<nettime> Etoys, etoy, eto, et, e digesting [rtmark, grether, rodriquez]

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

Lucky Name-Owner <announce0027@rtmark.com>
          Toy giant wins battle (for nettime-l@bbs.thing.net)
Reinhold Grether <Reinhold.Grether@uni-konstanz.de>
          Golden Nica for the Pro-Etoy-Campaign
"Felipe Rodriquez" <felipe@xs4all.nl>
          WIRED: EToys Relents, Won't Press Suit


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Date: Thu, 30 Dec 1999 06:49:13 -0500 (EST)
From: Lucky Name-Owner <announce0027@rtmark.com>
Subject: Toy giant wins battle (for nettime-l@bbs.thing.net)

     [nettime-specific un/sub info deleted--tb]

December 29, 1999
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

QUIT ETOYS! TOBY STEP DOWN!
   Contact: mailto:etoyfund@rtmark.com
   More information: http://rtmark.com/etoyswin.html,
        http://rtmark.com/etoypress.html,
        http://rtmark.com/etoy.html

As of Dec. 29, eToys, the giant online toy company, is still suing 
etoy, the most important Internet art group, to prevent etoy from 
using etoy.com, a URL that the artists were using long before the 
toy company came into being.

eToys has, however, agreed to temporarily "move away" from the 
lawsuit (without dropping it), according to Wired (see
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,33330,00.html). 

"It's good that eToys is now being shamed into lying to the press 
that its 'intent was never to silence free artistic expression,'" 
said RTMark spokesperson Ernest Lucha. "But 'moving away' from the 
suit now that their shopping season is over, without anything even 
resembling an apology, let alone compensation to etoy for their 
financial and emotional nightmare, is just pathetic and will not
fly with a lot of people." (Full RTMark comments can be found at 
http://rtmark.com/etoyswin.html; press reports about the eToys 
move can be found at http://rtmark.com/etoypress.html.)

Activists' anti-eToys efforts will continue at least until there 
is substance to eToys' withdrawal, according to Lucha. On Monday 
RTMark announced two new elements to its etoy Fund, an "online 
game" whose aim is to lower the eToys stock price to $0.00. 
The newest elements of the "game" are two letter-writing campaigns, 
one calling on eToys employees to quit the company 
(http://rtmark.com/etoysquit.html), and another aimed at the 
principal eToys shareholders, urging them to call for eToys C.E.O. 
Toby Lenk's dismissal (http://rtmark.com/etoystoby.html).

Several articles, including one in Yahoo! Finance, have credited 
some of the "game's" earlier components--the Virtual Sit-in, for 
example (http://rtmark.com/etoysitin.html)--with having helped 
to drive the dramatic eToys stock fall. The success of either or 
both of the new campaigns would further help to establish this 
case as "a precedent e-commerce companies will never forget," 
according to Lucha.

BACKGROUND

eToys stock has plummeted to a third of its Nov. 29 value--that was 
the day that the e-commerce toy giant was granted a court injunction 
against the European online art collective etoy (no "s"), forcing 
the artists to stop using their much older domain name, and also the 
day that protests began and were first reported. Before that day, 
eToys stock had been rising.

eToys CEO Toby Lenk had been hoping to keep etoy.com suspended and 
quiet until the December 27 court hearing, but activists from around 
the internet had different plans.

Many organizations saw eToys' abuse of the legal system as a threat 
to independent publishers and small business on the Web. On December 
15, these organizations, which included the Electronic Disturbance 
Theatre and RTMark (http://www.rtmark.com/), came together to expand 
the anti-eToys protests into a full-fledged "information war" 
against eToys, with the aim of establishing a precedent in 
e-commerce similar to that of the Brent Spar in petroleum production 
(http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/co/2469/1.html).

