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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
CONTACT: The Yes Men |
US Chamber Shuts off TheYesMen.org and Websites of Hundreds of Other Activist Groups
Free Speech, Free Commerce Threatened by "Free Trade" Champion
WASHINGTON - October 23 - Hundreds of activist organizations had their internet service turned off last night after the US Chamber of Commerce strong-armed an upstream provider, Hurricane Electric, to pull the plug on The Yes Men and May First / People Link, a 400-member-strong organization with a strong commitment to protecting free speech.
"This is a blow against free speech, and it demostrates in gory detail the full hypocrisy of the Chamber," said Andy Bichlbaum of The Yes Men. "The only freedom they care about is the economic freedom of large corporations to operate free of the hassles of science, reality, and democracy."
After suffering embarrassment at the hands of the Yes Men on Monday, the Chamber immediately threatened legal action, then followed through Thursday by sending a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice to Hurricane Electric Internet Services. In the DMCA notice, the Chamber claimed that the parody Chamber website operated by The Yes Men constituted copyright infringement, and demanded that the site be shut down immediately and that the creator's service be canceled.
But the Yes Men are not served directly by Hurricane Electric, but by May First / People Link. And when Hurricane Electric shut down the fake Chamber of Commerce site (now relocated), they also took down the websites of 400 other organizations.
May First / People Link fought back. They immediately "mirrored" the site, and then quickly negotiated with Hurricane Electric to restore service to their other members.
"The DMCA attacks the critically important right we have to effectively comment and criticize institutions and companies," said May First/People Link Co-Director Alfredo Lopez. "It's an undemocratic, backwards law, a perfect example of how the government shouldn't intrude on our lives. But the Chamber was perfectly happy to use it to stomp on the Yes Men's rights to free spech, and the rights of hundreds of other organizations to operate on the web."
The 400 May First / People Link members weren't the only victims of the Chamber's action on Thursday. Today is the start of the national release of the Yes Men's new film, The Yes Men Fix the World. The film is being released in a number of independent theaters - who, not being part of a chain, are heavily dependent on the Yes Men website for selling tickets to the film. The Chamber's actions thus impinge on the ability of these small businesses to turn a profit.
"The Chamber claims to represent 3 million businesses of every size, yet their actions undermined a fair number of small businesses," said Mike Bonanno of the Yes Men. "The Chamber is clearly much less interested in actual freedom, economic or otherwise, than in the license of their largest members to operate free from the scientific consensus." (The Chamber has opposed or refused to endorse a climate bill, the absurdity of which the Yes Men's Monday action was designed to highlight.)
This isn't the first time a Yes Men site has found itself targeted by a DMCA complaint brought by a large corporation. The Yes Men have in the past received DMCA notices from Exxon, Dow Chemical, DeBeers, and the New York Times. In each case, the the Yes Men (represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation) refused to comply, and prevailed. Even the George W. Bush campaign sent a complaint to try to interrupt service to GWBush.com, in 2000, resulting in extensive ridicule that culminated in Bush's mind-boggling gaffe that "There ought to be limits to freedom."
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7 Comments so far
Show All"There ought to be limits to freedom" Now that is as bright a statement as I have ever heard coming from the so called leader of the Free World. As of 8 years we had this person directing us and stealing our freedom and our rights and our money to funnel to his high faluting friends on Wall Street. The bankers all ought to be brought up on charges of treason for what they have done to this country. But back to freedom. When will people ever realize that the corporations have not the least bit of concern for us and our freedoms and do not care if we live or die (see public option). If we the people ever take back our country it will be a miracle because the corps have such a propaganda machine that they have lied their way to our pocket books, our freedoms and our jobs. Get them out of politics.
First thing I did was to forward the mirror site address to all in my address book. A great stunt with humor the world needs to know about. And about the resulting censure.
Yes, fascism does not have much humor. Looks like it's growing in the USA.... No, NOT the humor.
I think the Yes Men are great but I don't know how to judge a press release from them. It LOOKS legit but....
This sort of creative thinking is all we have left. After the takeover of everything by "Amerika Inc." I am reluctant to state the obvious, but media conglomeration has left the populace completely ignorant, powerless, and at the mercy of their controllers. There has been a coup --- we are no longer a free people. Who is responsible? Can someone tell me? I know who the obvious players are, but our country has been looted, and Amerika Inc. is now picking the bones of the carcass. I smell a grand plan, put in place and executed by someone --- via the venal idiots of the past 20 or so years. Who is it? The Bilderburgers? Someone who wants to succeed the USA as the next "Great Power" building an empire from the Nile to the Euphrates?
One could conclude easily that we "had it coming" to us, because of our recent hubristic behaviour, but was that too, not part of the "plan"
There are among those who post on this site, some with extraordinary insight and in aggregate, a hell of a lot of intellect. Some in particular come to mind. I seek enlightment.
Donkey Hote: great username; reminds me of windmills. Chew your food at least 35 times per bite. That can be enlightening if you try it. Amerika Inc: capitalist pigs to the max. They have been staging a coup against the working class since time immortal. Manifest Destiny suits the greedy and power hungry. Inevitably, it will end, with the fall of capitalism.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
If this is the "most popular article viewed this week" on CD, then why are there only 5 comments to it? Anybody else notice how peculiar CD's editor(s) are behaving lately? Their biases are coming to the fore in a pretty overt way, along with arbitrary and capricious censorship of this poster. I emailed the editor and asked for the cause and have received no reply. One hopes CD doesn't become a suspicious source of info or infiltrated by government actors.
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