Hmm, how to summarize this twisted, yet brilliant story...
Some subversive activist types bought the domain name dow-chemical.com. On December 3, dow-chemical.com sent out an email press release masquerading as the real Dow Chemical company. The press release was about the Bhopal disaster of 1984, an industrial accident at a Union Carbide factory which killed tens of thousands of Indians. Dow now owns Union Carbide, and December 3 was the anniversary of the accident (I think you can see where this is going...).
The press release more or less said "We, the Dow Chemical company, probably did cause the massive death of the Bhopal disaster, but we can't acknowledge that we did because it would cost us money, and our shareholders wouldn't like that" (go read the full version, it's great). And if anyone wanted to double check the dow-chemical.com report by going to the corresponding web address, they would find a remarkably sly parody Dow site which looks almost exactly like the Dow site. Apparently, hundreds were taken in by the hoax, and wrote back with outrage.
The real Dow was obviously, um, "displeased" with these events, and was able to shut down the site with relatively little fuss (it's actually pretty funny. In order to maximize realism [and irony], the pranksters registered dow-chemical.com under the name of the son of Dow's CEO, complete with his real home address. So when Dow went to shut down the site, they found that they already legally owned it, and just changed all the content). But people are mirroring the site all around the world, including most appropriately DowEthics.com.
In related news, a different fellow set up a parody website of Burson-Marsteller, the PR company that helped Union Carbide/Dow try to spin its way out of responsibility for Bhopal (site has since been changed). B-M promptly sued the college freshman, who wrote up a lengthy, satirical legal brief in response. I'm reading through it now, and it's pretty funny.
To read all about it, check some of these reports:
Excellent work amigos, excellent work.
Posted by Jake at December 13, 2002 09:56 PMIn the process of shutting down the original parody site, dow-chemical.com, Dow's lawyers strongarmed upstream provider Verio into taking down not just dow-chemical.com, but the entire thing.net (hosts of rtMark and dozens of unrelated websites) with nothing more than a DMCA. So while they were pretty clever in realising they could seize the domain via Parker jr., it was only after they'd bullied an internet provider into closing down a neighborhood because they didn't like what was going on in one house.
Is it my imagingation, or is it getting chilly around here?
Full story at:
http://theregister.co.uk/content/6/28573.html
Posted by: Subcomandante Biff on December 16, 2002 11:18 PM