Anti-corporate pranksters The Yes Men sent out a
fake press release "from" Dow Chemical on December 3,
the anniversary of the Bhopal disaster. After
mercilessly imitating the bland tone of "real" press
releases denying corporate responsibility for
environmental atrocities, the press release gave out the
URL of the company web site: Dow-Chemical.com.
But that site was a parody, also created by The Yes Men
in the same style; the real Dow homepage is at Dow.com.
Dow's legal team sprang into action, making the usual
DMCA, cybersquatting, and trademark claims in a cease-and-desist
letter sent out the same day. Verio, The Yes Men's
upstream ISP, promptly rolled over and took down not
only Dow-Chemical.com, but all of Thing.net,
the larger activist network on which Dow-Chemical.com
had been hosted. This action, by the way, went well
beyond what the cease-and-desist letter asked it to do.
But the story doesn't stop there. Dow-Chemical.com
won't be coming back, even at another ISP. You see, when
The Yes Men registered the domain, they thought it would
be funny to use the name and address of the son of the
CEO of Dow. A few days later, he got in touch with the
registrar and took control of the domain. After all, it
was registered to him. Whoops.
Full story and links to other coverage here at The Yes
Men's site.
