<nettime> all_the_news_that_fits_digest [x3]

["nettime's_newsprint_recycler" <nettime@bbs.thing.net>]

From: "t.whid" <twhid@spacelab.net>
     Subject: etoy outlives etoys
From: cisler <cisler@pobox.com>
     Subject: WTO protest archive
From: s|a|m <sam@media.com.au>
     Subject: Marketing Privacy... 

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Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 12:07:16 -0500
From: "t.whid" <twhid@spacelab.net>
Subject: etoy outlives etoys

eToys issues earnings warning, prepares for sale


By TROY WOLVERTON, CNET NEWS.COM

eToys may not be playing the e-commerce game much longer.

The Los Angeles-based online toy seller issued an earnings warning 
Friday, saying that revenues for its third fiscal quarter could be 
half of what analysts expected. As a result of a revenue shortfall, 
eToys said it will run out of cash around the end of March. It has 
begun exploring options to sell the company or its assets and will 
announce layoffs early next year.

"This is certainly not good news," said company spokesman Gary 
Gerdemann. "We will be pursuing every possible avenue to maximize 
value for all stakeholders involved.


from nytimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_0_4_4170257_00.html
-- 

<twhid>
http://www.mteww.com
</twhid>

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Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 08:19:09 -0800
Subject: WTO protest archive
From: cisler <cisler@pobox.com>

http://chronicle.com/free/2000/12/2000121901t.htm

U. of Washington Professor's Site Recalls 1999 World Trade Organization
Protests
By JESSICA LUDWIG  <mailto:jessica.ludwig@chronicle.com>

Margaret Levi and many of her students and colleagues participated in the
Seattle World Trade Organization protests in late November of 1999. Ms.
Levi, who is a professor of political science at the University of
Washington and the director of the university's Center for Labor Studies,
says the events were far more positive than many people outside of Seattle
believe. "There was a tremendous amount of planning, debate, and various
coalitions going on," she says. "It wasn't a mess."

After conducting informational forums on the protests and their legacy, Ms.
Levi saw a need to document the movement from labor's perspective. Last
spring, she began the W.T.O. History Project,
<http://depts.washington.edu/pcls/WTO_History_Project.htm>  a collaboration
among the Center for Labor Studies, the university's Center for
Communication and Civic Engagement, and the Manuscripts, Special Collections
and University Archives division of the university libraries.

The protests brought more than 40,000 activists to downtown Seattle. The
city is still assessing its costs -- from lost tourism revenues, damage, and
security expenses -- but they are thought to be in the millions. The history
project focuses on labor's organization before, involvement during, and
impact after the demonstrations.

The project's staff members, who are graduate and undergraduate students,
conduct interviews with activists that are transcribed and posted on the
site. Visitors to the site are invited to submit personal accounts as well.
Links to news articles, photos, and video clips of the protests are also
included. 

So far, some 85 interviews have been conducted with representatives of
organizations like Global Trade Watch and the United Steelworkers of
America. To gain a "very pluralistic" historical representation, the project
includes interviews with members of national and international groups, and
it involves a range of activists, including environmentalists and
anarchists. 

"Our focus is on the protesters, rather than on the city's response," says
Gillian Murphy, the project's coordinator, who is a second-year graduate
student in sociology at the university. "Someone else will write the other
parts." 

Ms. Murphy says: "Very rarely are these materials preserved. We're in such a
unique position, being in Seattle at the site of the protests." She adds
that the university's proximity makes it easier to collect fliers, leaflets,
and "ephemera such as turtle suits and picket signs," which will be
displayed online. 

Ms. Levi cites the Seattle general strike of 1919, which caused a city-wide
work stoppage, and the waterfront strike of 1934 as episodes where
"histories are extremely flawed, sources are poor -- all you had were
printed media accounts and occasional firsthand accounts." She says that in
such situations, often "one person becomes emblematic" of the whole event.
The W.T.O. Project wants to avoid a one-sided historical account by
considering a number of voices.

The W.T.O. History Project is a pilot program that will become part of the
University of Washington's Global Citizen Project,
<http://depts.washington.edu/ccce/global_citizen_project.htm>  an
interdisciplinary collaboration on research in international trade, the
corporate economy, and democratization. Ms. Levi says the W.T.O. component
will contribute to larger questions, like "What does it mean that nation
states are no longer making crucial decisions or they're being made in some
other country? What happens to democratic accountability?"

Ms. Levi says she hopes the site will become a research portal for scholars
and activists with a fully indexed and searchable multimedia database. In
the future, staff members will develop the project's resources into
undergraduate, secondary, and elementary course modules on the Internet that
will supplement classroom-based learning. 

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Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 13:38:42 +1100
From: s|a|m <sam@media.com.au>
Subject: Marketing Privacy... 

( sourced from  http://www.onlinecide.org/thepaper/ )

In October this year, the US-based Direct Marketing Association announced
it would spearhead a three year, US$100 million campaign to "deal with the
misinformation and the public's anxiety" about privacy.

The campaign will be led by Privacy Leadership Initiative, an organization
made up of corporations and trade associations. Young & Rubicam, a large
international advertising agency, has been hired to implement the campaign
which will consist of advertisements, opinion pieces, Web ads and articles
in newspapers and magazines.

Advertising and direct marketing has long occupied our public space, but
more recently corporations have been attempting to employ more targeted
advertising.

However, there is growing evidence that their strategies aren't working.
It seems that people aren't actually behaving like the surveys and market
research suggests that they should. And so business must find other, more
sophisticated ways to wants to pin-point common traits amongst ‘the
public'.

In late 1999, Kerry Packer's Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd formed a joint
venture with US-based data-warehouse group Acxiom to collect data on
Australian citizens. 

According to Acxiom's website, their citizen database "enables businesses
to develop and deepen customer relationships by creating a single, accurate
view of their customers".

Data-warehousing and consumer profiling is big business. Many of the large
websites on the Internet make their money by selling the data collected
about their visitors on to other businesses. The data collected and
processed about our private habits are then fed in to sophisticated
advertising and public relations campaigns.

Business will tell us they want to cater to our individual tastes. But
common sense should tell us that they would much prefer us to behave like a
‘consumer mass', who don't discriminate and aren't fussy about
diversity. After all, catering for diversity is expensive and may eat in to
the profits of the corporate monopolies. If our privacy can be broken in
to, insecurities can be capitalised on, thereby forcing people to adopt a
more common denominator (or fashion).

At the beginning of the 21st Century we are being sold a mobile future,
where wireless devices will set us free. However, our mobile phones and
palm pilots of the future will not only be transmitting our transaction
details, but will also enable the tracking of our physical location.

Business not only wants to know what we like, but also where we are. They
want to tell us where to eat and shop. Picture this: messages appear on the
displays of the gadgets we carry, tempting us with locality-based offers.
And the secret killer application - mobile gambling - will soon be widely
accepted.

As one commentator put it, "privacy is your right to be left alone".
Let's hope we will survive the US$100 million campaign that is being aimed
at our privacy by the Direct Marketing Association and their profit-driven
partners.


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