The excellent Red Bullog, run by Dank who often posts comments here, is closing following a complaint by Red Bull.
Dank wrote yesterday:
It is with regret that this will be the last ever post on The Red Bullog. Having pondered over the contents of this letter for the past few hours, it has severely knocked any enthusiasm I had. What began just six months ago as a labour of love, quickly developed into a time consuming obsession to provide Red Bull Racing fans with something worth reading and I hope I that I have been successful in my quest to do so.
Red Bullog was an excellent site and it reflects very poorly on Red Bull that they treat their most passionate fans in such a shabby fashion. I’ve already sent Dank my commiserations via his site and I’m sure many F1 Fanatic readers will be equally dismayed by this news.
Read Dank’s post in full here: The End
Tombong
29th March 2009, 6:06
Hope there’s nothing sort of that happens to this site in the future . . .
Steve_P
29th March 2009, 7:38
That’s silly. Why would Red Bull want to close down a site of someone actually writing good things about them?
pSynrg
29th March 2009, 10:30
That’s terrible. What exactly was Red Bull’s complaint?
pSynrg
29th March 2009, 10:31
Never mind just reading it now…
Dougie
29th March 2009, 10:38
Absolutely atrocious!!
and as for “you can keep the domain name if you abide by our t&C”!! what bull! (no pun intended)
You want the domain name you give the guy loads of money… good on him that’s what I say.
pSynrg
29th March 2009, 10:40
Yeah, appalling behaviour from the team that wants to put on a great show for the fans!
Like I say on his blog, keep the domain name – after all it isn’t actually redbull.com and use it as an information site about the detrimental effects of that god awful ‘drink’.
F1Yankee
29th March 2009, 19:12
well said
copydude
29th March 2009, 11:03
It’s what lawyers do all day.
You may remember the story of the IT guy called Mike Rowe. He set up a site called MikeRoweSoft. That’s right, he gets a heavy letter from Microsoft’s legal people . . .
The current UK Government, made up of lawyers, has managed to introduced 3,600 largely irrelevant new laws since taking power. Yes, that’s one every four days.
You’d think a bunch of caffeine pushers would be a bit more careful about their public image but if they want to wind up as popular as the Government they are going the right way about it.
MartinWR
29th March 2009, 22:24
It is much much worse than that. There are countless thousands of new laws, 85% of them originating from Brussels. The figure of 3,000+ refers to new (completely unnecessary) criminal offences. Of those more than a thousand (again totally unnecessary) land you in the slammer. An orgy of criminalisation, for the law-abiding of course.
Phil
29th March 2009, 23:05
The problem is all with trademark law – if you don’t actively defend a trademark you lose it. The MikeRoweSoft item was a display of that, they actually sent the guy a load of goodies, but they had to do it or they could be challenged.
Red Bull offering for him to kep going, but under their scrutiny, would also tie into that.
So yes, nasty lawyers, but borne out of necessity unfortunately.
Robert McKay
29th March 2009, 14:22
To be fair, I’m not sure they “forced” him to close the blog from what I’ve read (although I’m happy to be corrected). They’ve said that he’s using their trademark logos and are happy for him to keep it going as long as he subjects the content to their scrutiny. Dank has (quite reasonably) said “no, it’s my blog and my content and I’m not writing under external influences” and so he’s closed it down. But I’m not quite sure what the legal situation would have been had he kept the content but simply dropped the logos.
Dank
29th March 2009, 21:06
Hi Keith,
Robert is right in a sense, in that I wasn’t ‘forced’ as such to close the blog down and it was my choice at the end of the day.
I’ve completely pulled the plug on the site now as I didn’t to further jeopardise my current position.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
29th March 2009, 21:14
Very sorry to hear that Dank. You’re more than welcome to contribute here if you want to, drop me a line any time.
If you feel very strongly about ‘forced’ I could change it?
Dank
29th March 2009, 21:26
If you could Keith I’d be most appreciative.
And regarding contributing: I believe I have your details, so I’ll be in touch in the future perhaps!
Thanks
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
29th March 2009, 22:33
Done :-)
Alianora La Canta
30th March 2009, 14:55
This is disgusting behaviour frm Red Bull. I can understand the logo objection, but “redbullog” doesn’t have that much resemblance to “redbull”, “redblog” or even “redbullblog”, so I don’t see how Red Bull expected to win this one except through bullying :(