Charles Carreon, the lawyer now suing webcomic creator Matthew Inman for things like incitement to "cyber-vandalism," isn't messing around with his lawsuit—he really does intend to nail everyone involved, from Inman to Twitter imposters to "cyber-vandals" to online fundraising sites. After filing a lawsuit targeting 100 anonymous Internet "Does" (among others), Carreon has announced that he plans to unmask at least one of them and name the person in his complaint, even if it means subpoenas to Twitter and Ars Technica.

While the case has quickly taken on aspects of the farcical—its main charge at this point involves a bizarre interpretation of "commercial fundraising," of all things—Carreon appears deeply serious. And that's a problem, because the broad nature of the complaint could, if successful, exert a strong negative pressure on those who might be tempted to complain publicly about the bad behavior of others.

The power of a tweet

The saga began with a recent letter from Carreon to Inman, creator of "The Oatmeal," on behalf of Carreon's client FunnyJunk, a user-generated comedy site. Carreon said that Inman had defamed his client during a spat in 2011, and he requested a $20,000 check.

On June 14, after Inman publicized the letter and began an online fundraiser for charity, someone opened a new (and fake) Twitter account called @Charles_Carreon. This account immediately began "defending" Carreon while actually making him look bad, tweeting things like "You sir, are a dumbass. I am doing what any sane individual would do."

"This will not end well for him. I just want to say that I tried. I really tried to get him to come to his senses. I tried really, really hard."

Carreon was not pleased. "I am offering a reward of $500 for the provable identity of the impersonator," he tweeted, and then demanded that the imposter "cease impersonating me and disclose your true identity. I am reporting your act of criminal impersonation now."

The next day, June 15, Carreon sent a letter to Twitter providing his credentials and asking for the bogus account to be removed. Twitter quickly suspended it.

Carreon has a trademark on his own name, when used for legal services, so when he sued Matthew Inman, donation collection site Indiegogo, the National Wildlife Federation, and the American Cancer Society later that day, he also targeted "Doe 1"—the person behind the fake Twitter account—for trademark infringement. (Carreon's suit was in his own name, not on behalf of his client FunnyJunk.)

As to who the person was, Carreon had some ideas: it was someone "incited by Inman, or in the alternative and on information and belief, Inman himself."

The bogus tweets had harmed his business, Carreon told the court.

The fake tweets from @Charles_Carreon were abrasive and provoking to other Twitter users, and engendered immediate negative responses, having the effect of intensifying public hostility toward Plaintiff, and causing him irreparable harm in the marketplace for legal services. Plaintiff makes it a practice to engage in tempered speech even on matters of heated debate, and does not sling insults like "dumbass" and "idiot."

On June 18, a user named "Modelista" registered on Ars Technica and left a comment in one of our stories on the case. "I ran that Twitter account," he said. "It was suspended after the real Charles Carreon faxed over his ID to Twitter." Modelista said that he had opened a second parody account instead, one that made clear it was satirical.

Modelista also denied that he was Inman. "I am just an ordinary citizen of the Internet," he wrote.

To unmask the person, Carreon would need to have either Twitter or Ars reveal whatever information they had on the account, which would likely require a subpoena (Ars Technica does not voluntarily reveal identifying information, including IP address, of our readers). But was Carreon really willing to go the mat over a one-day Twitter impersonator who used words like "dumbass"? He said he was.

Asked on Twitter whether he really intended to "drag Ars Technica & Twitter into this," Carreon has now responded: "Of course I will: Doe 1 in the Complaint becomes named defendant after Twitter and Ars Technica answer subpoena."

Ars Technica has not received any legal communication about the matter; Carreon has yet to respond to our request for comment.

I asked Modelista why he had created the account. Replying by e-mail, he told me that the account had merely been set up to satirize Carreon, not to actually impersonate him, and that Modelista's new mock account therefore makes clear it is parodic.

"It became clear to me at one point that I could not keep up with Charles," Modelista wrote. "His comments to the press were more damaging to his reputation than any Twitter parody account could ever be. You cannot mock someone who has such a low regard for his own reputation. Before the @Charles_Carreon account was suspended, I was simply linking to his interviews. Satire was not necessary at that point as Charles was providing it."

He also claimed that a subpoena would be a waste of time. "I don't live in the United States nor do I plan on visiting anytime in the future," he added. "If Charles can somehow get a court order to all of the proxy servers I used, he may be able to find me here in my comfy home in Sweden."

Tempered speech

Carreon tells both the court and his followers on Twitter that he avoids name calling and prefers "tempered speech." In an interview last Friday with a blogger from Rambling Beach Cat, Carreon doubled down on the point about the importance of speaking respectfully.

