From: "RTMark Bulletin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, November 15, 2001 11:42 PM Subject: Site-stealing program answers WTO crackdown
WTO ATTACKS WEBSITE, REAPS HUNDREDS OF OTHERS As it met in Qatar, WTO attempt to shut down critical website; group counters with site-stealing software Contacts: Jonathan Prince (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) Jean-Guy Carrier (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) Verio (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) The Yes Men (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) Software: http://www.theyesmen.org/yesiwill/ http://yesiwill.plagiarist.org/ http://detritus.net/projects/yesiwill/ Last Friday, Jonathan Prince, who owns the Gatt.org domain, received a call from Verio, Gatt.org's upstream provider. The World Trade Organization had just asked Verio to shut down the domain for copyright violations, and Verio told Prince that it would do just that if nothing was changed by November 13--the last day of the Doha Ministerial, as it would happen. An official email followed (http://rtmark.com/verio.html). (Last-minute update: Verio's shutdown is currently expected sometime after noon EST today--watch software sites above for updates.) "It's the war," says Prince. "Bush has popularized zero-tolerance, and it's open season on dissent of any kind. So just when they're meeting in Doha, the WTO has decided to divert attention from its problems by attacking a website." "Or maybe they really do want to make it so that protest has as little place on the web as it does in Qatar," adds Prince. Oddly enough, the WTO has been aware of the parody website since before the 1999 Ministerial in Seattle, when it issued a public statement claiming the site misled visitors (http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/pres99_e/pr151_e.htm). Two weeks ago, the WTO issued another release (http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news01_e/gattdotorg_e.htm), this one claiming that Gatt.org was harvesting e-mails, an allegation reprinted as fact in some newspaper articles (http://rtmark.com/pressgat.html). While it may be puzzling why the WTO chose to issue a second press release about Gatt.org two years later, it is even more surprising that they are now taking concrete steps to stop the critical site. In statements made just last week to the French daily newspaper Liberation and to others, WTO spokesperson Jean-Guy Carrier stated that "It's not our job to use legal means against people. We appreciate dissidence and honest criticism." Why the sudden change of attitude? "They got nervous, it's only human," said Elaine Peabody, a spokesperson for The Yes Men (http://www.theyesmen.org), the group that maintains the Gatt.org website. "The WTO remembers what happened the last time they had one of these meetings [in Seattle]. They felt like tackling something they knew they could handle--and a satirical website fit the bill." BATTLE HEATS UP But the WTO could well have stepped on a hornets' nest. To counter the attack, the Yes Men have are releasing today a piece of open-source "parodyware" (http://theyesmen.org/yesiwill/) that will "forever make this kind of censorship obsolete," according to Peabody. "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," said Peabody, who helped to develop the program. "All you need is a place to put it--say, WTOO.org, WorldTradeOrg.com, whatever." The software, called "Yes I Will!", automatically duplicates websites as needed, changing words and images as the user desires--with results that can be very telling. The WTO site can be made to speak of "consumers" and "companies" rather than "citizens" and "countries." Unleashed on the CNN.com website, the software can simplify the reporting even further by referring to Bush as "Leader," and the war in Afghanistan as one between "Good" and "Evil"; a Time.com article linked from the site then discusses "The Poor Way of War". The parody site updates itself automatically as the target website changes. "The idea is to insure that even if they shut down our website, hundreds of others will continue our work of translation," said Peabody. "The more they try to fight it, the funnier they're going to look." "Such heavy-handed tactics work as poorly in cyberspace as they do on the geopolitical stage," said Cooper Kharms, another Yes Man. "At least Gatt.org was transparent: you could tell what it was by reading a line or two. These other sites may not be so obvious." Prince thinks the software, while interesting, is not a solution. "With their attack on Gatt.org, an unelected, unaccountable organization is running roughshod over the USA Bill of Rights," said Prince. "But every day they violate people's rights in the Third World, or enable corporations to do so. This time it's just closer to home." For more on the legal basis of the WTO's attack, see also http://dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=15296&group=webcast RTMark's primary goal is to publicize corporate subversion of the democratic process. To this end it acts as a clearinghouse for anti-corporate projects. # 30 # -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
