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Dow Chemical Wipes Parody Website Over
Bhopal 'Truths' December 20, 2002  It looked like any other
corporate website, and read like any other press
release. But a couple of sentences in, the Dow Chemical Company
explains why it refuses to clean up the city of Bhopal, India, after the
lethal gas leak that killed
20,000 people in 1984.Dow President and CEO Michael D. Parker is quoted as saying: "We have responsibilities to our shareholders and our industry colleagues that make action on Bhopal impossible." The cold, unsympathetic choice of words provoked hundreds of angry e-mails. The press release was the work of The Yes Men, a group of activists who have posted similar critiques in the past. Satire has angered corporations and politicians, most noticeably when rtmark.com registered the domain name GWBush.com in 1999, prompting the then-presidential candidate to mutter "There ought to be limits to freedom." One of these "limits" is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), originally intended to allow the entertainment industry to retain its rights over web content. The DMCA has also been used as a tool to counter satire websites. Dow claimed that the satire site breached several copyrights under the DMCA, and forced the internet provider to take it offline. Aiming for a funny twist, the Yes Men registered the site in the name of James Parker, son of Dow's President and CEO. This allowed Dow to take control of the site and kill it. Greenpeace has since come up with its own parody site, which looks eerily similar to Dow's official web presence. The blame on such corporate blunders usually falls on Public Relations companies. But Dow's PR advisor on Bhopal, Burston-Marsteller, is waging its own battle after a parody site took control of their domain name. - Mario Canseco Recent News Dow Parody Website Pulled No Clowns Allowed Not On Your McLife Obese kids take McDonald's to court Community station Star Ray TV fights for survival Other News |