Lynne Elvins

Dow Targeted over Bhopal via Fake Website

The very qualities that make the internet a vehicle of business opportunity – such as access to global audiences - can also make it a threat. Protesters who wish to put the spotlight onto bad practice have just the same internet technologies at their fingertips as businesses, and in some cases deploy them in a far more effective way.

Dow has become the most recent company to get adverse attention over a ‘spoof website’ that takes issue with its merger with Union Carbide and their involvement in the Bhopal incident, where a gas tank suffered a catastrophic leak and many of Bhopal’s 900,000 residents were exposed to the highly toxic methyl isocyanate. Up to 8,000 people are said to have been killed on the night of the incident, and anywhere from 100,000 to 200,000 still suffer from serious, potentially deadly, health effects such as cancer and respiratory problems.

What was possibly the world’s most horrific industrial disaster resulted in a massive lawsuit against Union Carbide which was ordered to pay $470 million into a victims’ fund set up by the Indian government. However, Bhopal victims claim the fund is a "pittance."

When Dow merged with Union Carbide in 2001 many people felt it also took on the company’s perceived neglect of the Bhopal situation – if not legally then morally. Activists protested the presence of Dow at the World Summit and have criticized the UN for helping Dow to "build its image as a caring company." Other protests continue (see page 16).

December 3rd 2002 was the 18th anniversary of the Bhopal incident and the Yes Men – a group of internet activists - decided to mark the occasion. The Yes Men posed as Dow representatives and sent out a fake e-mail press-release ‘explaining’ Dow’s position on Bhopal.

It quoted a Dow spokesperson as saying, "We understand the anger and hurt. But Dow does not and cannot acknowledge responsibility. If we did, not only would we be required to expend many billions of dollars on cleanup and compensation - much worse, the public could then point to Dow as a precedent in other big cases."

The well written fake release was immediately forwarded around the world, and the Yes Men put up a fake, but convincing, website at www.dow-chemical.com. The website questioned Dow’s whole stance on corporate responsibility in a writing style that showed a level of detail not often seen in parody websites and a design style that was almost indistinguishable from Dow’s official website. The parody website said: "We applaud the wisdom of the DJSI (Dow Jones Sustainability Index) in ignoring what some call potential liabilities like the Bhopal disaster, Union Carbides’ asbestos liabilities, and other issues which less visionary indices might have called negatives.

We’re proud of the role that our public relations department has played in ensuring these issues take their proper place outside any assessment of our corporate value."

The stunt was reported in national and international news, and the Dow parody site got hundreds of thousands of hits.

Within a day of the release, Dow threatened the http://www.dow-chemical.com/ host company, Verio. Under the rules of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Yes Men’s site was accused of violating Dow’s copyright in web design, images and text. Due to a connected prank, where the Yes Men bought the domain using address details of the son of former Dow President Michael Parker, Dow was able to reclaim the domain - http://www.dow-chemical.com/ now redirects to Dow’s official site. However, the parody site is still available in several other locations at the time of writing, including: http://www.dowinfo.com/.

So, the Yes Men lost the ‘squatted’ domain, but the website is still available at other locations. Most importantly for the Yes Men, they received huge attention for their parody and therefore thousands more people heard about Bhopal and the debateable conduct of Dow. Yes Men conspirator, Mike Bonanno, said in one article "our ultimate goal of bringing attention to Bhopal is accomplished!"

Dow followed the traditional corporate response to criticism of this nature. Whilst shutting down websites and leaning on hosting companies to remove content may be correct in the eyes of the law, the reputation impacts can backfire for companies. If businesses want to avoid criticism of this nature then ultimately the best policy is not to act in ways which bring such scrutiny. To take this path, however, companies will have to consider engaging in public dialogue over their responsibilities rather than gaining publicity for trying to gag their opponents. 

Lynne Elvins is editor of SustainAbility Radar and works freelance on ethical internet issues. elvins@a420.com.

This article originally appeared in the February 2003 edition of SustainAbility Radar. Annual subscriptions and back issues are available online