The LAD Bible have enjoyed a meteoric rise to success in the UK as a web publisher, which can almost be entirely attributed to their dominance on Facebook. With over 10 million likes on the social networking site, The LAD Bible’s page predominantly shares content first featured on other websites such as Reddit, and as such they’ve come under fire in the past due to allegations of stealing content and passing it off as their own.
To their credit, The LAD Bible have largely changed their approach since their beginnings as a crude start-up, with their parent company 65twenty steadily ridding the company of many of the bad habits they once employed. For one, they no longer base their business model on brazen sexism, but they now also typically tend to credit those responsible for the videos/photos they share, too. However, this still isn’t always the case, and the guys over at DSSK decided to call them out on it after The LAD Bible’s Facebook page decided to share a screenshot of one of their articles without providing a link to the article itself.
In a post titled ‘The LAD Bible are Monumental Wankers, and Not for the Reasons You Think,’ DSSK’s Gareth Arnoult revealed how the company had forced him to shut down his parody Facebook page titled ‘The LID Bible.’ Arnoult explained: “My page was called The LID Bible and I posted images of pen lids, jam jar lids, bottle caps and once: an LED. Obviously the joke wore thin very quickly but it amassed thousands of likes within a few hours. LAD Bible reported it and the page was deleted because our branding apparently infringed or otherwise violated their trademark rights.”
In the post, Arnoult also revealed how he had previously contacted the company regarding them posting the aforementioned screenshot of a DSSK post without attributing it to the correct source. The screenshot included the headline and blurb of DSSK’s post, titled ‘Lad sues Nando’s for meal not being ‘cheeky’ enough’ (Arnoult reveals that he thankfully made that story up), but does not link to the story itself. Arnoult claimed that he contacted The LAD Bible on Facebook to ask them to credit his story, and though the message was seen by them, they did not reply.
But since the post detailing these events went live, The LAD Bible have responded by threatening to sue for damages, with Arnoult claiming that the company has told them that will file a lawsuit if they don’t agree to five conditions. The first condition is that DSSK removes the post; the second that they provide a written apology; the third that they disclose the identities of everyone involved with DSSK; the fourth that they disclose the identities of those who they have “communicated the allegations that appeared on the page” with; and the fifth that they will no longer produce any more material about The LAD Bible.
DSSK have made it clear via their post regarding the matter that they won’t be compliant with The LAD Bible’s demands, and have posted a video regarding their thoughts on the matter:
Discussing The LAD Bible’s actions, Arnoult wrote: “A key staple of their business model is reposting the original content of others, and now LAD Bible are using bullying tactics against the content creators they exploit to make money. Apparently, in my case they are threatening to sue for damages. I don’t think that’s fair. This isn’t an attack on me; this is an attack on content creators and the right to parody in the UK.”
Needless to say, The LAD Bible’s stance on this matter is a little confusing. Are they suing Arnoult and DSSK for starting a parody Facebook account? Or for branding them wankers? Or for discussing how they had taken a screenshot of one of DSSK’s posts without giving them credit, which isn’t so much defamatory as it is a statement of fact? Needless to say the online backlash against The LAD Bible in regards to their actions is growing, with many taking to Twitter and Facebook to criticize the company for their behaviour. It remains to be seen whether the company will decide against pursuing further action, but considering that their whole brand hinges the re-sharing of “viral” content, it is perhaps not the wisest of decisions to then go after the creators of the content that they so freely use.
