Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

by inacheapwestern

Why do I start this off with the First Amendment of the Constitution? Because as a tax payer and a proud American, I believe in this fundamental right to my core. I believe that everyone has the right to express themselves and their opinions in ANY way that does not hurt the general public. The fact that people may not like my site is ok, like your TV, change the channel, the local government should not be coming after local bloggers trying to shut them down. Owning the Mayor of Concord domain has been a challenge in the 3 weeks of it’s life. Between emails, website comments and comments sent to me about the website, I have spent less time writing about the City of Concord and more time responding to the ridiculous amount of attention I am getting about it. Don’t get me wrong, the fact that in 2 weeks I have had over 2500 page views is more than any new website with $0 in marketing can ask for.

It started with an idea.

After realizing the importance of starting a local blog, I went into action. I may not be as tapped into the local issues as some but I know with my experiences living here and general internet skills, I could ramp up quickly. The idea was to set up a site that focused on the City of Concord and highlight some news I felt was relevant. I did a quick brainstorm of the posts I wanted to make and started putting some initial ones together.

Get attention to your blog

It takes time to build a site up and even more to actually attract visitors, but within a week, I was already getting attention to the new blog. Some was nice, some was not so nice but in an age where anyone with an opinion can hide behind a pseudonym and send an anonymous email telling you you’re a loser, I guess I can accept that. I wasn’t phased, I have no intent on letting go of a domain name that I have every right to own and develop. I tried to be nice and explain myself and the intentions of the site but I guess that wasn’t enough. Some ‘concerned’ citizen(s) went to the City and complained and the city decided they would actually act on this by trying to shut down the site. Does the City Attorney believe I have broken the law?

The City of Concord responds

Early yesterday Assistant City Attorney Mark Boehme contacted my hosting company asking for the site to be taken down. My hosting company sent me a message letting me know I’ve been targeted.

Mark, a representative of the city concord called in today regarding your site being miss leading and not connected to the Mayor at all. He is requesting the site be taken down for this reason. I have notified him and let him know that your not doing anything wrong and this domain would have to be left up. Your site does not seem to be disobeying our AUP.

Thanks Media Temple, You ROCK! Since it is no mystery who I am and though I would have liked to remain anonymous for a while, that is a luxury I do not have. With the emails and comments coming from all over, why didn’t the City Attorney contact me directly? They can’t say they didn’t know how, there is a big Contact page on the site with a form and an email address that could have been used. I may be going out on a limb here but I think the City Attorney saw the site so he couldn’t have missed my contact page. It probably took him more work to identify who my hosting provider was than to just try me.

“...misleading and not connected to the Mayor at all.” I have to scratch my head on this for a bit. I have a disclaimer on every page and my banner makes it perfectly clear as well. Unless the official Mayor likes to be seen as a cartoon character with balloon text over his head, it’s obvious to the general public this is NOT an official site for the city.  The site is a .COM not a .GOV which would be the next identifier. The Mayor is an elected official of the city and you cannot trademark an elected officials title. That’s like someone trademarking the title of “Sr. Sales Associate”. If I were the REAL Mayor of Concord, I would be happy that someone was actually using the site for legitimate purposes and not some adult entertainment videos. If I were the REAL Mayor of Concord, I would tell these ‘concerned citizens’ to spend their energy fixing the cities educational system, jobless rate and other pressing matters affecting the City and stop whining about some small blog writing about the City of Concord. But I am not the REAL Mayor of Concord. Just to be clear!

Maybe they thought if by sounding official they could get the hosting company to fold and just take the site down. Do they think this is 1985? Really, with the laws and rights given to writers/bloggers these days, what were they expecting? Doesn’t the Constitution hold true in Concord California just like everywhere else? I believe I can write about just about anything. Sure, they may not like it but can they do anything legally about it? I’ve done nothing remotely shady with the site. I have not made any reference to any pending child endangerment charges on elected officials or any allegations of Government fraud. Not that there are any, I’m just saying I haven’t. As I said before, blogs tend to take on a life of their own and this one is growing fast.

Here is the Acceptable Usage Policy for my hosting company.

In order to provide a high class, professional service, we have a few conditions for Customers of our service. Some of these conditions may seem strict, but they insure a safe, functional, and trusted environment for our customers to publish their information on the World Wide Web.

Some example scenarios that may warrant a service suspension:

• Customer is knowingly or unknowingly hosting pornographic videos or photographs.
• Copyrighted media such as music or videos are found to be distributed without the copyright owner’s consent.
• Illegal or un-licensed software or ‘warez’ download sites.
• A site set up to function as an open http proxy.
• Large amounts of unsolicited email (SPAM) are sent using a customer’s SMTP service or mail script.
• An unusual spike in resource usage is detected by our systems resulting in an account far outstripping the allotted resources. To protect the customer, a site may be suspended in order to verify that this resource spike is legitimate.
• A hacked script or otherwise compromised site is discovered. This condition usually results in one or more of the above conditions.

Doesn’t look to me that I am in violation of ANYTHING. My hosting company agreed. I must be doing something right if I’m getting the attention of the city on a small blog about the City of Concord. I hope it stops there. I sent an email to the City Attorney asking for clarification and have not heard a response. Honestly I really hope that tax dollars are not being wasted on this when the MDUSD still can’t pay our teachers enough, the foreclosure rate in the city is raising and our general economy is going to shit. Again, instead of writing about the issues facing our city, I am responding to this rediculousness.

bookmark to:

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!