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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.
That was the most incomprehensible story summary I've ever read.
There was the group, and we'll give them some forgettable name, and they did some stuff, and DMCA, and ow what hit me, the end.
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
The entire point of the Yes Man's actions has always been that it is confused with the real thing. They've done a couple things that make you really think about it, and they could only do it the way they did.
If corporations have free speech, why can't the Yes Men? Honestly, what's the worse crime - poisoning a couple thousand people, or impersonating someone who isn't even a person?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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
The news that Dow is suing the Bopahl survivors to try to silence their protests over Dows failure to clean up is news to me.
The Union Carbide disaster at Bopahl was due to sheer negligence and greed. Dow still refuses to clean up the site of the disaster and has yet to pay compensation to most of the victims.
Perhaps if students stopped and considered the wisdom of joining a company that could kill 800 people with its negligence and not care a damn Dow might have a lot more difficulty recruiting on campus.
If you are choosing an employer in the chemical business their safety record should be your first concern. If you work for a company like Dow that is saying that they can kill 800 people, create pollution that will kill even more and they just don't care you are quite litteraly putting your own life on the line for their corporate profits.
The same goes for communities that have Dow installations near them, or planned to be built near them. Make sure that your representatives are aware that Dow cannoit be trusted.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
...that bit about DOW suing the families that were destroyed/hurt by their Bhopal disaster?
A bunch of women marched on DOW HQ in India, delivering some of the contanimated soil and water from Bhopal. The protest lasted two peaceful hours. A single DOW employee greeted them.
DOW is now suing them for the equivalent of US$10K -- a helluva lot of money, particularly in India -- for "lost wages" because of the "work disruption."
Disgusting. First they slaughter hundreds and thousands of employees and families through cost-cutting, undertraining, and poor plant maintenance; then they refuse to clean up the mess; then they sue the very people who were hurt by the accident.
Sometimes it would be e'er so nice to be able to punish CEOs as if they'd committed the crimes themselves.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
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.
Far be it from me to think walking away from an ecological disaster is a good thing, but from what I can see, according to both the US and Indian courts, Dow has done everything they said they'd do relating to this, and everything the lawsuits against them said they had to do.
The paid ~$500 million to the Indian Government for ongoing cleanup, to create a medical program for anyone who lives in the affected area, and to cover things like ongoing monitoring of the chemical creep. They also paid out an additional ~$20 million to build and maintain a new hospital specifically in the area to handle any related medical claims. They also added an additional ~$55 million dollars to the hospital support funds when they bought out UCI.
They actually have paid out far more than the lawsuits against them in US courts originally stated (where the Indian government received a ruling for ~$350 million). I think all told that Dow has produced over $600 million for cleanup and ongoing support and healthcare.
All in all, most of the cleanup, treatment and monitoring of chemical contamination in the area is supposed to be handled by the Indian Government, not by Dow directly. If those hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent somewhere else, are people asking the government (or whoever they've appointed to handle the situation) where it's going?
This is especially apt as many of the court cases have focused on Dow's liability, and the majority still uphold the 'reasonable doubt' that Dow was criminally liable (which is why they still haven't tried very hard to get Warren Anderson shipped their for homicide charges), and even some went so far as to support the findings of 3rd party teams that the chemical release was a result of a deliberate act by a disgruntled worker.
Now, it's been 18 years, and I don't personally have any knowledge of anything to do with Bhopal beyond what I can read. However, based on that information, I think a lot of this is the result of PR by Greenpeace and others who conveniently ignore the things that Dow *has* done.
As an aside, I don't work for Dow, have any relatives who work for Dow, or own stock in Dow (unless one of those pathetic 401k funds that are basically WORTHLESS right now has shares, in which case I don't give a damn). I just see a lot of knee-jerk reactions and wonder if a lot of people who 'know about bhopal' have ever done more than read 1 website or less? Could Dow be a tool of Satan designed to make life on Earth a living hell, run completely by unfeeling demons who want to kill and maim innocent people? Sure. Is it probably that black-and-white? I really doubt it. It's only fair to research both sides.
To be defamation, or more precisely, libel Dow would have to show false facts. What are the false facts that have been published?
Second it is not false representation. Parody by nature requires one to create an image of what you are making parody of. To be fraud, they must be attempting to get something of value.
Asking a court to restrict someone's right or penalize someone for their speech is an infringment of the first amendment. Using the threat os this should also be considered the same.
Fight Spammers!
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
Whether this was parody or fraud should have been a matter for the courts to decide. Thanks to the provisions of the DMCA, they didn't have to get involved for censorship to occur. This is what is meant by the term, "Chilling Effect." As for defamation, printing negative information is not libel if it is true, no matter how negative. A biting satire of the company that continues to ignore their responsibility for Bhopal, and is even suing Bhopal survivors, that appears at first glance to be Dow's real website is a valid exercise in free speech in my opinion. I think that the Supreme Court would eventually agree if they heard this case, as it did in the Larry Flynt vs. Jerry Falwell case. Dow deserves to have the screws put to them. I support the Yes Men, and Greenpeace for doing just that. Dow could have avoided a lot of negative publicity by ignoring the yes men. Now, more people than ever before are learning that Dow is Union Carbide, and people are still dying every day because of their irresponsibility.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
American politicians today who scream about Iraq gassing its own people should take a look at this.
A negligent American company releases poisonous gases in a third-world country and kills or injures tens of thousands of (dark-skinned) people. You would think the world would be outraged.
Your comparison between Carbide and Hussein is morally bankrupt.
There is a very large difference between the negligence (if there was actual negligence) of Carbide and murderous intent of Saddam Hussein to commit genocide. Carbide certainly did NOT go out and say 'let's kill off a bunch of folks using MIC to cut down on these local protests'.
There is also the fact that the UCarbide plant in West Va, had problems with MIC accidents as well. The concept that Carbide was doing anything in India because it felt that Indians were less worthy than Americans is speculative, to say the least.
UC does bear a great deal of responsibility for what happened in India. But it was not genocide, murder, chemical warefare or any other such act. It was an unintended industrial accident of unprecidented impact.
Maybe UC was negligent in it's operations of the Bhopal plant - but the fact is that best practice standards then and now are two very different things. And the fact is that ultimately that local management of a chemical plant is in the best position to address safety issues. That local management must share a great deal of the responsibility for what happened, including ultimately the leaky valve that was the immediate cause of the accident. That local management was Indian.