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Citing the DMCA, the World Trade Organization complained to Verio, the upstream provider of parody site gatt.org, a site we've mentioned before which jabs at the aims and methods of GATT and the WTO. Verio notified domain holder Jonathan Prince of the complaint, and asked Prince to remove any copyrighted materials from the site. The site appears intact for now, but read on to learn about the interesting software the complaint has spawned -- perhaps this isn't what the WTO had in mind.

As Andrew Bichlbaum writes: "The WTO could well have stepped on a hornets' nest. To counter the attack, Gatt.org managers The Yes Men have released a piece of open-source 'parodyware' that will 'forever make this kind of censorship obsolete. ... Using this software, it takes five minutes to set up a convincing, personalized, evolving parody of the WTO.org website, or any other website of your choice ... All you need is a place to put it -- say, WTOO.org, WorldTradeOrg.com, whatever.'"

An unnamed correspondent writes: "The New York Times has a story about how an anti-trade group conned a trade conference into inviting a talk from a member using a page at www.gatt.org that looks like a legitimate WTO/GATT page with a bogus e-mail link to the WTO's director-general. It seems like domain hijacking to me, but the real WTO 'respects the nature of the Internet' and is playing it cool. Funny for those amused by pranks and hoaxes." (Yes, it's the New York Times, so no-login URLs will doubtless soon appear.) I must admit, this made me think about from which misleading domain names it would be coolest to receive such misdirected mail.