[jsprinkles]

FunnyJunk is apparently responding quietly on their site, as just searching for the word 'oatmeal' results in no search results (that wasn't the case when this blog post went up). According to people I know that use the site, you cannot add comments with the word 'oatmeal', either. They also deleted every single linked image he exhaustively listed.

I have a hard time resolving litigation like this with the fact that the truth can change in minutes, as Web sites are fairly easy to edit. It's just scary.

[mrpollo]

Google cache still has all of the content indexed example: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:e8h2n1h...

[rufibarbatus]

Looks like FJ's been excluded from the Internet Archive. Is there a trustworthy caching authority, you know, for this kind of situation?

[arethuza]

Interesting question - you could take automated screenshots, save them in a lawyer-friendly format (e.g. PDF) and then add a certifying signature with a secure timestamp (perhaps adding the raw pages and images from the site as attachments to the PDF as well).

If the target market was lawyers you could probably charge a chunk-o-money for it as well...

NB I have no idea whether such a service already exists.

[jjcm]

How does this bode in the terms of destroying evidence? Is there any legal ramifications of doing this after you've engaged in legal action?

[dangrossman]

The alleged libel is based, in part, upon Funnyjunk's claim that they are acting legally within the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA by only hosting UGC and taking it down upon notice of infringement.

The Oatmeal's response to the claim included a list of content infringing his copyright. Funnyjunk is going to want to remove that content to retain its safe harbor from liability for the infringement. It may or may not be a properly worded notice under the DMCA, but a lot of notices UGC hosts get aren't, and they still take down the content -- because the intent of the parties and whether they acted in good faith matters when it's time to face a judge.

That the pages are no longer accessible does not mean the evidence has been destroyed, either. The DMCA requires only that you "block access to" the content, not physically remove it from a server.

[dag11]

Either way, they're dumb. Archives definitely had to be taken of the pages.

[cf0ed2aa-bdf5]

The search thing is really interesting to me.

I'm no lawyer but couldn't this theoretically be used in court by Inman since FunnyJunk apparently makes it extra hard for content creators like Inman, the Cyanide & Happiness guys et cetera to find their content and issue takedown requests?

Thinking a bit further: by filtering search they are implicitly saying that they know they are hosting content by Inman aren't they? In that case they shouldn't be able to hide behind the DMCA safe harbor provisions since one of the requirements of the DMCA is that the Online Service Provider has no knowledge about any infringing material on their servers (Section 512(c) http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512)

[bru]

I don't really know about oatmeal, but they still have thousands of comics from Cy&H: Searching for "cyanide happiness" does not return any result[1], but just "cyanide" returns tons of comics.

1: http://www.funnyjunk.com/search/?q=cyanide+happiness&sea...

2: http://www.funnyjunk.com/search/?q=cyanide&search-target...

[jere]

Inman sounds smart enough to have personally archived some evidence or found a reliable archive he can count on.

There are definitely caches. What scares me is: will that count as viable evidence and will the judge understand what has happened?