Eastchester school critics forced to change Web
site name
By DAVID MCKAY WILSON
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original Publication: July 20, 2006)
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EASTCHESTER - A citizens group critical of the Eastchester school
board has changed the name of its Web site to avoid a potentially costly legal
battle with the school district.
The district in early July warned the group, Citizen Advocates for
Responsible Education, that it would take legal action if the group continued
to run its Web site under the domain name www.eastchesterschools.org, maintaining the group deceived
residents into thinking it was the official district Web site.
The new site, called www.eastchestereducation.org, debuted yesterday with
criticism of the district's intervention, calling it "a blatant attempt to
stifle our First Amendment rights of free speech and silence any opposing
views."
"This is harassment, pure and simple," said the site's
webmaster, Renee Marsh, an IBM executive who lost her bid for school board in
May.
Board of Education President Michelle Simon Kissel
said officials didn't want to stop the debate; they just wanted to make sure
residents were not confused by coming across the group's Web site when they
were seeking the school district's site.
She said the trustees had received complaints.
"All we are trying to do is avoid confusion for
residents," said Kissel. "We want to make
sure that people seeking information about the schools are sent to the official
site."
A Google search of "eastchester
schools" on Tuesday found the district's Web site and the town's Web site
listed before the citizens group's site.
Kissel said the district has not
taken action against an advertising Web site called www.eastchesterschools.com because residents haven't
complained.
The dispute over the domain name is the latest skirmish between
school critics and the Eastchester school board.
Since the district embarked on a controversial
"fields-for-fill" project in 2002, residents have complained that the
school board has turned a deaf ear to citizen concerns.
In the spring, five opponents mounted a spirited, yet
unsuccessful, bid to unseat three incumbents in the May elections.
Though the challengers lost, there was enough dissension in the
district that voters defeated the school budget.
It was subsequently passed in June after the school board cut
$300,000 from the $57 million spending plan.
The critics' Web site came online in September 2005 and attracted
2,000 visitors until it was shut down and transferred to the new address
yesterday, Marsh said.
The site includes statistics from budget votes over 10 years, a
look at Schools Superintendent Robert Siebert's compensation package of
$290,869 for 2006-07, and articles on education from the conservative magazine
National Review.
Two attorneys who specialize in Internet law said the citizens
group would have had a decent chance of prevailing if they had found legal
counsel and challenged the district's attempt to shut down www.eastchesterschools.org.
In its July 6 letter to Marsh, Board of Education counsel Donna Frosco cited state business law in her demand that the
group "cease and desist" in its use of www.eastchesterschools.org.
Frosco said the Web site violated
state law because it might deceive or mislead the public as to the identity of
the site's owner.
Attorney Jonathan Bick, who has taught Internet law at Pace
University Law School, said the statute cited by the district involves
deceptive trade practices in the commercial marketplace and would not apply to
the debate over school policies.
Bick said that the domain name seemed appropriate - it was a site
about Eastchester schools, with the .org suffix, which is used by organizations
like CARE.
"It could be argued that the name was deceptive if the people
weren't associated with East-chester, but these are
East-chester taxpayers, and it looks like absolutely
fair use," he said.
Attorney Ari Goldberger, who specializes in domain-name issues,
said governments do not have exclusive rights to geographical names and noted
that the Eastchester public schools were not the only educational institutions
in town.
"It doesn't appear that they are misleading the public,"
he said "When you go to the site, you can see it's not the school
district."
Kissel, also a Pace law professor, declined to comment on the legal
positions offered by Goldberger and Bick.
She said the citizens could fight the district if they wanted to
mount a challenge.
"If this group doesn't agree with our position, they are free
to contest it, that's fine," she said.
But Marsh, who was trying to find a volunteer attorney to take the
case, said she was unwilling to dig into her own wallet to make the point.
"We just don't have the money to fight it," she said.