| November 15 - Last
Friday, Jonathan Prince, who owns the Gatt.org domain, received a call
from Verio, Gatt.org's upstream provider. The
World Trade Organization had just asked Verio to shut down the
domain for copyright violations, and Verio told Prince that it would
do just that if nothing was changed by November 13--the last day of
the Doha Ministerial, as it would happen. An official email followed
(http://rtmark.com/verio.html).
(Last-minute
update: Verio's shutdown is currently expected sometime after noon
EST today--watch software sites above for updates.)
"It's the war,"
says Prince. "Bush has popularized zero-tolerance, and it's open
season on dissent of any kind. So just when they're meeting in Doha,
the WTO has decided to divert attention from its problems by
attacking a website."
"Or maybe they
really do want to make it so that protest has as little place on the
web as it does in Qatar," adds Prince.
Oddly enough,
the WTO has been aware of the parody website since before the 1999
Ministerial in Seattle, when it issued a public statement claiming
the site misled visitors (http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/pres99_e/pr151_e.htm).
Two weeks ago,
the WTO issued another release (http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news01_e/gattdotorg_e.htm),
this one claiming that Gatt.org was harvesting e-mails, an
allegation reprinted as fact in some newspaper articles (http://rtmark.com/pressgat.html).
While it may be
puzzling why the WTO chose to issue a second press release about
Gatt.org two years later, it is even more surprising that they are
now taking concrete steps to stop the critical site. In statements
made just last week to the French daily newspaper Liberation and to
others, WTO spokesperson Jean-Guy Carrier stated that "It's not our
job to use legal means against people. We appreciate dissidence and
honest criticism."
Why the sudden
change of attitude?
"They got
nervous, it's only human," said Elaine Peabody, a spokesperson for
The Yes Men (http://www.theyesmen.org/), the
group that maintains the Gatt.org website. "The WTO remembers
what happened the last time they had one of these meetings [in
Seattle]. They felt like tackling something they knew they could
handle--and a satirical website fit the bill."
BATTLE HEATS
UP
But the WTO
could well have stepped on a hornets' nest. To counter the attack,
the Yes Men have are releasing today a piece of open-source
"parodyware" (http://theyesmen.org/yesiwill/)
that will"forever make this kind of censorship obsolete," according
to Peabody.
"Using this
software, it takes five minutes to set up a convincing,
personalized, evolving parody of the WTO.org website, or any other
website of your choice," said Peabody, who helped to develop the
program. "All you need is a place to put it--say, WTOO.org,
WorldTradeOrg.com, whatever."
The software,
called "Yes I Will!", automatically duplicates websites as needed,
changing words and images as the user desires--with results that can
be very telling. The WTO site can be made to speak of"consumers" and
"companies" rather than "citizens" and "countries." Unleashed on the
CNN.com website, the software can simplify the reporting even
further by referring to Bush as "Leader," and the war in Afghanistan
as one between "Good" and "Evil"; a Time.com article linked from the
site then discusses "The Poor Way of War". The parody site updates
itself automatically as the target website changes.
"The idea is to
insure that even if they shut down our website, hundreds of others
will continue our work of translation," said Peabody. "The more they
try to fight it, the funnier they're going to look."
"Such
heavy-handed tactics work as poorly in cyberspace as they do on the
geopolitical stage," said Cooper Kharms, another Yes Man. "At least
Gatt.org was transparent: you could tell what it was by reading a
line or two. These other sites may not be so obvious."
Prince thinks
the software, while interesting, is not a solution."With their
attack on Gatt.org, an unelected, unaccountable organization is
running roughshod over the USA Bill of Rights," said Prince. "But
every day they violate people's rights in the Third World, or enable
corporations to do so. This time it's just closer to
home."
For more on the
legal basis of the WTO's attack, see also
http://dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=15296&group=webcast
RTMark's
primary goal is to publicize corporate subversion of the democratic
process. To this end it acts as a clearinghouse for anti-corporate
projects.
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