The IIPM Blog Wars: No legal notices today. Wow!

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Submitted by varun on Wed, 12/10/2005 - 10:24pm.

Amazingly today has been a notice-less day for Indian bloggers. Maybe its because the morons (my opinion) at IIPM legal cell took the day off due to Dushera. Or maybe its because they finally came to their senses.

There was a major slipup on my part in my previous post. I had written that Varna had been sued. Well later I realized that she has just been threatened with a legal notice that she will be sued. Sorry about that... Btw Varna says that she is not afraid of IIPM or its threats... of course yaar, that goes without saying. Nice to hear from you.

Mainstream media has finally noticed this controversy. Hindustan Times has it on Page 3 in today’s Mumbai edition. 2 snippets from the article:

"We are not concerned about the blog, and in no way has the written matter on the blog affected us," says A. Sandip, IIPM's all-India dean.

"But we are going to take legal action against the blogger for defamation. The person is identifiable. It is a legal notice against the person and not the blog."

WTF! Never heard of a teeny-weeny thing called logical consistency, eh?

Anusha Subramanian (author of this article) quotes Pavan Duggal a Supreme Court advocate specializing in cyber laws:

"What all this now comes down to is the issue of free speech, as there are no specific laws for blogging. Blogs are not specifically covered in the IT Act of India. Secondly, every citizen has, except in certain extraordinary circumstances, the fundamental right to freedom of speech under the Constitution. This incident of a blogger being threatened with legal action clearly reflects the need for a clarification of the rights of a blogger."

Mumbai Mirror's Blogger's park also has a ultrasmallish article about this. I wish they had talked about it in more detail, especially about how blogging is one form of freedom of expression.

It was very nice of Ravi to compile a list of email addresses of mainstream media entities. IIPM also has a feedback form and a email address (Info@IIPM.edu) that you can use to get in touch with them. In fact they have a page full of email addresses. Thanks for the idea JhQuest!

Hemanth and Gawker cause more laugh riots :-) Thanks guys!

Somebody has dared to dream beyond the IIPM legal notices and started the Real IIPM blog.

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IIPM Shit

Submitted by Pratik (not verified) on Thu, 13/10/2005 - 12:43pm.

Varun there are hazar fraudulent institutions like IIPM, the whole goverment is fraudulent. I guess instead of following one stupid institute, it would be better to concentrate our efforts on the bigger picture and to make a 'change'.

The text boxes here for specifying name, email address have a leading space. Guess u can chuck that off.

1 babystep at a time

Submitted by varun on Thu, 13/10/2005 - 1:43pm.

What you are saying is very true. There are indeed many institutions out there cheat students and do not provide anything of value.

What makes me happy right now is that blogging _could_ be a form of grassroots journalism. As 1 blogger noted Mr. Chaudhari does not buy ads on blogs.

As far is the bigger picture is concerned we can take 1 baby step at a time. If we do succeed in exposing IIPM to the community then we could use the experience to bring more culprits to book.

The textboxes actually dont have a leading space. Just that they have extra padding (CSS thingy). Drupal's default CSS is tooooo bloated and I cut it down a lot but didnt do it very meticulously. So there are a few irritating things like this. Dont worry. I plan to design a theme from the group up in the near future (2 days?, 2 weeks?, 2 months? who knows!) and I will fix it then.

wish you were a lawyer :-)

Submitted by varun on Thu, 13/10/2005 - 1:50pm.

I was reminded a few times of what you said about law and how knowing it was important when all this was going on.

Wish I could get a crystal clear explanation from a legal point of view regarding this whole episode...

Chal jaldi sey lawyer ban ja. Then I can be assured of at least 1 person who will give me good free legal advice just in case I get a legal notice of something :-)

Bantu, totally agree with

Submitted by JhQ (not verified) on Thu, 13/10/2005 - 4:30pm.

Bantu, totally agree with Varun, jaldi se lawyer ban jaa, the way i see it i will atleast know where to use my 1 phone call whn te cops get me :P

cheers

u out of ur senses?

Submitted by varun on Thu, 13/10/2005 - 6:20pm.

@JhQuest: You out of your senses? You will use your 1 phone call to call up Bantu?!? OMG!

He will (assuming he has become a lwayer) say "Dont worry yaar... main tujhe bachaney aa raha hoon". Then 2 mins after the call is over he will brush his teeth with Palmolive, gel his hair with toothpaste and then promptly go to sleep...

Tell you what... gimme a call and I will keep reminding Bantu till he does something... thats a much better way :-)

the farce of IIPM

Submitted by neeraj (not verified) on Fri, 14/10/2005 - 9:23am.

Those who told everyone to think beyond IIMs forgot that charades, opaqueness, threatenings,lies and contempt for criticism is not what can take people beyond B-schools Like IIMs and XLRI. It's hard work(the alumni and students of IIMs and XLRI, Am I joking!!!, intelligence and XLence that matter to bring such a respect in industry.The intelligence of IIPM fellows is out in the open when they escalated a Blog for a self defeating action.Kudos!!
Regards
an XLer.

please stop this non-sence

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 26/10/2005 - 1:36pm.

hi guys

i dont no wat u guys r doing.... come on v hav iipm people working in our organization and they r really good... and by doing all these stupid things u guys r spoiling students future...no body is perfect in this world... if some has not got job that doesnt mean that u people start talking stupid things and u people r playing with the future of those guys who r working in organization. and i dont want to lose them because of your all these web sites. companies are sacking IIPM people because of youe website. please think abt it...

with regards ,

An X IIMB

media report

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 14/10/2005 - 10:53am.

I wasn't following your blog for the past few days. Yesterday I came across a report in 'Indian Express' on the IIPM issue. They have quoted you and some other bloggers. The report brought me back to your page. I don't know about who is being right or wrong. But you better handle issues with care.

Its clear that only

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 27/10/2005 - 6:29pm.

Its clear that only confirmed morons have joined IIPM in the past and there will be many confirmed morons who will join IIPM in the future. No amount of blogging can save any moron from joining IIPM. So IIPM management have actually proved that (a) they are morons when they sued and protested. (b) they don't know that they are morons and need bloggers to tell them that. (c) they don't know that their students are morons and need bloggers to tell them that.