[Newspoetry] inspirational satire

[William Gillespie]

October 1, 1999
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (contact mailto:copyright at rtmark.com)

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 /
mailto:joerg.haider at fpoe.at)

Earlier this week, 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?read=detail&id=4737&tmp=61046,
and
http://www.politik-digital.de/europa/laender/oesterreich/innenpolitik/fake.s

html.

WWW.REALJEFF.COM or www.jeff.com.au? (contact
mailto:realjeff99 at 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
(mailto:info at 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 mailto:press at grayday.org /
      mailto:press at 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]."

(The name TCP/IP is a pointed insiders' joke. It stands not only for
"Tell-all
Computer Programmers & Internet Professionals," but for "Transmission
Control
Protocol / Internet Protocol," the software at the heart of the Internet
that
was given away without copyright in 1981 by programmers at the U.S.
Government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.)


RTMark (http://rtmark.com) uses its limited liability as a corporation
to sponsor the sabotage of mass-produced products, and to discuss
corporate
abuses of the political process. One of RTMark's ultimate aims is to
eliminate the principle of limited liability.


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