[Infowarrior] - Charles Carreon finally quits fighting, calls Oatmeal battle “a dumb thing”

[Richard Forno]

Charles Carreon finally quits fighting, calls Oatmeal battle “a dumb thing”

Lawyer tells Ars he was "rapeutated," unjustly lowering his reputation online.

by Cyrus Farivar - Sept 19 2013, 10:45am EDT

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/09/charles-carreon-withdraws-final-appeal-says-entire-affair-was-a-dumb-thing/

Last year, embattled Arizona lawyer Charles Carreon brought a lawsuit against The Oatmeal creator Matthew Inman, doubling down by suing anonymous Internet commenters and even two charities, the National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society. (The whole crazy story also involved a cartoon of an obese woman asking a bear to "Come hurr and love meeee!") Things got even weirder when Carreon threatened Chris Recouvreur, also known "Satirical Charles," who had created a website mocking Carreon. Recouvreur then sued Carreon in federal court for a declarative judgement that his site was not libelous.

In a Tuesday legal filing with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Charles Carreon dropped his final appeal in the Recouvreur case and now definitively owes over $46,000 in fees to Recouvreur.

Now Carreon says he regrets the entire affair. Why? Largely because it has unleashed the wrath of angry people on the Internet and has subsequently damaged his reputation online.

“I genuinely say it was a dumb thing,” Carreon told Ars. “This is not a soluble problem. This is not a problem that is soluble with a legal cease-and-desist letter, or a counter cease-and-desist letter. I would not have sent that and I really reassess the decision thoroughly. It was not a good idea. You really are dealing with a situation that is not amenable to legal resolution.”

“I made it worse”

Carreon was a little-known lawyer until June 2012, at which point he began representing the website FunnyJunk.com and sued Matthew Inman, demanding $20,000 over comments Inman had made about FunnyJunk's habit of hosting Inman's cartoons. Inman then turned around and raised $100,000, giving that money to charity instead of to Carreon, at which point Carreon escalated his legal filings. At one point, Carreon even threatened to subpoena Ars Technica. (Ars’ collected coverage of the entire affair can be read here.)

In a 30-minute phone interview with Ars on Wednesday, Carreon lamented that, as a result of this entire sordid affair, his professional reputation has been damaged—or as he calls it, "rapeutated." In fact, Carreon has a colorful website at Rapeutation.com that includes an elaborate chart with a new, long, and extensive list of all the so-called “rapeutationists,” including yours truly and two more Ars staffers. If you'd like to see a picture of Carreon's critics—including an Ars Technica writer—spewing fecal matter out of their mouths, that too can be accommodated.

In short, Carreon portrays himself as the victim here—he’s now become the victim of the Streisand effect, or as it might now be called, the Carreon effect.

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http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/09/charles-carreon-withdraws-final-appeal-says-entire-affair-was-a-dumb-thing/


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Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it.