Jim Elve, creator and passionately devoted owner of BlogsCanada, has received a "cease and desist" order from the Government of Canada requesting that he "immediately cease and desist from reproducing the Government of Canada's corporate signature, the Canada wordmark and the Common Look and Feel layout for your site."
This is not much of a surprise; as Jim says, "Ever since launching BlogsCanada last August, I've been waiting for the Government of Canada (GoC) to tell me that they don't like the way this site looks so much like the main GoC site."
In the About page, Jim says exactly why he has chosen to mimic the GoC look:
If you are confused or offended by our site and think we are doing something wrong, please contact the Government of Canada and complain to them. With any luck at all, they will make a fuss and that might help us get even more free press. Then again, maybe they won't. You see, the Government of Canada would like to have a Common Look and Feel for the Internet.
Why stop with government websites? Let's go one step further. Why not make all Canadian websites look alike? Better yet, how about making every website in the world with the common look and feel?
So, it seems Jim did, indeed, intend his design choices as a parody of GoC's insistence that all Federal websites adhere to detailed set of appearance standards. Which is all well and good, so far as it goes.
It isn't August anymore, though, and BlogsCanada has evolved since then from a naiscent directory and personal blog to the Canadian Weblog Directory (and personal blog, and community political blog, and coffeehouse cum washateria). Mr. Elve, sir, you've moved on. It's not a parody anymore. It's time for a new look, one that asserts your own unique identity and that celebrates and showcases the work you've done and are doing.
UPDATE
Ratty's Ghost sparks a notion: not just a redesign for BlogsCanada, but also, separately so there's no confusion, a kick-ass, in-your-face, parody of the GoC web presence.
4 Comments
Thanks for that, Pericat.
“The Canadian Weblog Directory” has a nice ring to it. Maybe I’ll work that in as a tagline when the redesigned site is launched. Yes, that’s “when” and not “if”. As to when that “when” will be, I’m not sure yet.
Among those who’ve commented on this flap, you’re about the only one who bothered to dig a little deeper and quote the About Us page. I’m glad you did. I haven’t tried to make any secret of the fact that the copying of the GoC look was intended to attract attention.
What is important, IMO, is that people understand my reason for wanting to attract attention. I consider BlogsCanada to be, first and foremost, a Canadian blog directory – maybe, The Canadian Blog Directory. I do not have the resources to research and scour the web trying to see which of the roughly 2,000,000 blogs are Canadian. I depend on submissions from bloggers. Of the estimated 20,000 Canadian blogs in existence, only 7,700 are indexed at BlogsCanada.
My logic is that a higher profile means more Canadian bloggers wil notice the site and will be motivated to submit their blogs. A more comprehensive directory will benefit both bloggers and blog readers.
Yesterday, about noon EDT, Instapundit and then many others picked up on the copyright issue and my hit counter went wild. For a couple of hours, I was getting over 1,100 hits per hour. By midnight, site traffic was up tenfold from usual. This morning, I checked to see how many new submissions came in from noon until midnight yesterday. Normally, there would have been 5 or 6 during that time period. There were 30.
Over the next days and weeks, I’ll be able to better determine whether a one-day burst in exposure translates into more daily site traffic and more directory submissions. If it does, my mediawhoring (as it’s been called) will have served its purpose: to help build a bigger Canadian blog directory to better serve everyone.
I’m not sorry you’ll be redesigning the look (except for the amount of work involved!), but I am annoyed that the Treasury folks began with such an antagonistic communication. It’s simply not needful, and counterproductive, for them to go on full-scale, typewriters a-blasting, hostile mode when they feel a need to ask someone to change what he’s doing. They could have composed a much more neutral letter outlining why they believed, issues of fair use and free speech aside, your site’s design compromised their ability to deliver accurate information to the general public, or caused small dogs to pee behind government sofas, or whatever.
Most people with whom the GoC has to deal are well-meaning and reasonable, and I deplore the mind-set that leads any of them to habitually structure their communications in an adversarial mode.
They may or may not “need” to discuss BlogsCanada’s design with you; they do not need to be mean. It just gets them talked about.
It would be delightful to do a kick ass parody site of GOC. I don’t have the web skills but I can write like a bureaucrat in my sleep…wait, that is what I actually do in my sleep.
Nice site..
Thank you! We’d need a theme. Something about our new Head of State, the Dalai Lama. Or perhaps the economic and cultural benefits of remounting the RCMP on caribou. Or on declaring Inuktitut to be the third official language, and how the resulting growth in cereal box sizes benefits Canada by encouraging larger families.
Or we could just build something around this sign.