Logo original, says 'International Chalu Union' after Facebook page taken down

Logo original, says 'International Chalu Union' after Facebook page taken down
Logo original, says 'International Chalu Union' after Facebook page taken down
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The Facebook page of "International Chalu Union" (ICU), a popular Malayalam platform that usually posts humourous content including memes, was on Thursday pulled down from the social networking site. Though the ICU page, which had over a lakh followers on Facebook, was removed on Thursday morning, a fresh page was created by the members soon after. The new page, as of now, has got over 39,000 likes and several fake pages by the same name have also been created on Facebook.The page allegedly violated copyright norms after it posted an illustration without taking permission and there was also speculation on Facebook that the page was taken down by administrators as the logo of the page was not original.Those associated with the page now say the logo was their own and was not taken from any other source.The founder of Vector Toons, Brad Gosse, on April 15 published a post on his Facebook page saying, "Last week I caught a Facebook page stealing one of our watermarked Vector Toons of Jesus. I reported them and asked for a misuse penalty." He added that since then he was receiving "death threats from strangers."  ICU is primarily a private group which is only accessible to members. The public page (which has now been taken down) was created to share content from the group.Members share different types of content on the group on a regular basis, and the ones that generate the most number of likes is then selected for posting on their public page. One of the members associated with ICU said that the illustration of Jesus was also selected for public posting after it was liked by several of the group members. However, the group claims that inspite of taking the image down, Gosse was only interested in getting compensation from the group. "We do not make any money from the ICU page," says the member. When they informed Gosse, he apparently increased the sum of compensation he had been demanding so far.Soon after, according to the member, an unknown website, which stated that it sold logos, popped up. "One of their designs included the ICU logo suggesting that we flicked our logo from their site," says the member. The website apparently lodged a complaint against the ICU page following which it was taken down.ICU member says the 'dummy' website was deliberately set up by someone so that their page could be pulled down. According to the ICU member, their logo was selected from a list of entries they got in a competition they had held in 2014. "Last year in December, we had conducted a logo competition in the group. The design that won was selected as our group's logo and the winner was given a Rs 10,000 cash prize. We released the logo in January 2015 and actors Mukesh and Ramesh Pisharadi were present to launch the logo," the member says. (All images source: International Chalu Union)

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