In retrospect, it’s an obvious strategy: Grab the domain names for every school district in Iowa, using the full name; follow that with the school nickname; make it a dot-com, since most official school district websites end in .k12.ia.us; and profit from those who aren’t paying attention. (EDIT: Not just Iowa, this is going on across the country.)
In August, a penny-stock company called DigitalTown did just that. Now typing every [school][mascot].com from “keekeehawks” to “akronwestfieldwesterners” brings up a templated website with a district logo cribbed from somewhere, design accents in the school colors, and “[nickname]bucks”. DigitalTown is engaging in a form of cybersquatting.
The press releases couldn’t be more cookie-cutter or more obvious that they’re press releases, but it looks like local papers have fallen for it, including the Traer Star-Clipper and Reinbeck Courier. The latter’s website has deleted the page, but it can be found in the Google cache. It bears all the hallmarks of a plug-and-chug text macro: Where the website is the first word in the sentence it is not capitalized, all the releases are missing a comma in the same place, and “Jack Londgren” is working in Iowa, Maryland, and Oregon. An extra giveaway: The release/website for North Tama uses “Red Hawks” as two words, which is incorrect. North Tama has put up a notice on its Facebook page, which would be a good idea for everyone else to do too, and the superintendent has a blog post about it.
Iowa’s school districts have nothing to do with the DigitalTown websites. Schools will not receive any revenue through them. In fine, fine print at the bottom of each one is a disclaimer like this: “DigitalTown.com and its network are not affiliated with Bcluw Comets. All trademarks are held by their respective holders.” Yes, lowercased just like that. Even the disclaimer is an autofill blank.
The Fairfield Sun-Times — not Fairfield, Iowa, but Fairfield, Montana — did some investigation, and it gets more suspicious by the minute.
Sports schedules and rosters are available in many places. But DigitalTown takes it further, attempting to sell ad space, offering e-mail addresses that use the school name and nickname, and selling merchandise with the school’s name on it. The “Team Stores” have all sorts of clothing designs but — and here’s another sign this whole thing is automated — the full name includes the nickname even where the nickname is listed separately. That leads to…this.
There is significant potential for confusion here, and that’s just what DigitalTown is banking on. I would argue that it amounts to false representation, something that can’t be avoided with a miniature disclaimer. The average Iowa school district isn’t concerning itself with the concept of snatching up every website related to it (see, for example, presidential candidate Carly Fiorina not buying the .org version of her name), nor is it thinking about its name as a form of intellectual property or a reason to trademark it. One that HAS thought about it, though, is West Des Moines, which created new logos not that long ago and trademarked them. And guess what — DigitalTown owns valleytigers.com.
I intend to tell the IHSAA, IGHSAU, and the Iowa attorney general’s office about this. Even if state-level groups are not able to do anything — the individual districts may have to take action, and they aren’t going to be able to afford the lawyers — they can alert districts and Iowans that this is happening. Ideally, DigitalTown would get buried in an avalanche of cease-and-desist letters, but at the very least, true supporters of Iowa schools and their sports teams should stay as far away from DigitalTown websites as possible.