Facebook V’s  the Teachers.

I am somewhat bemused by the latest actions of the equally famous and infamous entity that is Facebook.  It has moved to bring charges and legal proceedings against a community of educators that have called their online community Teachbook.  Now unless I have been misinformed or perhaps left out of the loop on a key international policy shift, I was under the impression that the English language belonged to all of us, no?

I understand that Mr Zukerberg has a brand to protect, and should someone come along a create an online community and call it Facebook dot whatever, he should rightly come down on these imposters like Anubis him self.  Oh! wait, it is impossible for anyone to do this, given the World Wide Web’s built in security feature, one can only have “whateverName dot whatever” once.

Had Teachbook designed their site in such a style that they were blatantly cashing in on FB’s success “I mean c’mon, who isn’t“ then I would understand the actions taken by Facebook’s suits.

So what next for FB and the rest of us?  Will the word “book” be taken from all teaching syllabi’s  and be replaced with the word “Monograph” or perhaps the English speaking world will adopt the e-reader instead and our Children will never know what it is like to hold a proper book in their hands, okay, perhaps I have gone a little over board here.

Anyway, I just wanted to express my disgust at this internet “giant”, and show my empathy toward the wee tiny website that has now received so much publicity as a result of Facebook’s insecurity.

Oh! There is a knock at the door….  Is it the facebook police?

Original Story

Facebook Shall Have No False Books Before It

By Steve HuffAugust 24, 2010 | 8:50 p.m