Between suing survivors of an incident they caused and suing an ISP for hosting a parody of their company, Dow Chemical is clearly run by bastards.

Apparently, Dow Chemical, grabbing their crotch and grimacing at the First Amendment, filed a lawsuit against the ISP Verio for hosting "The Thing", a venue for New York artists and political activists, and asked the ISP to shut down the site. Unfortunately, they have a pretty good legal leg to stand on.

The Thing served as web host for the Yes Men, who, among other projects, created a parody site originally at dow-chemical.com that brings to light the many exploits of said corporation in a humorous manner.

Through the use of the corporate-friendly Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), they have free range to shut down almost anything they didn't create on the web that has the words "Dow Chemical" somewhere in it. And God forbid you should use an image of theirs. Here's a link to the letter Dow's attorney sent to Verio. I hope this makes you sick.

Long story short, any corporation can shut down a website for being a parody of that corporation or their respective site, especially if the name of the site in question includes the company's name in it or they use graphics similar to that company's graphics. Disturbing. Parody is dead.

Onward to an even more ludicrous story.

Dow Chemical (owners of Union Carbide) is suing the survivors of the 1984 Union Carbide gas disaster. That's right. They killed thousands of people, and affected the health of 150,000 people so adversely that they can hardly find work in their condition even 18 years down the road, and now they're suing the people lucky enough to live.

"Crap, there's one of the bastards that made it! Take them for all they're worth!"
"Why, sir?"
"They... uh... complained?"

On December 2, 200 women survivors peacefully marched to Bombay from Bhopal and delivered toxic waste from the abandoned Union Carbide factory there to the Dow Chemical Indian HQ, and called for the company to take responsibility for the suffering they have caused there. Instead of doing something remotely like helping, Dow instead slapped the protesters with a $10,000 lawsuit for "loss of work".

Let me clarify. $10,000 is a little over a year's worth of gross income in the US if you work at minimum wage. In Bhopal, that's something closer to 10 years salary, for one of the nicer jobs, should you be fortunate enough to find one at all. That is, find one you can work in; you're left close to crippled after a Union Carbide incident 18 years ago.

Again, short story: $10,000 is a lot of money there. What, exactly, warranted this lawsuit? "Loss of work"? One employee (1) came out to meet the protestors for approximately two hours. Otherwise, no work was halted. Did I mention that now, survivors of said incident can no longer come within 100 meters of the Dow Chemical HQ?

Dow Chemical's slogan: "Living. Improved daily."
Left out of the slogan: "...unless you're not a Dow executive."

Sleep tight.