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While most 21st Century newspapers, including the Buffalo News and the Reporter, offer online editions as a free service to their readers, anyone attempting to find the Niagara Gazette on the World Wide Web will be lead instead to a generic site posted by the Alabama-based Community Newspaper Holdings Inc.
And, even if the Gazette wanted to post a Web page, they would have to deal either with a man they"ve much maligned or another they"ve threatened to sue.
Niagaragazette.com is owned by 29th Street resident James Jones, while niagaragazette.org and niagaragazette.net are owned by Niagara Falls Redevelopment honcho Eddie Cogan.
Jones was threatened with legal action by Gazette attorney Patrick Berrigan on May 19 after his Web site, entitled "The Incompetent Niagara Gazette"detailed his travails in attempting to run advertisements in that paper.
"You know why I put that up? Because every time I put an ad in the paper it was wrong or misspelled,"Jones said.
A computer expert, Jones ran advertisements offering computer training and another for a Web site he"d created, he said. In each instance, the ads were less than satisfactory.
"I was told they couldn"t help it, that my ads were screwed up down in Tonawanda,"Jones said. "I was so pissed."
That was when he purchased the domain name, he said.
In fewer than 24 hours, he received an e-mail from the law firm of Berrigan, Perlman & Gabriel.
The e-mail, signed by senior partner Patrick Berrigan, ordered Jones to "cease and desiste (sic) from further publications"on the Web site.
"Please be advised that your use of such a Web page and it"s contents are unlawful,"Berrigan added.
Jones took the page down that same day. Still, he said, he was unfazed by the threats.
"I knew what I was doing, I didn"t care,"he said. "They said they were going to sue me but I was like, you can"t get blood out of a stone."
While Jones was threatened with trade name infringement litigation, the recent passage by the United States Senate of a bill to protect businesses against "cybersquatting"specifically excludes the registration of a domain name containing a trademark "for the purpose of protest, parody or otherwise protected speech."
It"s not a secret that there"s no love lost between Toronto-based developer Eddie Cogan and the Gazette. But Cogan"s registration of the domain names was not meant to cause trouble, he said.
"The logic was, I"ve always believed in a regional approach to development here, and I was trying to push the partnership between the Canadian side and the American side,"Cogan said. "We were looking to wake them up at the paper and tell them they need to be a regional paper."
But the effort was given the cold shoulder by the Gazette.
"We gave the message to (Gazette Publisher) Steve Braver three or four months ago and we never heard back,"he said. "We weren"t asking him to buy it, we said he could have it."
Cogan said the response was typical of his relationship with the paper.
"I"ve been consistent since I"ve been here,"he said. "We have to be one. The Gazette, for whatever reason, doesn"t want any changes here." While the paper"s Luddite mentality might be difficult to understand, those seeking online news and information concerning the Greater Niagara area are nonetheless well served. In addition to the Reporter and Buffalo News Web sites, the Niagara Frontier Media Monitor Web site offers news and commentary concerning the area"s newspapers, radio and television stations.