued to be hosted on FunnyJunk without attribution or permission.

Recently, almost a year later, Charles Carreon, a lawyer who became famous in the 90s after successfully litigating sex.com, served papers on Matthew representing FunnyJunk, demanding that Matthew remove “false statements about FunnyJunk” from his website, and accuses Matthew of using SEO practices to attempt to come up when people search for “funnyjunk”. (Er, yes, a page written about FunnyJunk will indeed appear in search results for “funnyjunk” – that’s not SEO trickery or any negative action, that’s how the Internet works.)

Worse, though, he also demanded payment of $20,000 to be made! Er, yes, good luck demanding unsubstantiated amounts from a fellow citizen; as a lawyer, I’m sure you’d know that Matthew has no obligation to comply whatsoever, until you take a case in front of a judge, and get awarded damages; how you could substantiate that level of damages I’m not quite sure.

In response, Matthew launched a fundraiser, intended to raise the $20,000 demanded, which would then be donated to the American Cancer Society and the National Wildlife Federation, two worthy causes. The $20,000 was raised in around an hour, and ballooned to an incredible sum of over $186,000 at time of writing – that’s an incredible achievement and something Matthew can be proud of.

Charles Carreon apparently took offense, though, and told a journalist at MSNBC that he “has sent a request to disable the fundraising campaign”. So, he wants to prevent the American Cancer Society and the National Wildlife Federation from receiving over $90,000 each? That seems like something that’ll make you popular.

Amazingly, he decided to go on and launch a lawsuit not only against Matthew, but also against IndieGoGo, the company hosting the donation appeal, who are uninvolved in the whole original bitchfight. That wasn’t dickish enough, though; he also decided to sue the National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society, who have no involvement other than being the intended recipients of the fundraising results.

Seriously, dude, what the fuck?

I can’t find better words to summarise the situation than these by Ken at Popehat in the link above:

Yes. Charles Carreon, butthurt that someone had leveraged his douchebaggery into almost two hundred thousand dollars of donations to two worthy charities, sued the charities.

Charles Carreon, I think you are indeed a grade-A douchebag. I do hope nobody will ever consider hiring you to represent them in future, except perhaps to unblock their toilets with your tongue. Matthew Inman, I’d like to buy you a beer.

Jacko dominates the charts, again

Michael Jackson was a true legend, one of the best musical entertainers for a long time, and of cause his untimely demise was a big shame.

But, what’s with the number of his songs in the charts?

I don’t understand this – the real fans who will really miss him will already *have* his albums, so why are his singles now suddenly selling so much? Who are these people who presumably didn’t think much of him when he was alive, but now want to buy his music so much now he’s passed on?

Granted, it’s good to see the quality of the music in the charts inproving, but how’s this for mad (this is looking at the chart for the week of 2009-07-06):

Position Song
2 Man In The Mirror
10 Billie Jean
12 Thriller
13 Smooth Criminal
19 Beat It
25 Black Or White
26 Dirty Diana
32 They Don’t Care About Us
33 Earth Song
34 The Way You Make Me Feel
35 You Are Not ALone
38 Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough
40 Bad
43 I Want You Back (Jackson 5)
46 Ben
50 ABC (Jackson 5)

That’s just those within the top 50 – there’s a few more between 50 and 75 too.

It’s a fitting tribute to a great entertainer, but it still puzzles me.

Ryanair “standing room only” plans?

Ryanair passengers could soon fly for free – if they want to stand for their journey

Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary told Sky News the low-cost airline was considering ripping out the back few rows of seats on some flights.

Um, what? I’m pretty sure that won’t fly.

The FAA regulations definately require suitable seats with safety belts:

Sec. 121.311 – Seats, safety belts, and shoulder harnesses.

(a) No person may operate an airplane unless there are available during the takeoff, en route flight, and landing —

(1) An approved seat or berth for each person on board the airplane who has reached his second birthday; and

(2) An approved safety belt for separate use by each person on board the airplane who has reached his second birthday, except that two persons occupying a berth may share one approved safety belt and two persons occupying a multiple lounge or divan seat may share one approved safety belt during en route flight only.

(b) Except as provided in this paragraph, each person on board an airplane operated under this part shall occupy an approved seat or berth with a separate safety belt properly secured about him or her during movement on the surface, takeoff, and landing. A safety belt provided for the occupant of a seat may not be used by more than one person who has reached his or her second birthday.

Pretty sure the CAA/JAA will have similar rules.

My first instinct was to check whether this story was published April 1st, but clearly not.

Now, does someone think this will really work, or is it just a PR stunt to get people talking about Ryanair again (much like previous suggestions on charging to use toilets etc)?

Prick with a fork?

Have to repost this from today’s DailyWTF.

This is suppose to be a real product packaging for some sausages for a supermarket in Ireland, before the supermarket relised the problem and withdrew the product.

Background: Ainsley Harriott is a TV chef in the UK (I think he came over to the US at one point), he’s an alright guy but can be a bit annoying at times, and does get overly excited and irritating on his shows.

Ainsley Sausages

(To start with I didn’t read the instructions at the bottom of the packaging – took me a few seconds to get it :) )

Surprised nobody picked up on it before they went on sale!

FA supporting criminals

Just read this post on 200 Weeks about the FA supporting a convicted criminal.

Ashley Sestanovich was a member of Grays Athletic who play in the Blue Square Premier League. He’s not currently able to play as he is being detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure whilst serving 8 years for conspiracy to rob.

Sestanovich tipped off two illegal immigrants that 11 grand would be at a roofing company. The cash wasn’t there & a 42-year-old father of a newborn was shot, he died 7 months later.

Where does the F.A. come in? They kindly agreed with the player’s appeal against Grays Athletic’s refusal to pay him after his arrest. The club has been fined £500 & told to pay Sestanovich £14,000 within 2 weeks or the club will be banned from the league.

Club chairman, Mick Woodward, said the club would not be paying the money to someone who attended 3 training sessions & played 20 minutes of a pre-season friendly due to being involved in a ‘heinous crime’. He offered to pay the £14,000 “wages” to the victim’s family but the F.A. are enforcing their decision.

Um, so this “footballer” commits a crime, gets put away, and expects the club to still pay his “wages” – and the FA agree with this?

What the hell is this country coming to? I don’t bother with football anyway (especially the Premier league, it’s not about the sport anymore, it’s just a commercial thing), but as “PC 200″said, “if this is not yet another reason to switch support from football to another sport, I don’t know what is.”

Fair play to Grays Athletic for refusing to pay the money to a criminal, and I hope the FA see some sense.

A BBC report on this said:

The FA said because Sestanovich was arrested after he signed for Grays, the club were obliged to honour his contract until he was actually convicted of an offence, under contract law.

Um, he might have signed a contract, but I’d imagine that contract, like most employment contracts, included terms that the contract would be severed if you were convicted of criminal charges. Even if not, if you break the law in a serious way, you no longer deserve the protection of the law.