Thursday, December 06, 2007

Indoctrinate U and the Blogging Big-Time

Any guesses which conservative teacher's blog was mentioned in the Wall Street Journal Online's "Best of the Web" section today? If you guessed Darren's, you win!

In addition to linking to my site--specifically, my post about Evan Coyne Maloney's film Indoctrinate U--they fill us in on why his site was taken down in the first place. Apparently, the logo was too similar to the logo for Indiana University, and they threatened. Before deciding how to respond, Maloney took down the site and eventually decided to put it back up, sans logo. However, the university still wants beaucoup dinero. I'd love to see how that turns out.

Update, 12/11/07: All's well that ends well.

10 comments:

Robert Talbert said...

Say WHAT? Indiana Universiy's logo is almost nothing like the logo that's on the Indoctrinate U website. That can't possibly be the real reason -- although I'm sure the threat from IU and demand for money is real.

I bet IU's just trying to piss off RightWingProf.

Anonymous said...

Darren

Finally, you be's somebody....

My 15 minutes of fame came at 18 YOA when I was in line for "Return of the Jedi" and made it on TV.

Congratulations....I knew you could make it man! :)

W.R. Chandler said...

That is awesome! Good for you!

Darren said...

I should go get a ring so people can kiss it. It beats the alternative!

Ellen K said...

Congratulations. Now go and sin no more. Perhaps you could give recovering liberals absolution. Or have faith healings for BDS.

Darren said...

Shall I say a prayer to Saint Ronald and Saint Barry, the patron saints of conservatives?

TBL said...

Great blog! You might want to post this resource to your site - it's a website where parents and teachers can request free letters from Santa, and the letters will come in both Braille and print. It's a great resource for educators and those working in special education! Check out http://talkingbookslibrarian.blogspot.com for more info and a link to the website! If you know of any other teachers that could benefit from this information, please feel free to share with them. Happy Holidays!

Unknown said...

Robert is correct. See here:

http://rightwingnation.com/2007/12/07/dont-think-so/

Not to stick up for IU, but I doubt there was a political motivation here. IU has a long, shameful history of copyright abuse -- against their own faculty and students, not just external bodies. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to find a "take that logo down off your website" message in my email queue in the next few days.

The IU Trustees are clowns. Always have been.

David said...

Robert:

Indoctrinate-U has developed a new logo as a result of the threats of lawsuit. That's probably what you're seeing on their site. Not that I'm sticking up for IU.

Unknown said...

It looked the same to me, so I used the wayback machine, and looked at an archived page from March. Same logo.

However, it's just plain stupid for the IU trustees to call attention to themselves. No copyright violation for the unofficial, untrademarked IU logo would stand up in court for many reasons, but notably, because there are lots of more obvious violations. Nebraska calls their teams Big Red, for example. IUP uses the same colors, has Indiana University in their name, and uses the same unofficial IU symbol on their clothing (it's weird -- sweatshirts from the two are indistinguishable). The whole thing is crap.