Either there is very poor communication between departments at the American Federation of Teachers headquarters, or the AFT has quickly changed its tune about this website.
Earlier this week we told you about a threatening letter we received from an AFT attorney, demanding that we stop using the acronym AFT anywhere on this website, and surrender the domain name “AFTexposed.com” to the union. The strong implication was that our failure to comply could lead to legal proceedings.
Then today, this website received a written comment from Liz Rose, press secretary of the AFT. Her message was quite different. She wrote that the “AFT is deeply committed to free speech and would never attempt to stifle free expression.” She went on to imply that the union’s only concern was our website’s use of a logo that bore a strong resemblance to the AFT logo. “Just as the law protects your right to free speech, it protects our logo from improper use,” she wrote.
No mention of the use of the AFT acronym. No demand that we turn surrender the website domain.
To address Ms. Rose’s concern, we have already altered our logo to make sure it could not be mistaken for the official AFT logo. Our attorneys told us that this was not absolutely necessary, but we were willing to make a small alteration to decrease the chance of a frivolous lawsuiit.
In the meantime we were happy to see Ms. Rose write “Keep up the free speech. We are all for that.” We never had any intention of stopping, and are in fact prepared to battle the union over this issue to the bitter end. Perhaps the AFT, after reading a response from our attorney questioning the legal basis for the union’s demands, has thought twice about trying to bully us.
If this means “case closed” – and we’re certainly not counting on that – we’ll happily second that motion. We have more important things to do than fight with the AFT over domain names and logos, like fighting the AFT over its political tactics and opposition to school reform.
[...] may not be able to read, but the AFT knows how to interpret blog traffic logs. They’ve backed down. Cyber-shmear [...]
Glad to see the AFT is backing off some and I think it was good of you to meet them on the logo/shield portion of their complaint. I was going to suggest if push came to shove in a court of law you change the domain name to grAFTexposed dot com.
Keep up the good work and I certainly hope some whistleblowers with a conscience come forward from their organization and the true AFT agenda is brought to light. Hiding behind the facade of “It’s for the children” is reprehensible. If they were ‘for the children’ they would not fight so hard to keep teachers that can’t teach and to keep schools in substandard conditions. – Your “non-educational” page is very telling.
Don’t believe a word of it….the AFT is not for free speech. They are a militant organization that cares only about the money they take from their member’s pockets and they filter to their left-wing friends.
[...] tried to shut down a blog critical of the group using a trademark claim. While the AFT eventually backed down, after pretty much everyone made it clear that it had no chance to win a trademark claim against a [...]
[...] tried to shut down a blog critical of the group using a trademark claim. While the AFT eventually backed down, after pretty much everyone made it clear that it had no chance to win a trademark claim against a [...]
[...] tried to shut down a blog critical of the group using a trademark claim. While the AFT eventually backed down, after pretty much everyone made it clear that it had no chance to win a trademark claim against a [...]
[...] tried to shut down a blog critical of the group using a trademark claim. While the AFT eventually backed down, after pretty much everyone made it clear that it had no chance to win a trademark claim against a [...]
[...] tried to shut down a blog critical of the group using a trademark claim. While the AFT eventually backed down, after pretty much everyone made it clear that it had no chance to win a trademark claim against a [...]
[...] Federation of Teachers backs off earlier aggressive trademark stance against critical website [AFT Exposed via Ron Coleman, [...]