Manga Publisher Threatens Blogger
May 17th, 2006 | comics talk
http://comics.212.net/2006_05_01_archive.shtml#114773171850856998
“Obviously you have never read Almost Crying. It is not shota and there are no sexual undertones expressed in the book… I am hoping that you will delete the slanderous aspects of your post after receiving this letter. I would hate for this escalate…”
then
http://comics.212.net/2006_05_01_archive.shtml#114774877338823162
“I did read Almost Crying before posting; It does have shota-con overtones; there are no undercurrents of sexuality because the sex is right there on the page, particularly the last story during which one character swallows another character’s semen…”
is the award-winning creator of graphic novels such as 
Swallowing semen is basically foreplay.
Horray for biting the hand that feeds you!
Most bloggers work without insurance, and such threats can cause them to bend over and obey, but in a niche and closely networked industry like the manga world, moves like this will invariably bite you in the ass.
Of course, what can be expected from a publisher who employs someone, at the director level, who can’t spell properly?
Global More Warren Ellis Genius
With a new job approaching, I felt the need to perhaps retrieve some normalcy from past time when work…
It’s easy to try and bully someone with legal threats when you don’t have to look them in the eye. The correct response I beleive is to demand a solicitors letter from the wanker. In my experience they never bother, because its too expensive.
In graduate school I once put something up on my (university) web site that resulted in a threat of being sued. The university lawyers decided that the content was legally in the right, but didn’t want to pay to defend against a lawsuit, so they had it removed. I certainly could have reposted it elsewhere, but I was in no position to pay for a legal battle. An identical event happened to a friend at about the same time. I shudder to think how often this occurs. Individuals don’t even remotely have the same free speech rights that large organizations and corporations do on the web.
Ever since then, situations like this, where a company uses the threat of (baseless) legal action against someone who can’t afford to go to court, as a means of censorship, have really pissed me off. I can only hope that in this particular case, it does bite the publisher’s ass, and hard.
“I would hate to have to send you a cease and decease letter from our lawyers…”
Cease and decease? Who the hell are these people’s lawyers and when did it become OK to tell people to stop what they’re doing wrong and drop dead on the spot?
Someone threatening to sue you means about as much as somebody saying, “Oh yeah? Well my big brother will beat you up!”
In the U.S. at least, a lawyer bringing legal action without an objectively reasonable legal argument for why the case should go to court risks getting hit with serious fines. The relevant rule of civil procedure is actually the second hit in Google when you search for the FRCP. Anyone foolish enough to represent himself is open to the same sanctions. http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/Rule11.htm
In any case, written material isn’t slander, and it is nigh impossible for a defendant in a US court to lose a defamation or libel case.
Of course, none of that applies, as he seems to be in Canada. Ah well.
to add a high-brow comment, I just love the fact that “xota” [as pronnounced in "shota"] is one of the names for “vagina” in Brazilian portuguese…
… er, sorry?
The use of images on the web is actually regulated, as Ted Rall pointed out when his image, ripped from his home page, appeared on the “top 100 people destroying amrica”-list.
(Along with Noam Chomsky and Osama Bin Werewolf.)
So, as long as the picture was the “intelectual property” of DMP, they can demand them to be removed.
http://www.glamourmodels.com/resources/articles/070903.html (the article used to be here. I can’t access the page to verify, as my uni server blocks it as “adult”.)
Showing the cover (or even some content) of a manga while discussing or reviewing that manga falls squarely under ‘fair use’ in the United States. This is why book and film reviews can have excerpts without fear of legal reprisal, even if the review is bad. The above discussion link refers to completely different situations.
As for a legal threat being the same as as “my brother will beat you up,” it does depend on how serious the legal threat is. In this case, the threat was obviously not that serious (since they didn’t even know what to call it). There’s a big difference between “objectively reasonable legal argument” and having a strong or even win-able case. You could sue someone even if you’re reasonably likely the lose the case, as long as it is properly, legally framed. What this means is that if the threat of lawsuit is sufficiently serious (in my own case, the threatening legal letter came from actual lawyers) and the person being threatened can’t afford to hire a lawyer, it doesn’t matter who would likely win the actual case. The person being threatened with the lawsuit must cave in if they believe that the person(s) threatening them would actually go to court just to punish them.