Since when has the net been anything more (or less)?

Fighting fire with fire makes the whole world warm. (and cozy)

Only a whore charges for a look and a feel.

Parody and impersonation is not forbidden by trademark and copyright law! Just check out those little peeing Calvin stickers!

Actually, those are probably illegal, or at least infringing. It's just that they're damn near impossible to get rid of.

The message sent by the creation of this software is that, if IP holders choose to engage in legal harassment, there are ways that the few people who care can make an even bigger nuisance, without recourse to lawyers.

Even if the product of the software is not funny, the concept is both funny (in its ironic justice of web harassment traded for legal harassment) and relevant to the politics of the web.

It was established some time ago that registering a trademark in order to place a site criticizing the trademark's owner is not "bad faith."

The WTO accused these folks of "harvesting" email addresses, but doesn't say what method they used...according to the site, the only method they used to "harvest" addresses was some "mailto:" links. WTO is annoyed by the mockery and is interpreting the facts to suit themselves.

Computerworld ran an article [computerworld.com] on this following WTO's party line on this issue so slavishly as to stretch anyone's definition of journalistic ethics. Most interesting is this passage:

The fake WTO site changed its look this afternoon so that it no longer exactly resembles the real WTO Web site.

Even so, the phony site contains so many references to the WTO that some search engines are directing people to it instead of to the official site. A search of AltaVista using the keyword WTO returns www.gatt.org in fifth place.

So, according to the WTO and to an incompetent journalist at Computerworld, establishing an anti-WTO site that shows up fifth in search engines is tantamount to site-jacking!!

Is this the type of reasoning that you wish to defend?

Does anyone have a link to a (non-distorted) mirror?

I know slashdot editors think everything done by corporations somehow tramples on my rights, but I just don't see the connection here.

The World Trade Organization is not an ordinary corporation; it's an international UN organization.

Imagine if the Red Cross wanted people to take down websites complaining about people who were infected by HIV via blood transfusions. Get it?

That does not significantly change the remedies available to the WTO. It appears to me that the WTO would have a good case to make.

The gatt.org site is not a 'parody' site, it is deliberately passing itself off as the official WTO site. It is intentionally deceiving the readers. As a result the WTO would appear to have many remedies available, the copyright on its logos, 'passing off' and libel.

These guys deserve everything that is comming to them. Deceit and lies are not legitimate means of protest. I don't see why we should be leaping to protect these idiots. Its like getting excited when people who go to demonstrations to get arrested get arrested and go to jail. Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

Amongst the statements on the site are:

Deceit and lies are not legitimate means of protest.

And I suppose the people that founded the USA never told a lie (the cherry tree legend not withstanding). Why is lying not a legitimate form of protest? It seems to be a legitimate form of political organisations like the WTO.

Why should anyone believe someone who is obviously telling lies? How do you know the truth from the lies?

One of the reasons I have no time for the anti-WTO protestors is that they appear to have no idea what they are protesting about. They completely fail to set out a coherent set of political goals or a strategy to achieve them.

For example amongst the protestors are people complaining that the third world is paid too little for the goods they export to the US and others who are complaining about the loss of US jobs. Denying access to the US markets is not going to help the developing world.

I don't see many of the anti-WTO protestors at the conferences trying to do something positive for the third world. Equally it is a bit odd being lectured on the evils of global capitalism by some teenager wearing a $150 pair of Nike trainers.

That statement itself is a silly parody of the WTO that has nothing to do with its real aims.

(Actually, it would seem that Alan is starting to take an active position on Internet / Digital rights - and that he's becoming more of an obsessive /. reader than I am!)

yesiwill-1.0.tar.gz [meatplow.com]

yesiwill-1.0.zip [meatplow.com]

http://detritus.net/projects/yesiwill [detritus.net]

Let's see how well they survive a slashdotting.

http://saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com/yesiwill/index.html [saintaardv...rpeted.com]

I can feel not-guilty about posting this, karmacap boy that I am. :)

Think before you mod: is it really offtopic..?

... How do we at the WTO fit in? Well, that's easy: We want to help you acieve those dollar results. We want to help make sure that nothing - protectionism, worry, even violence against physical property - stands in the way of your dollar results.

... CAUSES OF THE CIVIL WAR: PROTECTIONISM
[Slide: Freedom]
Why did people fight and die and lose money? It comes down to one word: FREEDOM.
[Slide: Southern Happiness]
By the 1860s, the South was utterly flush with cash. It had recently benefited from the cotton gin, an invention that took the seeds out of cotton and the South out of its preindustrial past. Hundreds of thousands of workers, previously unemployed in their countries of origin, were given useful jobs in textiles. Into this rosy picture of freedom and boom stepped ... you guessed it: the NORTH.

Now, we all known that not even the best workplace design can help even the most astute manage keep track odf hstaff. But our solution inables a lot more rapport with remote workers.
Mike, would you please?
[Unruh steps out from behind the podium to a drum roll. An assistant grabs him by the tie and belt and rips off his suit to reveal a golden spandex unitard underneath.]
Ah! That's better! This is the Management Leisure suit. This is the WTO's answer to the problems of maintaining rapport with distant workers and maintaining one's own mental health as a manager with the proper amount of leisure. How does the MLS work, besides being comfortable? Allow me to describe the suit's core features.
[Unruh unzips the from of the suit, then pulls on a rip cord that inflates a three-foot-long golden phallus. The audience claps.]

The presentation, which Harper's describes as "well-received", was subsequently praised by the MC on three seperate occasions that day.

(I want to be a yes man :)

And this is different from normal SlashDot HOW???

woof.

UR RIGHTS ONLNE: BMG BAX0RS DOWN OVER CPOY-PROETCTED CD

I made a parody, visit here [unc.edu] to see (it probably won't be up too long...). Finally, you can also get the code in the directory mentioned above, if you are having trouble finding a mirror. Retrieve yesiwill-1.0.tar.gz

• Greg

if people that are opposing it are already rich

It isn't that the people who oppose this are rich. It's just that only those who are rich can afford to protest regularly all over the world. I'm sure alot of the people who oppose this would love to make hemselves heard, but they have to work at a job most of the time so they can eat.

I especially like the part you quoted where someone on gatt said that, basically, you can't defend people in third world nations because you're richer than they are.

It's really not much different from similar sites by indymedia and others; all are nothing but lies.

Just what we need; more violent thugs fired up by misinformation beating up people, destroying businesses, and trying to "shut down" meetings that they do not like (so much for rights of free speech and assembly: if you don't like someone's meeting; organize a protest to "shut it down".)

Solving problems isn't the goal, its the advertising you put out to get people to help you achieve your REAL goals. In this case, discrediting anyone with a factual objection to raise, by association if nothing else.