Document text
62 °F Forecast | Road Cams Sunday, September 12, 2004 Today's News | Classifieds | Autos | Homes | Jobs | Tempo | Health | Community | Home Delivery SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics Tempo AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map SPECIAL SECTIONS Since We Asked Outdoor Journal Prime Times Wellness Connection Readers' Choice Real Estate Showcase Joy Magazine Homelife Magazine Wedding Guide Rogue Valley's Finest EXTRA Newspaper in Education Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People MARKETPLACE Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Classifieds Place an ad eSouthernOregon Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar CUSTOMER SERVICE Frequent Questions Advertising Information Home Delivery Employment Contact Us Media Kit Network Affiliate Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend July 10, 2004 Shakespeare Web site address upstages festival By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune Scott McTaggart believes he’s got a foolproof business idea for some cyber-whiz to make a killing on Ashland’s Shakespeare economy, and he owns the right name for it. Post a Web page at his www.oregonshakespearefestival.com , then get every bed-and-breakfast, restaurant and whitewater rafting outfit in town to advertise on it. And add a link to the real Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s real Web page at www.osfashland.org so those looking for tickets can get them. This way, anyone trying to Google up some info on the Ashland Shakespeare festival could get funneled through McTaggart’s site. McTaggart is offering the idea — and, most importantly, ownership of the Web address — for $20,000. Advertisement McTaggart, 34, of Ashland, bought the Internet domain-name rights to oregonshakespearefestival.com four years ago through a registration Web site, and has paid his $35 a year to keep it, hoping someone would want to buy it. "I’m throwing it out there now to see how many people call and get the bidding started," said McTaggart, a former Ashland stone salesman. "This could be a million-dollar-a- year business." Once the calls start coming, chances are one of them could be a lawyer. McTaggart’s sales pitch may actually slip into something called "cybersquatting." It can be illegal under federal law and international agreements if the festival were to file a lawsuit or seek arbitration through the nonprofit Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN. So far the festival hasn’t contested McTaggart’s ownership of the domain name. But festival officials are aware McTaggart is peddling their good name. Janeen Olsen, the festival’s director of marketing and communications, said festival officials have contacted their attorney but she declined further comment. The 1999 federal law called the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act defines cybersquatting as registering, selling or using a domain name — that individual name used to reach a specific site on the World Wide Web — with the intent of profiting from the goodwill of someone else’s trademark. Cybersquatting law surfaced after several corporations like Avon and Heinz tried to get Web sites, only to find someone else registered them first. As more businesses get Net-savvy, the cases of cybersquatting seem to be diminishing, said Justin Dack, webmaster at Western Telephone, formerly Internet CDS in Medford. "It just comes up once in a while," Dack said. "I wouldn’t say it’s rare, but I wouldn’t say it’s common." It also is something that, generally, is not investigated as a federal crime, said FBI spokeswoman Beth Anne Steele in Portland. "It doesn’t sound like something we’d handle criminally, (but) we’d have to look at all the facts in the case," Steele said. "More likely, that kind of thing would be handled civily." Businesses that believe their trademark is being used illegally can sue in court or follow the ICANN dispute-resolution process. To win, they must prove the squatter has no legitimate interest to the domain name and that it was registered and is being used "in bad faith," according to ICANN’s dispute- resolution policy. "Usually, they pay the squatter off," Dack said. McTaggart said that was his plan when he registered the festival’s trademark in April 2000, just about the time OSF registered the osfashland.org domain name. "When they went nonprofit I thought, well, somebody ought to make a profit," McTaggart said in a telephone interview. At the same time, he registered the Oregon Shakespeare Festival name through the state Corporation Division of the Secretary of State. McTaggart said he first put a $75,000 price tag on his domain name and offered it for sale, and pitched it to the festival. They declined, but he said he did garner interest from an Ashland hotel that eventually created its own similar Web site. This time, McTaggart took out a newspaper classified ad Thursday, asking for "serious inquiries only." As of Friday morning, he had none. There is no Web page posted at his site. McTaggart said he wants to sell the domain now to put a down-payment on a house. He said he has some Web page design experience and flirted with doing his own page and peddling space to local businesses. "It’s endless advertising," he says. McTaggart acknowledged that he knows his registered domain name exactly matches the festival’s trademark. But he claimed there are 17 other theaters in Oregon that produce Shakespeare plays. "It could be a link to all the Shakespeare plays," McTaggart said. McTaggart, who recently lived in Hawaii, said he also previously registered mauidirectory.com and oahudirectory.com in hopes of selling them. He has since let the registration lapse. "As soon as I let it go," he said, "it got snagged up." He said he expects some entrepreneurial interest in oregonshakespearefestival.com, if the festival doesn’t throw a stink. "It’s either that or they’ll be knocking on my door saying, ‘Stop now,’ " he said. Finder keepers for most names Just having your name in someone else’s dot-com address isn’t always illegal. They could be legitimate Web sites of businesses with similar, or identical, names and they simply played the domain-name game first. The Black Bird Shopping Center in Medford, for instance, can’t have blackbird.com as its Web site because a Rhode Island company called Blackbird Research registered that domain name in 1995. When the store opened its Web site, store officials settled for www.d-bird.com . "We had to," Black Bird’s Marie Wharton says. "Our name was gone." Subsequently, Black Bird let d-bird.com lapse, and a Long Beach, Calif., man registered it last February. In other instances, names can appear very similar, just registered under different "registrars," like .org or .net. Asante.com, for instance, has been registered since 1991 to Asante Technologies in San Jose, Calif. Asante.org was registered in 1996 to Asante Health Systems in Medford, which operates the Rogue Valley Medical Center. Sometimes, discrepancies are wide. Call up whitehouse.gov and you get President Bush. Try whitehouse.com and it’s a pornography site. Domain names and registration information are public records and are available through www.whois.net or various registration Web sites. — Mark Freeman Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2004 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions Website Feedback ADVERTISERS A D V E R T I S E R S SPECIAL SECTIONS Auto Finder Job Finder Home Finder Joy Magazine Homelife Magazine Tempo Readers' Choice Real Estate Showcase Since We Asked Outdoor Journal Moving to Southern Oregon? Volunteer Opportunities