Granted, the name is clever. YouCSD.com (or, if you rearrange the capitals, YoUCSD) is witty: this site is about YOU, put YOUrself in the university, put the YOU in UCSD, ha ha. Very punny.

Too bad the University of California’s administration, didn’t find the address quite so cute. Since the California Education Code grants the University of California full rights to its name and bars using the school’s name in a hyperlink without permission, UCSD officials have ordered YouCSD.com to change its address, claiming copyright infringement.

The Web site’s anonymous creators, of course, are assuming the role of martyrs. “This threat from the university has no merit,” they stated. “From the beginning we expected campus administration to try and use such strong-arm tactics to censor us.”

It’s pretty easy for the UC administration to come off, once again, as the bad guys: Big Brother Is Watching; Down with Free Speech; Do Not Resist the University of California. After all, they’re taking legal action against a Web site run by a group of students trying to form an online “community” and innocently expressing their opinions.

Catch the key clause there? “Expressing their opinions.” The University of California, thankfully, allows more diversity of thought than is reflected by YouCSD.com; it is fitting, therefore, that the site should not represent the university, and all its constituents, in the public eye. Both precedent and prudence demand that UC officials require YouCSD.com to find a new forum immediately.

The University of California should not allow full representation of the trademarked UC moniker to the latest revolutionaries, for doing so would be unfair to the other, arguably more legitimate, groups already shut down or relocated for similar reasons.

In September 2002, for example, UCSD took minor action against the UCSD Ché Café Collective. When the collective’s Web site, BURN!, published a link to an alleged terrorist association, the Webmasters were ordered to remove the link. And in the fall of 2003, the site formerly known as UCSDuncensored.com, a message board on which students could post thoughts or questions about the campus — but which had failed to obtain permission to use the trademarked “UCSD” name in its hyperlink — was also ordered to remove the name from the link to comply with the University of California’s code. The site has remained active, but is now simply known as SDuncensored.com — mildly disappointing, since it’s a good Web site — but, really, little harm done.

In both instances, the university was entirely justified in protecting its image and intellectual property.

YouCSD.com should be asked to change its address and be denied its official-sounding ties with UCSD, because carefully screening, and even removing Web sites that use UCSD in their hyperlinks is not only the University of California’s right but also its responsibility. Not all of UCSD’s 24,000 students and countless alumni want to be associated with the pretentious content of YouCSD.com, even if the site’s creators have a disclaimer on their site.

In one instance, for example, a YouCSD.com poster attacked the musical preferences one individual noted on his Xanga site. YouCSD.com’s posters have called George W. Bush “awful,” have harshly criticized the new chancellor and have, in general, forfeited any sort of critical or literary merit, instead opting for personal attacks and unsubstantiated, uneducated rants fatuously directed at any sort of differing opinions.

The students, of course, have every right to express these views. But there are more appropriate ways to do it. Sure, rant all you want about the cameras preventing theft in on-campus dining halls. Don’t hold back — keep telling us how you “had no idea Brigham Young University rejected anyone, much less some girl from Laguna Beach.” Give us your little blurbs on Fall Fest, other campus events and the A.S. Council’s newest scandal.

But respect the codes enforced by the state of California, and keep such comments to forums unaffiliated with the university — say, your own Xangas, or maybe a Facebook common-interest group. (Or, if you’re feeling ambitious, get adventurous and create a real community instead of an online one.)

Meanwhile, the rest of us will be thankful that the university doesn’t force such opinionated content on all of UCSD.