DOW Threatens Verio, Verio silences activists

An anonymous reader writes "A parody site hosted on Thing.net upset DOW Chemical. DOW is now using the DMCA to threaten Verio, Thing.net's provider, into silencing the activists. Read press release for more details."

Comments

Re:Does this surprise anyone

[GigsVT]

Well, you just proved Dow's case. You were misled by the parody site, beliveing it to be an official statement of Dow Chemical. That was Dow's whole complaint in the first place.

DMCA? HUH?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Can anybody dig up independent confirmation that this has anything at all to do with the DMCA? The RTMark press release mentions it in the context, "Dow was not amused, and sent a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint to Verio, which immediately cut Thing.net off the internet for fifteen hours." But that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

More importantly, the New York Times article on the subject (here), makes no reference at all to the DMCA, instead saying that "Dow's lawyers contacted Verio to complain that the site infringed on its trademarks, among other sins." If the DMCA were involved, I'm reasonably sure that the NYT article would mention it.

If I had to take a wild-ass guess, I'd say that what probably happened is that Dow simply told Verio that they want the offending web site shut down, and possibly that the site was making unauthorized use of their trademarks or some such. Verio said to themselves, "On the one hand we have a bunch of activists who pay their bills, but who aren't a significant source of revenue for us. On the other hand we have Dow Chemical, a gigantic multinational corporation that could throw us a lot of money if we have a good relationship with them." And they made a business decision.

If that's what happened, I really don't see a reason to get all up-in-arms. Yes, this is an inconvenience for the activists. But, if it happened the way I'm guessing, nobody did anything illegal, or even unethical.

(Incidentally, the NYT article also says, "When [Staehle] called Verio to ask why his entire network had been unplugged instead of the sole offending site, he said, a Verio lawyer told him that the Thing had violated its policies repeatedly and that its contract would be terminated."

The article goes on: "Verio had shut down part of the Thing once before. In 1999 the online toy retailer eToys.com asked a California court to stop an online arts group from using its longtime Web address etoy.com. The Electronic Disturbance Theater, a Thing client, staged a virtual protest by overloading the retailer's site with traffic during the holiday season. Verio blocked access to one of the Thing's computers until the protest site's owners agreed to take it offline."

Sounds like Thing.net isn't merely the mild-mannered parody site it claims to be. Parody is one thing. Actual disruption is something else altogether. Though they're not commenting, maybe Verio had some really good reasons to do what they did.)

Re:DMCA? HUH?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Um. Verio is a private company. (Well, they're publicly traded, but they're owned by private individuals. You know what I mean.) They are entitled to do business with whomever they please.

Nobody went to these guys and said, "Hey, you can't say that." (At least, not yet.) Rather, Verio said, "If you wanna do that, get your connectivity somewhere else."

Verio is completely and totally free to do that. Just because these guys have a Constitutionally protected right to say (nearly) whatever they want doesn't mean that any particular provider of services is obligated to do business with them.

Let me give you a real-world for-instance. About six years ago I was working as a pre-sales engineer for a fairly major computer company. (You've heard of them.) Somebody came to us and said, "I want to build a web site, and I need a very powerful server to do it." I, along with the sales rep, talked to him, and he said, after some probing, that he wanted to get into the "adult entertainment" business. Basically he wanted to build a porn site.

That's entirely legal. Nothing wrong with it, as far as the law is concerned. But the sales rep I was working with said to me, after the meeting, that he simply didn't want to do business with this guy. He had an opinion on porn-- not necessarily the same as mine, but I respected it-- and he acted accordingly. We never called the guy back, and we never returned any of his subsequent calls.

Life is full of little decisions like that. Ours was made on moral grounds; the sales rep I was working with had a moral objection to porn. Verio's decision was probably made purely on business grounds. Everybody-- individual and corporation alike-- is entitled to make those decisions for themselves.

I stand by my statement that what Verio did was neither illegal, unethical, nor wrong.

Say you have a mindspring.com account. On your personal web page, you post that 'bill gates of borg' icon that he's reputed to hate so much. He causes a letter to be sent to mindspring, and your account is revoked, using the same logic you just called 'a business decision'.

Get an account with another service provider. If you can't find one that will give you an account, take out a bank loan and start your own. If you can't start your own, then get your message out through another medium. Public access television. Letters to the editor. Flyers under windshield wipers. Whatever.

Freedom of speech is not being affected here in any way.

Not held accountable, they could kill anyone they wished without repurcussions. This is just a modern day version of that.

Exaggerate much? Nobody has killed anybody. Let's get this back down to earth, okay?