WHICH IS WHICH? ON THE INTERNET, YOU NEVER CAN TELL

Every day, thousands of people looking for the Internet sites of the ultra- right party in Austria (http://www.fpo.at), a Liberal candidate in Australia (http://www.realjeff.com), the Mayor of New York (http://yesrudy.com), and a copyright lobbying group (http://www.grayday.org) end up very confused.

Each of the sites listed above is a "rogue"--a nearly identical version of a "real" site (http://www.fpoe.at, http://www.jeff.com.au, http://www.rudyyes.com, and http://www.greyday.org, respectively), altered to make a political point. The trend may have begun with the http://yesrudy.com site, which resembles http://rudyes.com so closely that an aide with the opposing campaign admitted in the New York Times to being misled (see http://rtmark.com/pressyrd.html and http://rtmark.com/bush.html).

WWW.FPO.AT or www.fpoe.at?
(contact unknown / joerg.haider@fpoe.at)

Earlier this week [late Sept. 1999], Austria's third-largest party, which was formed from the leftovers of the Nazi party, was shocked and distressed to find itself extensively and subtly mocked.

The official website of the Freiheitlichen Partei Oesterreichs, which is considered very likely to become part of Austria's government after this Sunday's closely-watched elections, is http://www.fpoe.at/. http://www.fpo.at takes advantage of the fact that in German, the letter "o" with an umlaut can be written either as "o" or "oe"; the "FPO" site looks identical to the official FPOe site, but links directly to more overtly Nazi sites, replaces words like "information" with "propaganda," and makes use of many other instructive replacements.

Like George W. Bush with GWBush.com (see http://rtmark.com/bush.html), the FPOe is using every legal tactic to shut down the rogue site, including a U.S. copyright suit (the "FPO"'s service provider is American) and appeals to the Austrian Minister of the Interior. But like Bush with the original GWBush.com site, the FPOe has so far been unable to stop this attack on its ideas and intentions.

German-language press about the "FPO" site, from earlier this week, is at http://derstandard.at/arc/19990930/84.htm, http://futurezone.orf.at/futurezone.orf, and http://www.politik-digital.de/europa/laender/ oesterreich/innenpolitik/fake.shtml.

WWW.REALJEFF.COM or www.jeff.com.au?
(contact realjeff99@yahoo.com / http://www.liberal.org.au/cgi-bin/mail.cgi)

Australian Liberal candidate Jeff Kennett joins the FPOe and Presidential hopeful George W. Bush in attempting to shut down Internet opposition--in Kennett's case, http://www.realjeff.com, which mocks Kennett's http://www.jeff.com.au.

But Kennett's tactics are quieter than those of the FPOe and Bush. Addr.com (info@addr.com), until three weeks ago the Internet provider of http://www.realjeff.com, suddenly suspended its hosting without explanation, and has ignored repeated inquiries regarding the matter. Also, Kennett's http://www.jeff.com.au now merely defaults to the Liberal Party website, as if to avoid comparison.

WWW.GRAYDAY.ORG or www.greyday.org?
(contact press@grayday.org / press@greyday.org)

Today, many Internet visitors will visit http://www.grayday.org hoping to learn more about "GreyDay," an annual call for stricter copyright laws for the Web. Last year, the October 1 event was written about in the New York Times, Wired News and the Village Voice.

But whereas http://www.greyday.org calls for more copyright protection, http://www.grayday.org urges visitors to keep the Internet "free from phony copyright laws." Its authors, a team of Silicon Valley software programmers and graphic designers who call themselves Tell-all Computer Programmers & Internet Professionals (TCP/IP), claim to represent "the millions of people who have benefited and will continue to benefit from the free exchange of ideas, the hallmark of the Internet."

There are many other subtle differences between the two sites. Whereas GreyDay.org urges Internet users to imagine "what if" copyright infringement leads to a lack of creativity on the Web, the spoof site implores visitors to imagine "what if there was no WWW... no Internet."

According to TCP/IP spokesperson Cecil Park, "The call for more copyright laws on the Web is especially absurd considering the Web itself was made possible by the copyright-free distribution of the first Web browser [Mosaic] and the most popular Web server software [Apache]."