Search engines are directing visitors to a subtle parody of the Web site of the World Trade Organization (WTO) instead of the real thing--and the WTO is powerless to stop it, the Geneva-based body warned Wednesday in an e-mail to members of its mailing list.

The parody site, which has been around since late 1999, has in the last week copied the WTO's own site design and begun harvesting the e-mail addresses of visitors without their permission, WTO spokesman Jean-Guy Carrier says. This could enable the hoaxers to send visitors information purporting to be from the WTO, he says.

However, the "harvesting" of e-mails seems hardly discreet. The e-mail collection function seems to be tied to the parody site's search feature. An attempt on Wednesday to use the search feature led the fake site to attempt to launch the user's e-mail client using a simple "mailto:" link to send a message to the site's creators, but the link appeared to be broken.

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Another attempt on Wednesday triggered a pop-up message warning the user: "This form is being submitted using e-mail. Submitting this form will reveal your e-mail address to the recipient, and will send the form data without encrypting it for privacy." The user then was given the option to either cancel or continue with the search request.

The parody (it's www.gatt.org address is a reference to the WTO's predecessor, the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs) mimics almost every detail of the WTO's own site--right down to the front-page warning about a fake site masquerading as the real thing. The hoaxers have subverted this to warn visitors of the imagined dangers of a third site, set up by the WTO to promote an upcoming conference.

The parody site contains so many references to the WTO that search engines are directing people to it instead of the real thing. A search of Altavista using the keyword "WTO" returns the parody site in fifth place.

The hoaxers have made small alterations to the text on their copy of the site. "Secretary General Mike Moore" in the original text of a press release becomes "Chief Executive Officer Mike Moore" on the fake site, and "a draft Ministerial Declaration on intellectual property and access to medicines/public health" is transformed into "a draft Ministerial Declaration on Intello-Corporate Ownership and access to medicines/consumer work-fitness."

While the WTO encourages criticism of its role, there are limits to the forms this should take, Carrier says.

"It's a serious argument to make for or against the WTO, and we encourage that," he says, but "not masquerading as the WTO. It's very deceptive, it literally steals the look of the WTO," he says.

The WTO is powerless to put an end to the masquerade until a new procedure for domain name arbitration is introduced by the World Intellectual Property Organization allowing it to take control of the domain www.gatt.org, Carrier says.

Meanwhile it would be possible to sue the creators of the parody site for theft of the WTO's graphical identity, but "We are not in the business of suing people," he says. "First of all its very expensive, it takes a lot of time, and we are not that kind of organization. It's not a course that interests the WTO at all."

The domain name www.gatt.org is registered to Jonathan Prince of Washington, D.C., operator of the Web site killyourtv.com, but another group calling themselves The Yes Men claim responsibility for the WTO parody.

A request for comment made via e-mail by the IDG News Service to a The Yes Men e-mail address found on the group's site yielded an e-mail response from someone claiming to be a group representative.

"We are not harvesting e-mail addresses--it's just not so easy, if you're dumb like us, to write a search script, see? We don't know how they do it, so we can't rip that off. It's easier to just put a mailto: in there."

The representative, signing himself Andrew Bichlbaum, wrote that e-mail messages sent to searchdesire@gatt.org by the search form would receive an automated reply.

On their Web site, The Yes Men claim that the parody has even resulted in them being invited to speak at a conference on the WTO's behalf. They say they sent a speaker named Andreas Bichlbauer to a conference in Salzburg in October 2000.

Martyn Williams in Tokyo contributed to this report.