My, how the Digital Millennium Copyright Act,
the DMCA, is turning out to be a fine and flexible friend. It
extends across continents. It reaches into computers in Norway and
Russia, which when we last looked, were sovereign nations and not US
States.
A fortnight ago it was used to protect price lists,
claiming
that these are And now it has been turned onto a parody site.
Last week, the
Yes-Men created a replica of Dow Chemical's website
at the domain www.dow-chemical.com.
"Dow is responsible for
the birth of the modern environmental movement," begins the The
Yes-Men's sophisticated detournment of the official site. The group
also published press releases entitled "Responsible Care: Aiming For
Zero Responsibility" and a canned quote from 'a Dow Spokesperson'
who 'explains': "We understand the anger and hurt. But Dow does not
and cannot acknowledge responsibility. If we did, we [would] be
required to expend many billions of dollars on cleanup and
compensation."
Dow acquired Union Carbide and inherited the
responsibility for the horrific Bhopal disaster, which has so far
killed 20,000 Indians after a leak of the unstable chemical methyl
isocyanate.
Union Carbide workers were unscathed: management
told its own staff to run in the opposite direction, while at first
denying, then downplaying down the seriousness of the leak to the
local community. Carbide's settlement contrasts with Exxon's
compensation after the Alaskan oil spill, and shows how cheaply it
valued human life. The cost to Exxon of cleaning each photogenic
seal was $944, while each victim of the methyl isocyanate spill
received an average of $500. Dow insists it's all water under the
bridge.The group used the name of Dow Chemical CEO Michael Parker's
son James. When Dow discovered the prank, they served the hoster
Verio with a letter from their attorneys Howard, Philips and
Andersen, a Utah-based law firm.
Copyright Cocktail
Which is where it gets very interesting.
The
letter[78kb
PDF] spearheads a collection of copyright and trademark claims with
the DMCA boilerplate.
Many of the claims are arguable, and
on some grounds precedent favors the litigant. But the use of the
DMCA obliges the recipient to take immediate action. And in the
current frosty climate, that is intimidation enough:
"The
carrier must reply. It can state that to best of its knowledge this
does not violate what they're citing, but it has to be in good
faith, or the carrier will lose his exemption status," says Robin
Bandy who runs a co-operative ISP in Oakland, CA.
"The
aggrieved party is claiming that this violates copyright - but
they're making a legal assertion. And that's bullshit half of the
time, as they've got programs generating these letters."
Bandy advises other ISPs to check that these robo-generated
emails have been cryptographically signed and come from the
aggrieved party, or someone verifiably associated with them.
"In the one case we received a complaint, all they cited was
a file name. There was no assertion of the contents of the file
therefore they were not even making a valid assertion of copyright.
It came from a system that had no traceable relationship to the MPAA
and no reasonable network admin would assume that it did."
Parodies represent a legal minefield. Parody is interpreted
as commentary, but passing-off with the intention to deceive is not
likely to find favor with the court.
Bandy points out that
Dow Chemical's complaint that the Yes Men provided bogus information
on its whois entry does not affect the ISP. The contract between a
domain name holder and the registrar "is not Verio's problem", he
points out.
Verio ignored a request by the World Trade
Organization after one of The Yes Men registered an information site
at gatt.org, which has served as the springboard for a series of
sophisticated
infiltrations, keynoting unsuspecting conferences and even a
CNBC finance
broadcast.
Dow Chemical had not responded to a request
for comment at publication time. ®
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