The World Trade Organisation is fuming over a
spoof Web site which copies the WTO's design but subverts the text
to support the aims of anti-global protesters.
The Web site,
at
http://www.gatt.org/
(referring to the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, WTO's
predecessor), has been up and running since September.
The
site is owned by Prince & Associates in Washington (according to
the whois) with the somewhat dodgy editorial contact of
jonathan@killyourtv.com.
Reuters reckons it is owned by
RTMark, a Net community whose aim is to "support the sabotage
(informative alteration) of corporate products, from dolls and
children's learning tools to electronic action games, by channelling
funds from investors to workers for specific projects grouped into
'mutual funds'." Its site is at
http://www.rtmark.com/.
In
other words, www.gatt.org is a classic example of culture-jamming,
the playful anti-capitalist tool of choice made famous by Naomi
Klein through her book
No
Logo.
Real WTO v. Surreal WTO The real
WTO site -
http://www.wto.org/ -
has posted the following headline on its site : "Fake WTO website
www.gatt.org deceitful and a nuisance to serious users".
Click this and you get this message: "The use of WTO
designs, logos and materials is strictly unauthorized. Worse, some
pages on the fake website could cause unsuspecting visitors to
reveal their email addresses and other information to the site's
operators. The fake site could also be picked up by search engines,
a nuisance for serious users looking for genuine information."
Looks like the real WTO is unamused, especially since the
surreal WTO Web site is a pretty professional job and subtle-ish in
its criticism of WTO. It also tackles nasty subjects like IBM/Nazis,
AIDS drugs and suspicious business habits.
In an excellent
article we've found on Infotoday.com titled
Better Read That
Again: Web Hoaxes and Misinformation, the author claims that a
significant number who viewed the site believed it to be the real
WTO site.
The WTO has been a target for the modern army of
anti-globalisation protestors, mostly famously in Seattle. A new WTO
meet is to take place in Qatar in the Persian Gulf. According to the
surreal WTO site, no-one wanted to host the event and Qatar is not
renowned for the gentle way it deals with protestors. ®
Related Links http://www.gatt.org/ http://www.wto.org/ Infotoday
article on Web hoaxes