New York MTA Wants Our Web Site Shut Down

Today we received an email from the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority demanding that we shut down our www.mtainfo.com web site. Here is what their attorney wrote:

President, Mission to America, Inc.
Tualatin, Oregon 97062

Your website,  http://www.mtainfo.com, is a classic example of an unlawful “ambush” website.  You are attracting and holding people to your website by misappropriating MTA’s website address and materials pertaining to MTA.

Demand is made that you immediately:

1. Change your website address so that it does not include MTAinfo.

2. Remove from your website all terms, imagery, information and any other references to the MTA or to its services.

Thank you in advance for your recognition that this is a serious matter and that it is inappropriate for an organization with your goals and objectives to operate in this unlawful and unethical manner.

We fully expect you to take the actions demanded above.

Sincerely,

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Senior Associate Counsel
Direct  telephone no: 000-000-0000
Fax no: 000-000-0000
E-Mail: ________@MTAHQ.org

I am assuming the problem the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority has is that they operate a web site using the domain name of mta.info. The problem with that is that we registered the mtainfo.com web address FOUR MONTHS BEFORE the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority registered their domain mta.info.

You can see a history of the content we've had on this web site at the Internet Archive: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://mtainfo.com. As you can see historically there is nothing that "ambushes" or does anything to detract from or harm in any way the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority.

Maybe this was the problem: Since the archive does not yet have more recent copies of web sites, what the above link does not show is that late in 2006 we did something we thought would be fun. After receiving an email from a man who said, "My wife was looking for bus information and ran across your web site. She immediately knew your web site was for me. I have some questions I'd like to ask." We thought that the idea of the impossibility of a "bus ride to heaven" would be fun. So we made a header that included two buses , a tram, and Jesus on the cross. One bus was an NYMTA bus, the other bus and the tram were from Moscow, Russia (pictures taken during a mission trip). The only transit related text we added to the site was on the home page. It had three sentences:

"You may have come here for information about another type of trip, or to look for a job. We don't have the bus or train schedule, nor do we have job information. But we can tell you how to take the most important trip of your life."

We obtained written permission from the photographer to use the picture of the NYMTA bus.

Here is a link to the Google cache showing the content of the web site: http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:1QVJqBto9LkJ:www.mtainfo.com/
(Note: this page will change once Google updates their cache, but Google should retain the old web site for several weeks.)

So this is an ambush??? This is misappropriating materials pertaining to MTA? Is this what got the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority so concerned about our web site that they want it taken off line?

Even with three sentences that mention bus travel, the www.mtainfo.com web site has always been about the Gospel message... salvation through Jesus Christ alone.

What should we do? Biblically we want to be loving in our response. There is no Biblical reason to mention buses or trains... the Gospel message does not need buses and trains. So we changed the header image and removed the three sentences shown above.

What do you think?