email this story | download as PDF | print article WTO Attempts to Shut Down Parody Website Gatt.org by Clarissa Peterson 10:32pm Tue Nov 13 '01 (Modified on 4:48pm Thu Nov 15 '01) clarissajoy@mindspring.com Last week, the WTO issued a cease and desist order against the company which is hosting the gatt.org website, a parody of the WTO’s own website. The WTO claims that the parody site violates copyrights owned by the WTO, and they have asked for the site to be shut down. If you are trying to find the official website for the World Trade Organization (WTO), be careful what you type into your browser. The web address gatt.org, with the initials GATT referring to the WTO’s predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, will take you not to the official WTO site, but to a parody site, maintained by Yesmen.org. Although at first glance the gatt.org website appears to be the actual WTO site, anyone who reads the material on gatt.org will immediately realize that it is a parody. Last week, the WTO issued a cease and desist order against Verio Inc., the company which is hosting the gatt.org website. The WTO claims that the parody site violates copyrights owned by the WTO, and they have asked for the site to be shut down. The basis for the legal action taken by the WTO is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Passed in 1998, this act provides detailed guidelines for how copyrighted material can be used on the internet. Under the act, if someone believes that their copyrighted material has been used without permission on a website, they may request that the hosting service remove the material. The hosting service can only avoid legal recourse by immediately removing the offending content, even if a copyright violation has not been proven. The website can then be reinstated only when the person or organization who maintains the website proves that they are not violating a copyright. In the case of gatt.org, the WTO claims that the parody website uses the trademarked WTO logo, as well as copyrighted material from the actual WTO website. It seems more than coincidental that the WTO’s initial legal action took place immediately before last week’s WTO ministerial meeting in Qatar. The WTO has known of the existence of the gatt.org website since its inception two years ago. In fact, WTO Director-General Michael Moore issued a statement against Yesmen.org at that time, and more recently a notice has appeared on the WTO’s own website warning users about the parody site. Yesmen.org does not believe that it is violating any copyrights with the gatt.org website. According to gatt.org domain owner Jonathan Prince, “the WTO is exploiting a bad law to squelch speech that it is clearly not happy with.” Since the law gives the copyright holder the benefit of the doubt, Yesmen.org will be forced to defend themselves against an accusation they believe is unfounded. add your own comments

possible copywrite loophole by Nature boy 3:24pm Wed Nov 14 '01 Hey parody site, I recently stumbled into your site and was actually not sure you were a parody, especially with the logo. I hate to say it, but they might have you on a copywrite infringement, however, you can easily get around this by renaming your site something like "W.T.O. parody site" Etc., which should throw off copywrite infringement. You could also mispell WTO. After all, it would be really ironic if a site out to shut down the WTO was shut down by the WTO. Whatever you decide, just keep on given' em' hell!

stop confusing the issue by Branko Collin 5:27am Thu Nov 15 '01 collin@xs4all.nl Stop confusing the issue. If it is coincidental that they start pushing now or not, is completely irrelevant. Whether the WTO has waited for two years to act is irrelevant too: copyright does not weaken if not protected. As copyright holder, the WTO has a legal right to protect its interest. Focus on the issue at hand: you are being deprived from your constitional right to free speech. Either you fight it in the courts, or you do not fight it at all and move hosting provider and DN server. Using the official WTO logo may also be a bad move: can't this be constituted as fraud? Basically, you're misleading visitors. You say that if people read a few lines, they'll understand this is not the official site, but people do not read on the web! They scan pages. Any web professional can tell you this. Perhaps you could redesign the logo, so that for instance the colourful happy lines strangle somebody. Also, I do not agree with Nature Boy when he says: "renaming your site something like W.T.O. Parody Site". By doing that, you basically make the site a non-parody. One of the properties of parody, IMHO, is that the word parody shall not be mentioned. That would like telling a joke and then saying before the punchline: "now follows the punchline -- you are expected to laugh after that".

fair use under parody by marco 8:44am Thu Nov 15 '01 yes. fair use under parody has become a huge grey area that you might be able to slip in under by clarifying that you're a parody. You might even be able to be so subtle as to have a "copyleft" at the bottom with a seperate page people click to in order to see your take on fair use under parodies. But the GATTzilla people are still going to have absolutely no sense of humor and you may have to go through a handful of new expensive isps before finding one willing to stand up to all aspects of corporate misbehavior.

DMCA Clarrification by Herbie Robinson 9:39am Thu Nov 15 '01 If I remember correctly from the Napster lawsuit, the DMCA does not require that the material be taken down until the offending party proves they are not violating copyrights, it only requires that it be taken down until they assert they are not violating copyrights (as in sending a registered letter to the ISP). At that point, the ISP is not obligated by the DMCA to do anything and the alleged copyright owner is supposed to sue the alleged violator directly. The DMCA does not require the information to be taken down if the legality is disputed. If the state the gatt.org web site is hosted in has SLAPP laws, suing the owners of the web site over it would be a very dangerous proposition, because it would almost certainly be considered a SLAPP lawsuit.

Parody is protected speech by John 10:57am Thu Nov 15 '01 gifs@Oz.net Fallwell sued Hustler and lost, without any of the disclaimers people are asking for here. If it is clear the site isn't possibly real, then it is protected speech in print. SO WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL IF IT'S DIGITAL? A slew of dangerous anti-freespeech laws, that's what.

a quick note of encouragement and suggestion by Paul Gowder 1:29pm Thu Nov 15 '01 Just a note of encouragement to the site producers -- that's truly a great parody site, the best I've ever seen. I would really suggest contacting a good copyright lawyer in your area -- for a cause like yours, perhaps contacting the national lawyer's guild (http://www.nlg.org) would lead you to a good lawyer that would work pro bono. Good luck.

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