Hostile website domain names

Jan 13th, 2012

by John Donovan.

Shell in their sights …. Royal Dutch Shell online critics John and Alfred Donovan outside the Shell Centre in London October 2009. Photograph: Graham Turner for Guardian newspaper article

By John Donovan

An article published in the Financial Times on 12 January 2012reported that the Blackstone Group has been using a brand protection firm MarkMonitor to quietly register "hostile webdomain names in an attempt to head off online criticism…"

The domain names registered predictably include blackstonesucks.com.

MarkMonitor declined to comment or deny that Blackstone is a client, but claimed that "defensive registration" is very common with major brands.

According to MarkMonitor: "Every business needs to protect their brand online. Powerful brands are valuable assets that are particularly vulnerable in the digital world."

The concern is over what a related article has described as "brand-bashers".

The website hereisthecity said in another related article: "Firms that are at the center of any form of controversy or, face possible public ire, often protect themselves in this way."

A Reuters article on the same subject contains a quote from Blackstone spokesman, Peter Rose who claims: "This is a routine defensive move to protect ourselves. Any company that is in the public eye will take similar measures."

Unfortunately for Royal Dutch Shell, when it tried in 2005 to register the top level domain name for the merged company – Royal Dutch Shell Plc as a defensive measure – it found that its most prominent long-term online critics had beaten them to the .com registration.

In June 2006, Shell appointed a digital agency with experience in turning around corporate reputations. The headline is self-explanatory: "Shell seeks agency for online makeover". The brief issued by Shell web communications division in The Hague, included online branding.

Despite Shell's best efforts, Royaldutchshellplc.com has become the effective "gripe" site in the world and has genuinely cost Shell billions of dollars. Sounds like a wild claim, but it is a provable fact.

Shell unsuccessfully attempted to seize the domain name.

Our subsequent activities have been so damaging to Shell that it set up a global operation spying on our website and its own employees. This was an unsuccessful effort to stop Shell insider information from being leaked to us.

There have been numerous media articles relating to our website.A search for "royaldutchshellplc.com" on ft.com reveals a list of articles, the majority based on information about Shell leaked to us and passed to the FT.

Some articles on this subject

Blackstone turns hostile on website names

Top Firm Takes Action Against 'Suckers'

Some related articles about our online activities…

Prospect Magazine: "Rise of the Gripe Site"

The Guardian: "92-year-old's website leaves oil giant Shell-shocked"

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

PDF VERSION OF GUARDIAN ARTICLE

The Sunday Times: "Two men and a website mount vendetta against Shell"

Posted in: Alfred Donovan, Bribery, Business Principles, Corporate Governance,Corruption, GoogleNews, John Donovan, Litigation, Reuters, Royal Dutch Shell Plc,Shell Spying, The Guardian.

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Royal Dutch Shell and Iran Oil

Jan 12th, 2012

by John Donovan.

By John Donovan: 12 January 2012

The front page lead story published by the Financial Times newspaper today reports that European refiners have begun to sever links with Iran ahead of an EU meeting, which could impose a full oil embargo on the Iranian regime. Iran is the world's third-largest oil exporter.

Tensions and oil prices are heightened by the regimes threat to close the Strait of Hormuz.

The article reports that according to Argus Media, Royal Dutch Shell is the biggest supplier of Iranian crude.

As could be expected, Shell has been extremely sensitive about purchasing oil from the fanatical Iranian regime supplying road side bombs, which have maimed and killed many US and British soldiers, but has continued to do so. With Shell, money wins out over mere moral considerations.

On 28 October 2010, Shell CFO Simon Henry came clean after press reports on the subject and admitted that Shell has continued to trade with Iran:

"Simon Henry, Shell's top financial official, said his company was still taking delivery of Iranian crude oil under the terms of its existing contracts with the Islamic republic." (extract from UPI article)

The following month, November 2010, Reuters published an article which stated:

"Companies are still finding ways to buy Iranian oil. Royal Dutch Shell and some Italian and Spanish refiners buy Iranian barrels with finance coming from Chinese and Italian banks…"

Shell has in fact continued to buy oil from the Iranian regime for many years and and because of the obvious sensitivity, has on occasion used subterfuge to disguise shipping movements.

I discovered just how sensitive the issue is after sending an email in March 2007 to Bill O'Reilly at Fox News, under the innocuous subject heading "Shell's treachery in Iran".

As a result of making an application to Shell under the Data Protection Act, we discovered from Shell internal communications the company was compelled to supply, that my email had sent Shell into a panic on both sides of the Atlantic. This was out of concern that if the story was taken up by Fox News, it could result in a US boycott of Shell gasoline.

The internal emails also revealed anxiety over information being leaked to us:

"They are a continued source of leaks from inside Shell – if you read their on line blog you will see a lot of insider material".

A media statement was drafted on a contingency basis.

As can be seen from the covering message, it contained the usual spin and was founded on deception:

"Greetings all – The lawyers are happy with the following response statement no changes from the draft I sent you yesterday). As discussed with xxxxxxx, we have phrased this as coming from Shell in the US, and have aimed to distance you as much as possible from what is essentially a dispute originating in the UK. Let's hope there is no follow up and we don't have to use anything."

The Shell internal emails focused on our Iran initiative with Fox News, but also mentioned a surge in our activities relating to Sakhalin 2 and Shell North Sea "TFA" safety culture, as exposed by Bill Campbell, the former Group HSE Auditor of Shell International.

That same month, Shell set up an aggressive team to combat our activities. This was followed by an attempt to close down this website and the setting up of a related global spying operationtargeting my family and all Shell employees, in conjunction with a US cyber intelligence unit partly staffed and funded by the FBI.

All in response to an entirely non commercial website publishing the truth about the dark side of Royal Dutch Shell, including its relationship with the Iranian regime.

RELATED

Royal Dutch Shell Iranian treachery

Posted in: Bill Campbell, Business Principles, Corporate Governance, GoogleNews,Human Rights, Iran, John Donovan, Leaked Shell Emails, Oil, Outspoken Articles, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Russia, Sakhalin II, Shell, Shell Employee Safety, United States.
Tagged: Bill O'Reilly · Fox News · Iran · John Donovan · Oil · Royal Dutch Shell Plc ·Russia · Sakhalin II

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