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Dow vs. Parody
tres3 writes "I stumbled across this item on Wired about Verio cutting off The Thing's Internet access after seven years of service. It seems that The Yes Men have upset DOW Chemical with their parody press release concerning a poison gas leak at the Union Carbide plant (now owned by Dow) in Bhopal, India, in 1984, that killed thousands. It was posted by RTMark.com, one of hundreds of customers (mostly artists and political activists) of The Thing, but has gone missing following the DMCA claims by DOW. Some European sites are now hosting the site here and here (slightly different). What really sent me into orbit was Dow's response to all of this. While writing this submission I noticed that I have become a victim of The Yes Men and "Dow's" response is actually one of their parodies! :-) The story is still valid but the only thing I could find that really came from DOW was the DMCA complaint (pdf) to Verio. To add insult to injury (and death (pun intended)) Dow has committed a reprehensible act, even for corporate America, by suing the survivors for ten years of income ($10,000) for protesting Dow's failure to clean up the mess. Greenpeace has set up a site for you to protest this action." We did an earlier story on this.
What gets me here is that, get this, from Dow's own web site: Yep, that's right, sports fans. If you serve no commercial purpose, you have no right to exist. Such corporate arrogance is horrid. In true W-esque fashion, unless you consume, you're worthless. What do these guys want? Web sites for companies only? What a yawn that would be. Remember the article a while back, noting that the web has been growing in capabilities and innovation not by big corporate bozo's but by, yep, web porn. We may not like it, but those sleazy guys are the ones Dow can sell fiber in the first place!
Lastly, I am so pleased to have Dow no inform me as to the unproductive analysis and critique that Thing.net was providing. Before, I considered it merely satire or commentary. Now I see what it truly was . . . a communist plot to keep Dow from cleaning our water and preserving our precious bodily fluids. Thanks Dow!
...tizzyd
I happen to think that for the most part you have the right to put anything you want on your website. If you want to run a parody of Dow, the Pope or John Lennon, go for it.
However, with that being said. Your ISP doesn't necessarily have to put up with that. They also have a right to decide what content they will host on their servers. If they take offense at your postings or bow to pressure from a corporation or the government, that's well within their right.
They run a business. Just because you want to take a risk with something you choose to write. Doesn't meant they have to take the risk with you.
In the case of the "Yes Men" the attempt seems to be using parody and satire to effect social activism. This, in itself, is not a bad or uncommon thing. However, if one is going to do this, one has to make sure the creation is actually satire.
The main tool that they use on the web appears to be 'Reamweaver', a tool to copy a website and modify in small ways. From the Reamweaver website we have .
Reamweaver has everything you need to instantly "funhouse-mirror" anyone's website, copying the real-time "look and feel" but letting you change any words, images, etc. that you choose.
and
Use Reamweaver for fun, or, if you like, for lots of fun... by obtaining speaking opportunities on behalf of your adopted organization. Here's how to that:
1. (Optional) Register a domain not too different from your target's domain - e.g. we-forum.org, world-economic-forum.com, wtoo.org, rncommittee.org
2. Put Reamweaver on your domain.
3. Tell search engines about your domain.
4. When invitations arrive, accept them!
This does not seem to a tool conducive to satire. This appears to be a tool that is to be used to misrepresent, decieve, and ultimately allow an individual to go into the community as the perceived representative of the company under attack.
Social activism is good. Trying to create a better world is good. However, when you invite a person from Dow Chemical to your office, one would expect that the person is actually from dow chemical. Furthermore, I am not sure I would equate the Reamweaver technique to a person who registers a slightly misspelled domain name and then puts up tons of pop ups and installs viruses when some unsuspecting visitors accidently hits the site.
I understand that the intention of the Yes Men are probably just. I understand that they are probably good people,. However, copying someone else's website and representing it as your own is not good. It is one thing to rip other artists CDs for personal use. It is another thing to rip those CDs and then sell the copies. It is yet another thing to rip those CDs change a few seconds, and then represent the tracks as your own. What they are doing might be peaceful disobendience. It does not seem to be satire
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Forcing a number of (presumably) individuals with something to say off the web with the stroke of a pen doesn't seem totalitarian to you? Due process isn't even an option due to the cost.
the Virgina Colony. The Hudson Bay Trading Company. The East Indian Trading Company. Etc.
The framers of the Constitution knew damn well what corporations "would become." They had *already* become them.
Provisions were made in the Constitution and legislative law to deal with this issue. Great essays were written on the subject by learned minds such as Thomas Jefferson. 50 years later such matters were still uppermost in the minds of America's great social philosopher's, such as Thoreau.
Our forefather's weren't idiots, weren't ignorant and weren't "cavemen." Their world was, in many respects, "more like our own than our own."
Stock markets, insurance companies, leveraged buyouts and hostile takeovers, all done on a global scale, were already a century or more of old news before the first shot of the revolution was fired on the green at Lexington.
For God's sake man, Jefferson and Adams were *lawyers* and had actually participated in such actions. They learned their loathing of them first hand.
So what went wrong?
Well, let me put it to you this way. Do *you* still do business with these large corporations, giving them the money and power to buy law? Traded a little freedom for luxury items and security maybe?
I forget who it was, but an ancient historian, commenting on the aculturation of the Britons under Roman rule, wrote something along these lines:
"And so, the gullible natives, eventually came to call their slavery "culture.""
Ring any bells close to home?
That's the problem with republicanism, don't you see. The problems start at the top, more often than not, but *responsibiltiy* always, always, alway, falls to the bottom.
People don't want responsibility. They want a Big Mac while bopping to the latest Brittney Spears "tune."
KFG
Isn't it James Parker's actions that put him and his family (THINK OF THE CHILDREN!) at risk?
What you are suggesting is - effectively - that those with power and influence must be protected from the consequences of their own actions. Does anything strike you as wrong with that?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Half of the "informative" posts on this article cite anti-Dow hoaxes as "facts," and use them to justify their opposition to Dow's attempts to suppress hoaxes. If that doesn't prove libel, I don't know what could.
(Having said that, I can't see what any of this has to do with the DMCA. But hey, libel cases are expensive. Why bother suing, when you can just say the magic words and make any website dissappear?)
MSK