Activists
Enrage WTO with Phony Web Site
Updated: Wed, Oct 31 2:27 PM EST |
GENEVA (Reuters) - Anti-globalization activists have enraged the
World Trade Organization (WTO) with a phony 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 organization 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 that was
besieged by anti-globalization 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-globalization
activists.
The Google Internet search engine lists the gatt.org site as belonging to RTMark, an
Internet community (http://www.rtmark.com/) that says
it "supports the sabotage (informative alteration) of corporate
products" in order to "improve culture." |