Thing.net closes down?
Pushed by Dow Chemical, Verio, the internet provider held by the japanese enterprise Ntt, decided to withdraw the concession to the server Thing.net, starting from feb.28 on.
Thing.net is a server that hosts since more than ten years hundreds of art sites
belonging to individuals and institutions (like the one of Moma Museum of modern art di New York),
publisher's sites, sites that make alternative information (like Autonomedia) and activism.
What raises the interest of the chemical giant is The Yes men's site, a group that
documents and disveal sick economic mechanisms behind neo-liberalism. The Yes Men
dedicated part of their site to the multinational Dow Chemical, that recently acquired
Union Carbide, in-famous due to the Bhopal disaster (India).
The web page, www.dow-chemical.com, was a fake, a parody of the official site of
the multinational. This web page is now hosted @ another url, while www.dow-chemical.org
points directly to the official Dow Chemical site: the powerful giant made such pressure on the
company that delivers the domains that it could 'absorb' it back under its own home page.
The immediate multiplication of mirrors of the indicted web pages led Verio to the
decision of interrupting anyway the contract with Thing.net, in order to avoid itself
an accusation for the violation of the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act [pdf file], which imposes
specific limits to internet providers in case of violation of copyright.
Thing.net already reacted, organizing a fund raising campaign via PayPal. Its goal is to achieve
more than 4000 IP numbers from American registry for internet
numbers. The IP will be distributed
on a number of broad band providers (15 or more), so that it won't be possible
to close down a network on the basis of a simple complaint anymore.
The cost of the whole operation of acquiring IP is estimated to be around 25.000 dollars.
Then Thing.net will try to charge Verio for violation of the right of free speech.
Updates: The Thing Home | The Thing Roma
in italian: thing.net chiude?
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