Due to pressure by Dow Chemical, Verio, an internet provider held by the Japanese enterprise Ntt, has decided to withdraw hosting of the service provider Thing.net, starting February 28. For more than 10 years, Thing.net has hosted hundreds of art sites belonging to individuals, organizations (e.g., RTMark) and institutions (e.g., The Museum of Modern Art of New York), publisher's sites, sites that provide alternative information (e.g., Autonomedia), and activist sites.
What motivated the chemical giant is a website by The Yes
Men, which documents and parodies the sick economic mechanisms behind neo-liberalism. The group dedicated part of their site to the
multinational Dow Chemical, which had recently acquired Union Carbide, infamous
due its culpability in the 1984 disaster in Bhopal, India.
The web page, originally at www.dow-chemical.com, was a parody of Dow's official site. The powerful giant pressured the company that delivers domains to assimilate the url to the Dow home page, and ultimately succeeded. The Dow parody webpage is now available at another url, while www.dow-chemical.org now points directly to the official site.
Following th=he immediate multiplication of mirrors of the Dow parody web pages, Verio decided to interrupt its contract with Thing.net, in
order to avoid an accusation for the violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) (pdf), which imposes specific limits on internet providers in case of violation of copyright law.
Thing.net responded immediately, organizing a
fund raising campaign via PayPal. Its goal is to achieve more than 4000 IP numbers from American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN). The IPs will be distributed on a number of broadband providers (15 or more), so that it will not be possible to close down a network on the basis of a simple
complaint. The cost of the whole operation of acquiring IPs is estimated to be around $25,000 US. Moreover, Thing.net plans to sue Verio for violation of its free speech rights.
Meanwhile, another website, www.bursonmarsteller.com, was put up by a college student about the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller. The firm is infamous for its role in spinning the images of and manufacturing public support for repressive governments and abusive corporations, and helped downplay the Bhopal disaster, which was documented in the site. The student was sued by the company for alleged trademark infringement before the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and has been contested.
Read coverage in italian.
[ The Thing | The Yes Men ]
