digi.no, the largest IT nettavisen in Norway wrote about "morsmal vs. morsmal case". Read about the case and comments here:The state stole our name …or the multiple language versions from below.
It is a bit surprising that despite that we have not yet sent the newsletter that this article was the first place in digi.no all week as the most read article!
- The state had stolen our name and idea, By Marius Jørgenrud, Monday 26 October 2009 at 11:03 The Editor of an independent Norwegian site is despairing. The website morsmal.org reacted strongly about a new webportal as the Directorate of Education announced Thursday last week, with the identical address morsmal.no.
- It's not every day the government steals ideas, names and concepts from others, writes editor On Elpeleg in morsmal.org to digi.no.
morsmal.org was established in 2003 and presents itself as "a multilingual information portal and a meeting place for bilingual researchers, teachers, parents and pupils".
The new government portal morsmal.no say that they should be "a meeting place for mother tongue teachers, pupils and parents (…) with learning resources in the respective language, and information on mother tongue education".
In a press release emphasizes Elpeleg that they were never contacted by the Directorate of Education in advance about the launching of the new website. He discusses the Directorate's new web portal as a competitor and a twin or "copy cat" of his own morsmal.org.
According to On Elpeleg, the Education Directorate [Ministry] expressed expressed a desire for a "constructive dialogue" with morsmal.org, but it is unclear what lies in this.
- We plan to consult with a lawyer and take the matter further to the legal authorities…" said Elpeleg to digi.no in response to what he plans to do next.
Project Manager and Content Manager for the Education Directorate's new sites would not comment on the strong accusations.
Instead, we referred to her boss, Deputy Director Jorunn Margrethe Ødegaard in the Education Directorate.
We were informed that the Department Director is not available for comment until at 14:00 in the afternoon.
- We have related to the normal procedures for acquisition of domain names at Norid, says Ødegaard later to digi.no.
She emphasizes that the new site, with mother tongue language as a theme, is The result of a mission they have been assigned by the Ministry of Education.
- The task arises from the White Paper No 23 - Language Building bridges. The goal is that this will be an important resource for language teachers…"said the department director.
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multilingualism_a_bridge_to_mutual_understanding.
