Something Awful vs. Crazy Doll Lady

My first contact with crazy doll lady came courtesy of the all-too-familiar Internet legal threat. You know, the generic "you have directly offended me, you'd better do what I say or else I'll sue, blah blah blah" garbage that I get from everybody every day because, as Americans, the lord Jesus bestowed upon us an inalienable right to threaten everybody everywhere with lawsuits for everything. She tried to spice things up a bit by not only insinuating I'd be at the ass end of a class action lawsuit, but I'd also thrown into Internet jail because - hold on to your socks here - SOMEBODY ON THE INTERNET MADE FUN OF HER PHOTOS. There's a special level of hell devoted to people like me. There's an Arby's on it.

These photos are all copyrighted by CRAZY DOLL LADY so please do not steal them and use them to frighten barnyard animals at night. From: PageantPhotos
To: lowtax@somethingawful.com
Subject: Lawsuit

I thought I would warn you, before suing you, that my work is copyright protected. Also, many of the photos that you and your friends are changing, adding text to, displaying, and writing false information about are copyrighted by other professional photographers. There are several web sites that you can easily find through your search engine which will teach you more about copyright laws. I suggest you learn about it quickly and remove the photos that are displayed in your forum titled "Pageant photo retouching, it makes me shudder." I will give you until Monday to remove them. At that point, I will give your web info to all of the other photographers as well as the parents of the children. The parents will no doubt sue you for _displaying their children's photos with crude and sexual comments_. I will gladly turn the info over to the police department as well. Children are very strictly protected from internet predators.

Alycia Collins
PageantPhotoRetouching.com

Oh no! "Internet predators!" I think those are animals who eat the Internet. A couple Internet predators tried eating our servers the other day, but I scared them away by unloading a couple shotgun rounds into the air.

From: lowtax@somethingawful.com
To: PageantPhotos
Subject: Re: Lawsuit

Greetings,

Thank you very much for your kind and generous email. I can assure you that our legal staff is in the process of either reading or comprehending it as I write this. Lawsuits are definitely no "laughing matter," and we take suits of the law very seriously, particularly in cases involving:

1) Copyright laws
2) Copyright protection
3) Friends changing, adding text to, displaying, and writing things
4) Monday
5) Children
6) "As well"

To help us expedite your claim, please let myself and Gary know which photos / pictures were edited and what you would like them to be edited by. In the sense of a post-edit situation (i.e., unauthorized editing or edited editing of previously altered and / or edited images for use within a single-company organization) these images (altered, unaltered from previous alteration and / or edit by unauthorized third parties unaffiliated with your organization) is both illegal and against the law, so we will work with you to develop a solution to this problem as soon as possible (edit: as soon as you may wish to proceed). Children are no laughing matter, and it matters when somebody is laughing at children. I would like to keep this lawsuit "under the sonar" so it doesn't leak to the press and media, as our company could suffer financial hardships as a direct result of such an action.

Please inform me as to how to rectumfy this situation and we will work with your company to the best of our satisfaction. We would not like the internet predators on our site to suffer any legal or financial hardships due to this mishap, so please let me know what I can do to make your company happy.

Thank you,
Richard "Kyanka" Kyanka

The last thing I wanted to do was directly offend a deluded woman with unlimited access to the clone stamp, so I felt my response was both quick and professional. As you will soon see, it was!

From: PageantPhotos
To: lowtax@somethingawful.com
Subject: Re: Lawsuit

Thank you for your quick and professional response. After reading your email, I believe you may not have been aware that your forum was being used this way. Several photos have obvious text added, graphics changed, and digital paint marks added to them. Most angering are the text remarks on photos of children and babies that include words such as "crazy pimp baby- where ma moneys at bitch?" Also, some files are being renamed with words such as "frodofagginsmorelike.JPG"

Please follow this link to view the disturbing material on your forum web site. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2137510&perpage= 40&pagenumber=1 I have attached an example of one of my photos that was changed without a copyright release. I'm requesting that you delete this forum entirely. Many of the photos were taken from my web site. Others belong to fellow photographers and/ or graphic artists.

Thank you for your quick attention to the matter.

Alycia Collins
PageantPhotoRetouching.com

Oh crap... "Crazy pimp baby- where ma moneys at bitch?" That's at least five years jail time, minimum. Fear not, crazy doll lady, I've got just the quick and professional response for you.