Jason Calacanis Threatens TechCrunch with DMCA Letter

This evening Jason Calacanis sent out an email to the people subscribed explaining Mahalo’s layoffs. Erick Schonfeld from TechCrunch decided to republish the email even though it states not to twice within it. Didn’t take long before people started attacking Erick.

Update: Erick Schonfeld has posted an update stating why he is leaving it up.

There is a lot of discussion, even outrage, in the comments and elsewhere about my decision to post this email, against the express wishes of its author and his subsequent request that it be taken down. We are not going to do that.

Like it or not, this document is news. Its author, Jason Calacanis, is the CEO of Mahalo, which announced a layoff yesterday. (He is also a TechCrunch partner apart from Mahalo in that we put on the TechCrunch50 conference togeher). At the time I posted this on Wednesday at 9:45 PM ET, the Mahalo layoffs were being discussed so vigorously that the topic was at the top of Techmeme. Although Calacanis had already written a blog post on the subject, he went into much more detail about why he felt he needed to go through the layoffs and how he went about doing so in the email. He also updated in the email how many people are still employed at Mahalo (30 full-time, 50 freelancers) in response to some reports.

The email went out to nearly 9,000 people. It was not a private email. And Jason Calacanis is not aprivate individual. He is the CEO of a high-profile startup and an Internet celebrity in his own right.

More importantly, the email shed light on an event that had happened earlier that day and that many media outlets were reporting on and speculating about. Here was a document from the CEO himself outlining his inner thinking on what had just happened. It was news.

There is no copyright issue here and there is no issue of me personally breaching an agreement. Nothing is off the record unless a reporter agrees that it is off the record prior to receiving information. I made no such agreement and Calacanis cannot unilaterally impose such restrictions simply by writing “Do Not Reprint” at the top of his email. Although I respect his desire in general to control who sees his email newsletters, in this case the news value of the document outweighs his personal wishes.

Beyond the layoffs at Mahalo, which are tiny in the grand scheme of things (six people), the email speaks to something that is happening across the startup economy. Every startup CEO is at least thinking about the need to cut back right now, if not going through the same ordeal that Calacanis had to go through. Others can learn from his experience. He actually has some good advice. Read the email. The fact that he was able to minimize the number of layoffs to only six people and how he did that is far more interesting than whether or not TechCrunch should have published the email in the first place.

Then Jason came in with the threat.

My bet is the post will be removed before long and will for sure be gone by the morning.