Online "Stars & Stripes" is a Dot-Con
Author's note: See also Online Stars & Stripes,
Revisited.
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While deployed to Kuwait, I remember how each military transport would be met with joyous anticipation, because we knew there would be several copies (just a day or two old!) of the Stars & Stripes aboard. These issues did much to save our sanity, protecting us from spending too much time on our alternative off-duty relaxation -- the daily scorpion races.
An announcement that the Stars & Stripes was going online in a major way (The Pacific Edition has already been online since 1997) should have been exciting news.
It's not.
"Pittsburgh, PA and Washington, DC - May 2, 2000 - iServed.com, www.iserved.com, the Internet's leading multimedia military content and solutions provider (MCSP), announced today that the company has acquired The Stars and Stripes newspaper, a 138 year-old national treasure and America's oldest privately owned military publication. The acquisition will merge the history, authority and advocacy of The Stars and Stripes with the military content capabilities and technological expertise of iServed.com, an Internet-age business-to-business company. The union will provide first-rate news coverage, online services and information to military members, veterans and their families as well as veteran service organizations through the multimedia channels of a newspaper, Internet site and weekly electronic newsletters. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed."
Sounds great, doesn't it? The Associated Press was taken in by it. CBS Radio was taken in by it. Here's the catch: This Stars & Stripes "newspaper" has nothing whatsoever to do with the Stars & Stripes publication you and I have come to love over the decades. But, if you visit this new online edition (I don't recommend it), you have to dig around to discover it is a completely different newspaper (the press release doesn't make this simple, but important fact clear, at all).
In fact, the Site's "Special Edition," intertwines the history of the real Stars & Stripes and the history of the National Tribune (who apparently owns the "rights" for the title "Stars & Stripes" - although this is debatable) so effectively that they appear to be one-in-the-same.
So, how can iServed.com legally use the same trademark and even stories published by the real Stars & Stripes?
The Stars and Stripes trademark, recently bought by iserved, is reportedly "owned" by a publication known as The National Tribune. Most items published by the Government is considered "public domain," i.e., it has no copyright. Sometime after WW I, a group of veterans who might have worked on the AEF edition started a weekly veteran's newsletter in New York, and titled it Stars & Stripes. It was later rolled up with a number of other veterans' papers (including the National Tribune, which was originally a paper for Civil War veterans) in the Bonus Army era, and at some point in the mid-1920s filed a trademark claim on the name "Stars and Stripes." Quite simply, the military used the trademark first, but the Government can't copyright, so the National Tribune was allowed to register it. The National Tribune then, reportedly "generously" allowed the Department of Defense to continue using the name.
This isn't the first time the "owner" of the trademark tried to cash in on the reputation and popularity of the real Stars & Stripes. In fact, the National Tribune went through at least one mail fraud investigation for misrepresentation.
The real Stars & Stripes has gotten a bum deal over the past decade. First, the military draw down has significantly reduced its readership, causing it to raise prices (Congress mandates that the Stars & Stripes not operate at a loss), then it's forced to turn its overseas bookstores (which it used to help keep newspaper prices down) over to AAFES. And now this "rip-off" of their very name.
Jack Colletti, Chairman and CEO of iServed.com should be ashamed of himself. This former Naval Officer (who presumably enjoyed reading the real Stars & Stripes as much as we did) has shamed the memories of the ten real Stars & Stripes reporters who have died in the line of duty.
Shame, shame, shame, shame, shame.
Author's Note: (Added, August 3, 2001: Stars & Stripes Omedia, Inc., has announced this month that they are filing for Chapter 7 Bankrupcy.)