"It might not have seemed very dehumanizing when Walt Disney made Japanese people look silly with buck teeth and big glasses who could not pronounce their 'R's or their 'L's," he said. "But it was dehumanizing, and the purpose was to direct evil intentions against them, which ultimately resulted in the only nuclear holocaust that ever occurred in the history of humanity. I don't think Truman would have ever done that if we hadn't so dehumanized the enemy. When you dehumanize someone, that is the first step to inciting people."

And back on June 15, when the situation was still escalating, Carreon did make a stab at appeasing his critics.

"Peace Offering to the Net!" he tweeted and offered a free download of his own book, The Sex.com Chronicles (Carreon was the lawyer who helped recover the famous domain name years ago).

A banner on the site welcomes the "people of the Internet" and concludes: "May we all together make this world a place of peace and happiness." Not a bad idea—though it looks a distant prospect only five days later.

But Carreon's concerns for even-handed speech don't seem to apply as strictly to the American Buddha website, which appears to be run by Carreon and his wife Tara. On the site, Carreon writes and sings a capella songs about "President Evil" (Bush) whose plan is to "Depend on the stupids / And call darkness light." The site also includes mocking images of a topless Condoleeza Rice on a can of "T--s and Rice" soup, along with a Carreon-penned song in which George W. Bush lusts after "The fruit juice flowing slowly, slowly, slowly / Down the bronze of your bombshells."

There are also Carreon's calls to "waterboard [Fed chairman Ben] Bernanke": "Strap him to a board, put a towel over his face and start pouring. He will merely experience a sensation like drowning, and will be none the worse for wear. Then we'll tilt him up, let him get a gasp of air and demand some straight answers: Where did all the money go? Is it in Iraq?"

Not that Inman is any stranger to over-the-top rhetoric (his initial response to Carreon included a crude image of a woman seducing a Kodiak bear). He initially tweeted "It's interesting to watch a man with his dick in a hornet's nest try to solve the problem by tossing his balls in as well." Lately, his tone has moderated; a new blog post asks readers to "stop harassing Carreon. Be lawful and civil in your interactions with him."

To Carreon, he added: "My advice: take a few weeks off, stop saying crazy shit to journalists, and come back when you've calmed down. Write an apology to whomever you feel is appropriate, or just don't write anything ever again."

The chill

Why does any of this matter? Because of the chilling effect a successful lawsuit could have on Internet complaints, especially those that involve legal disputes. If Matthew Inman became an illegal "commercial fundraiser" by trying to raise money as he did, and if he illegally "incited" his readers through his commentary and images, and if even the charities themselves can be drawn into this mess through no action of their own—then what happens to others in a similar situation who attempt similar tactics?

Knowing they are at legal risk for their attempts to mock and expose threats they do not agree are fair ones, they may stay silent instead.

As one of the legal bloggers at Popehat put it as part of a devastating nuclear attack on Carreon's legal reasoning in the case:

The implications of Mr. Carreon's argument–which will be demolished by apt First Amendment case citations in due course—are frightening. Mr. Carreon cannot cite a single thing Mr. Inman said to incite or encourage anyone to take any illegal action against Mr. Carreon. Instead, Mr. Carreon's argument seems to be that Mr. Inman committed actionable incitement not by calling for action, but merely by criticizing, ridiculing, and reviling Mr. Carreon. No First Amendment cases support such a proposition. The implications of Mr. Carreon's argument reveal its fatuity. Mr. Carreon's argument necessarily means that the more popular or listened-to a speaker is, the less they can say, for fear that an audience will be "incited" to do something illegal against whomever they are criticizing. Mr. Carreon's argument necessarily means that the more contemptible a person's behavior is, the less that others can criticize it, for fear of "incitement." It's a deeply unprincipled position, because the category of "critical speech that might cause someone to do something wrong" is infinitely malleable and can be used to attack almost any criticism one doesn't like.

What happened?

For Carreon, who has long made a stand on First Amendment freedom of speech principles, the entire avenue of attack here is hard for his colleagues to fathom. Try to shut down money to charity? Make incitement claims against Inman? Sue random Twitter imposters who operated for a couple of days?

Marc Randazza, the lawyer whose firm played a key role in bringing down Righthaven, knows Carreon—and can't understand what's come over the man.

"Charles wrote what I thought was one of the most ill-considered demand letters ever sent out on a lawyer’s letterhead," Randazza wrote on his blog this week. After The Oatmeal's response to Carreon's "unsupportable legal position," Carreon sued and "just made himself a meme—and not in a good way," Randazza added.

"This will not end well for him. I just want to say that I tried. I really tried to get him to come to his senses. I tried really, really hard."