Anti-globalisation
activists have enraged the World Trade Organisation
(WTO) with a phoney Web site that looks just like the
real thing but uses spoof officialese and mentions
profit at every opportunity.
"A fake WTO Web site - http://www.gatt.org/ - has been
created to deceive Internet users by copying the entire
official WTO Web site. While the design is identical,
the texts have been distorted," the organisation said on
its real site, http://www.wto.org/.
To
confuse users further, the fake site copies the warning,
but accuses the WTO of being the impostor.
The name of the fake Web site is the acronym for the
General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), a body
which was replaced by the WTO in 1995.
The WTO is preparing for a key ministerial meeting
next month in the Gulf state of Qatar to try to launch a
new round of trade talks after failure at the last
meeting in 1999 in Seattle, which was besieged by
anti-globalisation protesters.
The WTO faced a similar Net attack before Seattle.
Supporters of the 142-nation trade body have urged it
to be more active in responding to "dirty tricks" by
anti-globalisation activists.
The Google Internet search engine lists the gatt.org
site as belonging to RTMark, an Internet community (http://www.rtmark.com/) that said
it "supports the sabotage (informative alteration) of
corporate products" in order to "improve culture".
