College Blocks Blog Critical Of Chancellor; Now That Blog Is Mainstream News

from the nice-work! dept

Tue, Oct 23rd 2007 4:23am — Mike Masnick

Witty Nickname writes "A new Chancellor was selected to lead a Community College District in northern Harris County, Texas. A critical blog was set up to blast the new Chancellor, who quickly had IT block it on all campus computers. As these things always do, it backfired. The college was sued, forced to unblock the blog, and thanks to the media attention, now everyone in Houston knows about the blog." Didn't quite work the way he expected, huh? One would imagine that the blog got barely any traffic prior to this. Perhaps ignoring it would have been a better option.

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Filed Under: streisand effect

30 Comments

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mike, 23 Oct 2007 @ 4:56am

owned
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hpiguy, 23 Oct 2007 @ 5:35am

How about some info on which community college in Northern Harris County? Or maybe the blog website? As usual techdirt gets half the story and runs with it.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Oct 2007 @ 5:53am

College name
See that blue underlined text, it links to a story in the Houston Chronicle calling out North Harris Montgomery Community College.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Oct 2007 @ 5:54am

Re:
click the link to whole story and it's all right there, hey pay attention when you read and you might find everything you're looking for.
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Ninjamynci, 23 Oct 2007 @ 5:57am

Re:
Click on the link in the article and the information is there, right in front of you.
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that guy, 23 Oct 2007 @ 6:15am

home sweet home
I spent a few summers at North Harris Montgomery Community College between regular semesters... nice place, aside from all the stupid kids. I took a sophomore level government course in which the professor explicitly told us all the questions that were going to be on the MULTIPLE CHOICE test... verbatim. And yet, people still failed.

Anyways, the staff there are idiots too. But, the campus is pretty.
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Wisconsingod, 23 Oct 2007 @ 6:44am

They Should Learn
This problem has been happenning to those who try to silence freedom of speech in the media age. It is what is commonly reffered to as the Streisand Effect. The namesake comes from the one real contribution that Barbra Streisand made to the world: Suing a photographer for use of a photo that included part of her home, and that photo became popular only after she sued.
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Paul, 23 Oct 2007 @ 7:02am

Re: They Should Learn
trust me, i'm pretty sure regular readers of techdirt know *all* about the streisand effect
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Paul, 23 Oct 2007 @ 7:28am

That is the lazy way
If you post about a person/place/thing and someone is interested in more information then there should be a direct link to the person/place/thing you are writing about.

Placing a link to the source article without a direct link to the person/place/thing in question is lazy and un-professional.

Here the blog itself is the item of primary interest and should have a direct link rather than sending an interested reader off on a FIND THE LINK paper chase.
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Overcast, 23 Oct 2007 @ 8:19am

LOL, Universities are the just about the furthest thing now from 'free thought' and 'intellectual integrity'.

What a farce.

Seriously, anymore if you want to learn to really think, stay as far away from a University as possible.
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William, 23 Oct 2007 @ 8:27am

filter
They should have blocked all blogs/p0rn/streaming media from school computers using a filter. Problem solved now just put it in the school's internet terms of use. And everyone else gets a faster connection if you cut out all that crap at the school and the school might save money on their network connection.
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nipseyrussell, 23 Oct 2007 @ 8:43am

"They should have blocked all blogs/p0rn/streaming media from school computers using a filter....... And everyone else gets a faster connection.... and the school might save money on their network connection."

yep, because we all know how much bandwith blogs burn up
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Scratch McGoo, 23 Oct 2007 @ 8:45am

Never underestimate the power of the Streisand Effect. It seems to have emerged as one of the universal laws of the Net.
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RandomThoughts, 23 Oct 2007 @ 8:56am

They have colleges in Texas?

The Streisand Effect will soon lose its luster, as now people are doing things that seem to against them, but in fact actually bring them greater attention.

Take a look at the Boston Adult Swim marketing disaster. No attention at all was paid to those things for a week, no comment, no nothing. Then 5 calls go in to 911 within 5 mins. and there is almost a riot?

I wonder why they never talked about the punishment for making a false 911 call. Guess they couldn't prove it, or for some reason, didn't want to call attention to it.

