Responding to a deepening legal dispute over a parody of the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Web site, a loose-knit band of Internet activists has created software that will purportedly allow technically savvy users to spoof virtually any Web site in a matter of minutes.

Called "YesIWill," the software is being made available to Internet users at no cost by The Yes Men, a self-described group of Internet satirists opposed to the "neo-liberal economic policies" of the WTO and other organizations involved in facilitating broader global trade.

The YesIWill software will make it easy for activists to flood the Internet with sites that parody not only WTO.org, but also a host of other commercial and political portals, a Yes Men spokesman using the alias Kimppa Kiva said.

"The difference between doing it manually and doing automatically is pretty extreme," Kiva said. "It is really simple. It is automatic. It makes the process of parodying a Web site into a five-minute thing."

Internet users with a certain amount of technical proficiency can use the YesIWill software to automatically copy the coding of a Website and create an identical reproduction of the site at a remote Internet address. The user is then free to change some or all of the text and images on the site to reflect his or her own sociopolitical views, Kiva said.

Yes Men programmers are working on ironing out some of the kinks in the software to make it easier to use. Ideally, the Yes Men want the software to be user-friendly to the point that anyone with a domain name will be able to use it, Kiva said.

As it stands, the software, which was developed in less than a week, is a bit too complex to be easily used by rank-and-file Internet users, Kiva said.

Kiva said that the Yes Men created the software in response to efforts by the WTO to shut down gatt.org, a fake WTO Web site operated by the Yes Men.

GATT stands for General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade -- a predecessor of the WTO.

Jonathan Prince, the owner of the Gatt.org address, says that he was ordered to shut down gatt.org by Verio, the upstream Internet service provider (ISP) for the site. Prince says that Verio officials told him that they had been contacted by the WTO and alerted to possible copyright and trademark infringements on the site.

Prince says he told the Verio attorney who contacted him that the site was a constitutionally protected parody. Later, Verio withdrew its cease and desist request, Prince said.

Prince said he is not sure where the matter stands as of today.

Although Prince owns the Gatt.org address, which he registered in 1997, he says he is not involved with the day-to-day management of the site.

Prince said that he told members of the Yes Men group that they could use the domain to host their WTO parody site, which they erected around the time of the 1999 WTO ministerial in Seattle, Wash.

Although the site has been operating for some time, WTO officials took official notice last month, when they posted a message on the real WTO Web site warning people of the gatt.org parody page.

"A fake WTO Web site (gatt.org) has been created to deceive Internet users," the WTO wrote in a press release. "The use of WTO designs, logos and materials is strictly unauthorized. Worse, some pages on the fake (Web site) could cause unsuspecting visitors to reveal their e-mail addresses and other information to the site's operators."

Kiva said that he has not received any legal threats related to YesIWill, but also pointed out that the software has only been publicly available for a few days.

The Yes Men site is at http://www.theyesmen.org/.

Jonathan Prince's site is at http://www.killyourtv.com/.

The official WTO homepage is at http://www.wto.org/.

Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com.