Earlier this week, Carlos Mencia was brutally exposed as an unoriginal hack at an LA comedy club by Joe Rogan (of Fear Factor fame), whom ade the claim that Mencia steals the majority of his work, calling the comedian 'Menstelia'.
In another age, these claims would resonate with some, and rub others as sour grapes, with no hard evidence presented at the time of the argument. Thanks to the beauty of digital technology, Rogan posted video of the incident, cutting between his claims of Mencia's blatant copying and the exact examples he referred to. Like anything on the 'darknet', it spread like wild fire and Mencia's already flimsy comedic-cred seemed to evaporate into thin air.
Where else could he turn then but to over-protective copyright law? Mencia claimed copyright infringement on the video and got it taken off YouTube. Unfortunately for Mencia, it isn't really going anywhere and keeps popping up on various other sites and even back on YouTube under different names. I've included a link to a current posting of the video, although I don't expect it to last through the night.
So what is to be done? As an excellent TechDirt article points out, Mencia seems to have plagiarized most of his work, but should he be punished for that legally? To what extent is the takedown notice a successful use of copyright?
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1 comment:
He's not funny, he steals jokes, and he issues frivolous DMCA takedown notices... Does Carlos Mencia have anything going for him?
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