|
Activist network in NY evicted from
internet by DOW, VERIO
by t •
Thursday December 26, 2002 at 08:23
AM
DMCA (Digital
Millenium Copyright Act) is being used to evict
Thing.net from the internet.
Bowing to pressure from the Dow
Chemical Corporation, the internet
company
Verio has booted the activist-oriented Thing.net
from the Web.
Internet service provider
Thing.net has been the primary service
provider for activist and artist organizations
in the New York area
for 10 years.
On December 3, activists used a
server housed by Thing.net to post a
parody
Dow press release on the eighteenth anniversary of
the disaster
in which 20,000 people died as a
result of an accident at a Union
Carbide plant
in Bhopal, India. (Union Carbide is now owned by
Dow.)
The deadpan statement, which many people
took as real, explained that
Dow could not
accept responsibility for the disaster due to its
primary allegiance to its shareholders and to
its bottom line.
Dow was not amused, and sent a
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
complaint to Verio, which immediately cut
Thing.net off the internet
for fifteen hours.
A few days later, Verio announced that Thing.net
had 60 days to move to another provider before
being shut down
permanently, unilaterally
terminating Thing.net's 7-year-old contract.
Affected organizations include
PS1/MOMA, Artforum, Nettime, Tenant.net
(which
assists renters facing eviction), and hundreds
more.
"Verio's actions are nothing
short of outrageous," said Wolfgang
Staehle,
Thing.net Executive Director. "They could have
resolved the
matter with the Dow parodists
directly; instead they chose to shut
down our
entire network. This self-appointed enforcement of
the DMCA
could have a serious chilling effect
on free speech, and has already
damaged our
business."
RTMark, which publicizes
corporate abuses of democracy, is housed on
Thing.net. Please visit https://secure.thing.net/backbone/
to help
Thing.net survive Dow's and Verio's
actions, and to develop a plan to
avoid such
problems in the future.
| 
