Thank You For Your Prayers

Thank you everyone for your prayers.

I thought I should mention why I've posted the information in the last two posts. I have two reasons.

I would like your prayers... in particular that the Lord be guiding me in being Biblical in my responses and that everything be done in a way that glorifies God.

Second, I'm open to any feedback if it appears that my responses are unBiblical in any way or do not glorify God.

For now I'm just waiting to hear back from the New York Metropolitan transit Authority. They have not responed to the email I sent a week ago last Friday, so I assume they are waiting to receive my written response to the letter I received from them on Friday. I sent that response out in Monday's mail. So now it's time to move on to other concerns, such as upcoming mission trips. I'm heading to Russia in May and please also be praying for a mission trip to Nepal I hope to go on with my daughter in November. Thank you.

Thank you for your help and prayers.

Our Response To NY MTA

A week ago Friday I received an email from the NY MTA that you can see in the previous post. This Friday the certififed, return receipt required letter arrived. It said exactly the same thing. I though it might be a good idea to post our response, which I hope is a true Biblical and loving response. Here it is:

March 9, 2007

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Senior Associate Counsel
Metropolitan Transit Authority
347 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10017-3739

Subject: Your Letter Dated March 3, 2007

Dear Mr. xxxxxxxxx:

I received your certified letter in today’s mail. Thank you for your earlier email and this letter, bringing to my attention problems you feel exist with the Mission to America web site www.mtainfo.com. I have responded to your email and present the same response here. As I stated in my email I hope this can resolved in a Biblical, loving, respectful manner.

1. Your first demand was: ”Change your website address so that it does not include MTAinfo.”

A) Your letter does not mention which web site you feel our www.mtainfo.com site infringed. In researching the ownership of domains I see that the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority
owns the domain www.mta.info. This is a URL that is very similar to our URL. However, I would like to point out that Mission to America (MTA) registered and began using www.mtainfo.com FOUR MONTHS BEFORE your organization registered www.mta.info. We have not misappropriated your address. It is the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority that has taken a domain name that is similar to our existing domain name.

B) Please see http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://mtainfo.com. This will show you a history of our use of this domain. You'll see that it has always represented our organization, Mission to America (we are commonly known as MTA), and has historically not had any transit related material or images. It was only recently that I changed the header of the web site, after receiving an email from a gentleman who said, "My wife was looking for bus information and ran across your web site. She immediately knew it was for me.” The gentleman had some questions he wanted to ask. I thought that the idea of a "bus ride to heaven" would be fun and added some transit related images in the header, plus an image of Jesus on the cross. Please note that two of the three transit images were of the Moscow (Russia) transit system and are not related to your organization in any way. I regularly travel to Russia as a missionary and took the photos myself.

C) Prior to our purchase the www.mtainfo.com domain was not owned by anyone, and was available for the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority to purchase. However, the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority did not register it and thus must not have considered worthwhile, of possible conflict, or otherwise of value.

D) A quick search of Google shows there are many "MTA" domain names in use that are not related to the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority. For example:

www.mta.com/
www.mta.net/
www.mta.org/
www.mta.tv/
ww.mta.hu/
www.m-t-a.com/
www.nymta.com/
www.mtamaryland.com/
www.mtavc.com/

Are all of these misappropriating your web address? There are many organizations using the MTA acronym and which have a MTA related internet domain name. Unlike our web site, some of these are transit web sites with content very similar to yours increasing the likelyhood of confusion. The MTA acronym is used to represent many organizations, including our organization and, as others do, used as a part of our web site address. We are an evangelical Christian organization that does not run buses or trains. There is no possibility of confusion between us and the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority. I see no reason for us to stop using the www.mtainfo.com domain name.


2. Your second demand was: “Remove from your website all terms, imagery, information and any other references to the MTA or to its services.”

Our web site had only one image that could be related to the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority, and no references to your services. The image was there because, when I did a Google image search for "buses" it appeared near the top of the list. We secured the permission from the photographer and combined it with two images of the Moscow transit system and an image of Jesus on the cross, to create our header.

Our web site had no other references to the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority. The content of the web site focused on the Good Person Test; the fact that we all have broken God's laws in one way or another (“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” Romans 3:23); that we thus must pay a penalty for breaking God's laws (hell) (“the wages of sin is death” – Romans 6:23); and that for those who accept this gift, Jesus as paid their penalty on their behalf. (“For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” – John 3:16)

At no time was there any intent to misappropriate anything from the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority. The site was clearly a Christian web site, not a transit web site.

However, you are concerned and I am happy to address those concerns. Our message is about Christ, and there is no need to be "cute" in our presentation of our message. So I feel the loving response is to change our web site, which I have done.

Thank you for your letter. I was glad to hear about your concerns and I hope that I have addressed those concerns in a satisfactory manner.


May the Lord Bless You,
Mission to America
P.O. Box 974
Tualatin, OR 97062

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?