That being said, you have C&D letters being sent not to take down information, but because it draws attention. I wonder how many blogs have sent themselves C&D letters.
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elduderino, 23 Oct 2007 @ 9:18am

really?
Streisand effect sure yeah, but this chancellor wasnt famous like Barbara Streisand, so it's a bit different, he gets publicity too, negative publicity is still better than no publicity..

indeed nice work
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Tempest, 23 Oct 2007 @ 9:33am

Re: #15
"negative publicity is still better than no publicity"

Not if you're a publicly accountable figure, which this chancellor is.

And could everyone criticizing techdirt and Mike for their journalistic style just shut the hell up already? We get it, you don't like it. Move on to someplace you do.
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RandomThoughts, 23 Oct 2007 @ 9:54am

"And could everyone criticizing techdirt and Mike for their journalistic style just shut the hell up already? We get it, you don't like it. Move on to someplace you do."

I think that this post is pretty funny considering it is in a thread that kind of talks about freedom of speech.
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Chronno S. Trigger, 23 Oct 2007 @ 10:12am

Re: That is the lazy way
Hipguy requested the name of the college and/or the name of the blog. Both are in the linked article within the first few paragraphs. The blogs address is also in those paragraphs. The focus of the article is the blog, but the focus of this blog is the article witch Mike douse link to.
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Nismoto, 23 Oct 2007 @ 11:14am

Re: That is the lazy way
Sorry Paul, but you are the lazy one. How hard is it for you to click a link?

Besides, a link to just the source article kind of encourages people to actually read it. From there, the reader can pursue the story further if he/she so chooses.
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dorpass, 23 Oct 2007 @ 11:39am

"That being said, you have C&D letters being sent not to take down information, but because it draws attention."

So are you saying that people always WANT the Streisand effect? Sounds quite far fetched, even looking at the original event that gave this phenomenon its name.

"I wonder how many blogs have sent themselves C&D letters."

That makes no sense, seeing how it accomplishes nothing.
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ehrichweiss, 23 Oct 2007 @ 12:34pm

Re: That is the lazy way
Ahem, clicking on a link isn't that freakin' hard and if someone is lazy here, it's you.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Oct 2007 @ 3:01pm

Re:
Seriously, anymore if you want to learn to really think, stay as far away from a University as possible.
Where would you suggest they go instead?
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4-80-sicks, 23 Oct 2007 @ 3:02pm

Yeah, this is an EDITORIAL page, not "hard news." It fascinates me how many people don't realize that distinction. Links to the subject of the article that is linked, besides being unnecessary, are not always possible; in addition, that sometimes would run counter to the site's stance on many issues, such as when a company wants people to link to it for free publicity. Can't remember specific examples now, but I've seen that sort of thing written here.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Oct 2007 @ 3:05pm

Re: filter
They should have blocked all blogs...
And everyone else gets a faster connection if you cut out all that crap...
If all blogs are crap then what does it say about you spending your time reading this one?
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A Texan, 23 Oct 2007 @ 3:11pm

Re:
They have colleges in Texas?
Whee doggies, we're down right modern down here these a days. We got schoolin' an all that. Heck, some places even got 'lectricity an indoor plumbin'.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Oct 2007 @ 3:17pm

Re:
How about some info on which community college in Northern Harris County?

It's on the internet. How hard is it to type google.com?
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Hello, 25 Oct 2007 @ 10:34pm

I was just reading that blog you guys were talking about and they already had a link to yours. Thanks for some fun comments. Here is the blog you have been talking about http://richardcarpenterwatch.blogspot.com
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Oct 2007 @ 1:43am

Re: Re:
It's on the internet. How hard is it to type google.com?
How hard it is or isn't for the reader to find the references to validate a story on their own doesn't matter. The reader shouldn't have to do that, that's the author's job.
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Informed, 1 Dec 2007 @ 9:30pm

Updated link
Updated link:

http://richard-carpenter-watch.blogspot.com/
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Community Colleges, 5 Nov 2009 @ 12:05pm

Community Colleges
part of a college community like you are not bound to any rules and success is for you
Thanks for reading and we are welcome you to join Community Colleges.
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