[Random-bits] estreetjournal vrs wall street journal

[James Love]

Thanks to Judith Oppenheimer for this pointer. 

http://www.estreetjournal.com/threat.html
http://www.estreetjournal.com/reply.html

These are a letter from the WSJ to a person that owns and apparently has
tried to sell estreetjournal.com, and the response.  estreetjournal
actually has a pretty cool logo, and real content.   The WJS is offering
to buy the domain for $70.

	Jamie


>From the response:

http://www.estreetjournal.com/reply.html

	I started E Street Journal in June of 1999 with the intent of making it
a journal for creative writers and Mainframe Rexx programmers. The main
purpose of this site was to try and create a web site consisting of my
hobby (creative writing) and my livelihood (Mainframe rexx programming).
Running this web site has helped me tremendously in improving my writing
abilities (two of the stories are mine, 'Hit and Run' and 'A Killing in
the Woods', as well as my  Rexx knowledge (I personally answer every
Rexx question). 

	I worked very hard to establish and run this site by myself. As hard as
it was, it was a pleasure for me building this web site and to help
beginning writers and Rexx programmers. The others sections of the site
(Shopping mall, Financial corner, Consumer, Headline news, Museums,
Online Art ? and affiliate advertising were all added within the past
several months in an attempt to cover the Web hosting costs. Prior to
this there was no advertising nor any other attempts to make money from
this site. 

	The reason I am trying to sell the Web Site is that I would like to
start spending time with my kids while they are still young. Between
running the web site and volunteering almost every Friday for the past
two years here in Milford at the public library I've been neglecting my
family and would like to change that. I do not know how much it would
cost to pay someone to build a web site of this size, but I can probably
guess that it is much more than I am asking. 

	This site in no way, shape or form is similar to or infringes on the
Wall Street Journal or attempts to mislead. The site averages about 100
page views per day (paltry by Web standards) with an average user
session length of 13 minutes, which shows that they are looking for my
site, not yours. No one has ever complained that they were misled on
this site, or that they came here looking for your site, or that they
were looking for an E commerce site. The 'Djia companies' only show up
on the menu bar in the financial corner as initials only because of
space constraints. The actual page has the heading 'Companies of the Dow
Jones Industrial Average' with only a list of the companies and links to
their home pages. The remainder of this section only has headlines
provided by Isyndicate and Newshub and links to research sites, trading
sites, option information and exchanges. This section does not even have
any banners or advertising and of the 45000 hits (including Gifs) since
March 2000 that the entire site received, this entire section only had
315 hits, or 0.69% of total. A search on AltaVista.com found a total of
81,130 web pages containing Djia. 

	There is no resemblance to the Wall Street Journal anywhere on this
site nor has there ever been. To state that I am cybersquating is a
false accusation that I resent. To say that I am infringing on your
copyright is another false accusation that I resent. If I was doing
either I would have also registered the .NET and .ORG as well, which I
did not, even though Network Solutions tried to sell them both to me. I
was also not aware that every site that begins with an 'E' is an
E-commerce site; my site must be the only non e-commerce site that
begins with 'E'. If you are saying that any name that ends with Street
Journal is cybersquating and infringing on your trademark then I assume
you also sent letters to the following:  Law Street Journal, Monroe
Street Journal, Broad Street Journal, Wadsworth Street Journal, College
Street Journal, StreetJournal.Com to name a few. 

	It appears to me that this powerful conglomerate is using intimidation
to obtain what it wants. I will not fall victim to these scare tactics
and will use the public support to fight this. I will post your letter
and this response on my web site as well as on the news groups so that
we can see who the public feels is right and stands behind. 

  [snip]

=======================================================
James Love, Director           | http://www.cptech.org
Consumer Project on Technology | mailto:love@cptech.org 
P.O. Box 19367                 | voice: 1.202.387.8030
Washington, DC 20036           | fax:   1.202.234.5176
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