FMyLife has been a true web success story. Not only have the creators turned it into a hugely popular website in under a year, but they’ve already gotten a book deal, and now a TV deal out of it. But with success, comes the need to protect that success. As such, FMyLife is now going after a similar site, FMySexLife, sending them a cease and desist notice today.
The truth is that since FMyLife has seen some success, there have been multiple clones that have popped up using a similar look and feel while slightly tweaking the concept. For those not up to speed on FMyLife, it’s a site that allows you to post (anonymously or not) short blurbs about why your life sucks. Just in case you need me to spell it out for you, FMyLife stands for “F*** My Life.” FMySexLife (I’ll let you figure out what that one stands for) extends the concept to allow you to post about why your sex life sucks.
As you can see in the C&D email below, one of the main issues now seems to be the fact that FMyLife has the book and TV deals. If they’re not going to protect their property, you can be sure that Villard/Random House Publishing or William Morris/Endeavor will.
Here’s the best line from the email, “[FMyLife] is going to be exploited as a TV show by William Morris / Endeavor.” Followed by “We are requesting that you cease all exploitation of our Fmylife concept” — there’s both good and bad exploitation, apparently.
As we noted last year, another site in this vein existed, What The Fail, which translated the popular French site Vie De Merde (also run by Maxime Valette, one of the people behind FMyLife) to English. All now appear to be one in the same as What The Fail now simply forwards to FMyLife.
FMySexLife clearly doesn’t think FMyLife has rights to this concept as they’ve passed along the C&D along with the note that, “They are trying to say we have cloned their ‘concept.‘” Sounds like a perfect FMyLife posting.
Below find the full C&D:
Dear Webmaster,
Your website fmysex.com is a cloned copy of our concept created on 18th of
January 2009, under the name fmylife.com.Our Fmylife concept is currently under use as a book by Villard/Random House
Publishing and is going to be exploited as a TV show by William Morris /
Endeavor.We are requesting that you cease all exploitation of our Fmylife concept, so
we can avoid any and all legal issues.Hoping to hear from you,
Didier Guedj
CEO
Ouiche Lorraine Compagny
