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| Reply to: anon-7363701@craigslist.org Date: Fri Dec 13 12:42:58 2002 DOW BURSON-MARSTELLER CLAMP DOWN ON FAKE WEBSITES But companies find it harder to stifle criticism Two giant companies are struggling to shut down parody websites that portray them unfavorably interrupting internet use for thousands in the process and filing a lawsuit that pits the formidable legal department of PR giant Burson-Marsteller against a freshman at Hampshire College. The activists behind the fake corporate websites have fought back and obtained substantial publicity in the process. Fake websites have been used by activists before but Dow-Chemical.com and BursonMarsteller.com represent the first time that such websites have successfully been used to publicize abuses by specific corporations. A December 3 press release originating from one of the fake sites Dow-Chemical.com explained the "real" reasons that Dow could not take responsibility for the Bhopal catastrophe which has resulted in an estimated 20 000 deaths over the years http://www.theyesmen.org/dow/#release "Our prime responsibilities are to the people who own Dow shares and to the industry as a whole " the release stated. "We cannot do anything for the people of Bhopal." The fake site immediately received thousands of outraged e-mails http://www.dowethics.com/r/about/corp/email.htm Within hours the real Dow sent a legal threat to Dow-Chemical.com's upstream provider Verio prompting Verio to shut down the fake Dow's ISP for nearly a day closing down hundreds of unrelated websites and bulletin boards in the process. The fake Dow website quickly resurfaced at an ISP in Australia. http://theyesmen.org/dow/#threat In a comical anticlimax Dow then used a little-known domain-name rule to take possession of Dow-Chemical.com http://theyesmen.org/dow/#story another move which backfired when amused journalists wrote articles in newspapers from The New York Times to The Hindu in India http://theyesmen.org/dow/#links and sympathetic activists responded by cloning and mirroring the site at many locations including http://www.dowethics.com/ http://www.dowindia.com/ and with a twist http://www.mad-dow-disease.com/. Dow continues to play whack-a-mole with these sites at least one ISP has received veiled threats. Burson-Marsteller the public relations company that helped to "spin" Bhopal has meanwhile sued college student Paul Hardwin mailto:phardwin@yurt.org for putting up a fake Burson-Marsteller site http://www.bursonmarsteller.com/ which recounted how the PR giant helped to downplay the Bhopal disaster. Burson-Marsteller's suit against Hardwin will be heard next week by the World Intellectual Property Organization http://reamweaver.com/bmwipo/wipo.html Hardwin unable to afford a lawyer has composed a dryly humorous 57-page rebuttal to the PR giant's lawsuit http://www.reamweaver.com/bmwipo/response.htm#reality On page 7 for instance the student notes that Burson-Marsteller's "stated goal is 'to ensure that the perceptions which surround our clients and influence their stakeholders are consistent with reality.'" Hardwin goes on to assert that his satirical domain is doing precisely that by publicizing "academic and journalistic materials about Burson-Marsteller's involvement with and relationship to for example Philip Morris and the National Smoker's Alliance a consumer front group designed to create the appearance of public support for big-tobacco policies; Union Carbide and the deaths of 20 000 people following the 1984 disaster in Bhopal; and political regimes such as that of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and more recently Saudi Arabia following the events of September 11; and to properly associate them with the relevant Trademark so that they may be understood accordingly by Internet users." In response to the suit's claim that "a substantial degree of goodwill is associated with [the Burson-Marstellar Trademark]" Hardwin offers much "evidence to the contrary" including "a newspaper headline in which the Complainant is characterized as 'the Devil.'" The primary goal of RTMark http://rtmark.com/ is to publicize corporate subversion of the democratic process. Just like other corporations it achieves its aims by any and all means at its disposal. RTMark has previously helped to publicize websites against political parties http://rtmark.com/othersites.html#fpo political figures http://www.rtmark.com/bush.html and entities like the World Trade Organization http://www.gatt.org/ and the World Economic Forum http://www.world-economic-forum.com./ # 30 # it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests this is in or around dowethics.com |
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