Updated: The issue described below has been resolved. You can read about it here.
While we are happy to be an inspiration for educators and individuals, sometimes we see examples of commercial organizations that choose to make videos that cause potential confusion. When a video uses paper cut-outs on a whiteboard and "in Plain English" in the title, people may mistake it for part of the Common Craft video series. This confusion compromises the hard work we've put into building the Common Craft brand of "in Plain English" videos.
When this happens, we often take a reasonable approach as a first step: we ask them to simply change the title to reduce confusion.
Unfortunately, one company has not been so reasonable. A tech company called rPath made a video called "Cloud Computing in Plain English" that uses animated versions of paper cut-outs on a white background. Despite our multiple requests, they (via their IP attorneys) refuse to change the title of the video.
So, aside from potential legal action, we're motivated to make sure that confusion is reduced. We have our own "Cloud Computing in Plain English" video in the works and we want to ensure that rPath's video is not confused with our video.
So our purpose is clear: The Cloud Computing video by rPath, despite the title and appearances, is in no way related to Common Craft. Common Craft did not work with rPath in any way.
If you would like to help us reduce this confusion (without linking to the rPath website) it would be appreciated. Might I suggest a comment on their video? Commenting has been turned off.
UPDATED: I knew this would happen. rPath is now hiding/deleting the comments on the YouTube video and has turned off commenting completely. That's OK, I managed to grab a few screenshots (below) because I figured they didn't really want to hear what people think about this issue. Thanks to everyone that has commented!
Update 2: The rPath folks have changed the description on the YouTube video page to say "**Not affiliated with Common Craft. If you're interested in Common Craft, visit: http://www.commoncraft.com**" I appreciate them making this change.
Update 3: Jake from rPath has left a comment on this blog post ("rPath Responds" below) and we have been in toch via email. I will take Jake at his word when he says he didin't know about Common Craft when the video was made. Of course, as I told him, knowing then and refusing to make a change to make it right now are two different things.
