Blog Name Theft - Update and Resolved

An always excellent fount of reasonableness, Steven Taylor at PoliBlog, who started blogging around the same time as us in early 2003, has been having a problem with Verizon, which is mostly a company I like very much.

It’s considered impolite at absolute best, and is trademark or service mark infringement if you have developed the brand to enough of a degree to want to worry about it, not to use Google or one of its competitors to see if the blog name you’d like to use is already in use by another blog.  It screams out “hey wow, I’ve just learned about blogging, but I have no clue or class!”

I had been reading PoliBlog for at least two years before I ever saw reference to ”poliblog” as a generic word for a blog that covers politics.  The person in question was actually going to put it into a book about blogging, as I recall, along with a glossary that included both real terms, and other terms that I’d never seen actual bloggers use.  I think he had actually invented that and some of the other terms on the spot, for the sake of a beefier list, and he had no idea it was the name of a prominent blog.  I don’t think the “generic term” argument really cuts it.

Anyway, the real PoliBlog has been writing of the plight and seeking support from the blog public, since Verizon is acting like a behemoth corporation that needn’t abide by the norms of civil blogging, or even trademark standards.  The ad revenue from blogging is no match for the legal muscle required to take on Verizon, so shaming them is probably the only hope.

I posted a comment on this post over at the den of thievery, which I will quote here as it will surely not pass moderation:

Previous post.

A blog is a thing that contains posts.  For instance, this whole trademark-infringing site is a blog.  When you write on it, you are blogging.

The individual pieces you write that are posted to the blog are called posts, or entries.  Some folks might call them articles.  Calling each entry a blog would be like calling each article in a paper magazine a magazine.  You would never say “in my previous magazine.” You would say “in my previous article.”

Using incorrect nomenclature bothers me more and shows off more unserious internet newbieness than failing to use Google or one of its competitors to learn that PoliBlog was already in long established use as a blog name and you’d be generating badwill by stealing it.

Besides defending the real PoliBlog against the evil interloper, this allows me to revisit one of my pet peeves: Failure to learn proper nomenclature.  It screams newbie.  It screams unserious.  It self-mocks you as one who jumped onto the blogging train without having learned much more than that blogs exist and maybe you should have or participate in one too.  You have no depth.  You have no experience, not even in more generic internet terms.  You have no appreciation of language, or properly used words and their meanings.  Verizon shows itself as doubly foolish, between the name thing and the deployment of the clueless at blogging at their fraudulently named site.

I just noticed another detail.  You can’t hover over “permalink” and copy the link.  The link goes to a generic javascript “link” so you have to click and then get the permalink from the address bar when the page comes up.  Lame.

Update:

Verizon has let Steven Taylor know that they will be changing the name to Policy Blog as part of a redesign.  Most excellent.  I knew I liked Verizon.

Then again, I was starting to like the idea of starting “VeriBlog.” After all, veri is short for verity…

1. Jay,

   A 1,000 thanks for this post and for your support.

   The great news is that Verizon has decided, as of less than an hour ago, to change the name.

   See here.

   And you are quite correct:  they site screams newbie.  Indeed, I don’t think they understand the entire blogging phenomenon.  Perhaps the very little attention that they received today was an indicator.  I have no way of knowing for sure if the PR since last night resulted in the letter this afternoon, but let’s say I have my suspicions…

   Posted by Steven Taylor  on  12/15  at  06:59 PM  from 
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