Encyclopedia Dramatica Is Being Sued for $750,000 in Copyright Lawsuit

The internet’s oldest and most controversial meme culture wiki may be facing one of the biggest threats to its 12-year existence, thanks to a copyright lawsuit filed by a video game developer-turned-eccentric millionaire.

Known for its shocking and offensive, yet surprisingly comprehensive, documentation of internet meme history, Encyclopedia Dramatica (ED) is a fragile internet relic that has endured through several close calls over the last 12 years of its existence. Originally launched by founder Sherrod DeGrippo as a LiveJournal gossip database in 2004, the site nearly came to an end in 2011 after DeGrippo attempted to delete the wiki in order to launch a work safe variant named “Oh Internet.” Much to DeGrippo’s dismay, ED users (affectionately known as “EDiots”) managed to salvage the database and relaunch it on a separate domain, where it is currently being run by web administrator Brian Zaiger.

The feud began nine years ago in 2008, when a user of the site create a profile article on Jonathan Monsarrat, the founder and CEO of American video game developer Turbine Inc., which cited a 2003 article alleging that he launched the campus dating service Match-Up in order to collect contact information from various women during his years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a business graduate student. Fast forward a couple of years, in February 2010, the article was updated to reflect yet another allegation of unsavory conduct by Monsarrat, this time for distribution of alcohol to underage teenagers at a party that he was hosting, which was first reported on by the Massachusetts local newspaper Somerville Journal. The charges were subsequently dropped.

Then in January 2011, Monsarrat hit ED with a cease-and-desist letter to take down the article from the site; it was subsequently taken offline as the website had to shut down in April 2011 due to its mounting financial woes. When ED came back online under a new domain in 2013, the article also resurfaced as a result of an oversight in the transition process, according to Zaiger's statement in a recent interview with The Daily Dot. Although the article was taken down again shortly after the ED administrators discovered the DMCA complaint, Monsarrat decided to move forward with suing the site for a total $750,000 in damages for alleged copyright infringement, citing quotations from archived forum posts and a photograph of him dressed in a beaver costume with Pedobear superimposed into the frame.

Zaiger, who described the lawsuit as a “strategic lawsuit against public participation" (SLAPP) carried out for the purpose of silencing one's critics and enemies with absurd legal costs, has since launched a crowdfunding campaign to cover the mounting fees on WeSearchr, where he has accumulated upwards of $6,100 of his $50,000 goal. In a video uploaded to YouTube, an ED administrator warned that the site may be forced to shut down even if the lawsuit is thrown out unless the legal costs can be covered.

Will one of the last havens of the Anonymous subculture make it through to live another day? We'll just have to watch and see.