The organizations' WWW "sit-in" had little effect on the first day, 
but massively overloaded eToys' server on Thursday, December 16 by 
filling its customer database with false information. Observers in 
both the US and Europe were unable to reach eToys.com at times, and 
online ordering was paralyzed. (See for example the CNN transcript 
at http://www.tveyes.com/database/expands.asp?ln=526785&key=etoys.)

Although eToys officials had pooh-poohed the attack the day before, 
they now panicked. eToys filed a restraining order against the 
Electronic Disturbance Theatre, cutting it off the Web and, 
meanwhile, changed their site to resist the attack. (eToys also used 
other means to make its voice heard. In a threatening letter sent 
from a Hotmail account, an eToys employee told one activist to "get 
the hell out of dodge"; see http://rtmark.com/etoysthreat.html.)

Having lost a peak day's worth of orders, eToys found itself with 
extra inventory on hand and had to extend its deadline for Christmas 
delivery until Saturday, the second slowest day on the web. Although 
eToys.com has claimed that it has added 900,000 new customers this 
season, any such figures are questionable because of false 
information entered by activists.


RTMark, which is in no way associated with etoy, aims to publicize 
the widespread corporate abuse of democratic institutions like courts 
and elections. To this end it solicits and distributes funding for 
"sabotage projects"; the groups of such projects are called "mutual 
funds" in order to call attention to one way in which large numbers 
of people come to identify corporate needs as their own. RTMark 
projects do not normally target specific companies; the etoy Fund 
projects are an exception.

RTMark is no stranger to the hot topic of domain-name control. The 
World Trade Organization's press release about http://gatt.org, 
accusing RTMark of "illegal practices" in publishing information 
critical of the WTO at that site, merely brought the WTO ridicule 
from the press (http://rtmark.com/gatt.html); George W. Bush's and 
Microsoft's legal attacks on GWBush.com (http://rtmark.com/bush.html) 
and MicrosoftEdu.com (http://rtmark.com/allpress.html#mse) failed to 
affect the domains. See also http://rtmark.com/othersites.html for 
more on this issue.

     [nettime-specific un/sub info deleted--tb]

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Date: Thu, 30 Dec 1999 11:33:36 +0100
From: Reinhold Grether <Reinhold.Grether@uni-konstanz.de>
Subject: Golden Nica for the Pro-Etoy-Campaign

Golden Nica for the Pro-Etoy-Campaign
By Reinhold Grether
Reinhold.Grether@uni-konstanz.de


Vanishing for a month in silence even eToys is able to coin
a historical word: "People are telling us they want the art of
etoy and the e-commerce of eToys to co-exist." Net.art,
existing aesthetically for years, has through its thrilling global
pro etoy movement majored up to exist in terms of power
relations too. That's all the more an epoch-making event
because net.art, especially in its etoy version, claimed from
its very beginning to analyze and to challenge the emerging
power structures of the Net. What's in terms of power is called
co-existence, has in aesthetical terms to be viewed as a licence
to aesthetical intervention. Encountering eToys' power claim,
net.art's aesthetical intervention adopted the gestalt of a game,
the game to play eToys' share value to ground. There were of
course some risks to take: 1) Would it be possible to
aesthetically hype out the hype? 2) And would it be possible
to translate an aesthetical intervention into real power effects?
Only to play the game could give an answer.

It's all up to etoy now. I strictly plead for their right to decide.
In their last official press release, dating from 12/26, etoy stated:

"the etoy.ART-CORPORATION is ready to talk about 
solutions to stop this insane media war as soon as our 
illegally removed DNS entries are re installed and an 
apology is made. etoy is not able and willing to accept 
this rude way of doing international business, and does 
not talk to the other side as long as we don't see the 
will for fair and violence free negotiations." 

"[our attorneys suggested a one week interview stop to let the 
other side feel that etoy is not interested in destroying their 
company if they start to respect our trademark rights... the 
beginning of a new century could be a good moment to think about 
business, responsibility and society on a larger scale. we urge 
the press to respect this. we wish eToys a happy new year and 
that their share value may recover a bit]"

etoy has to decide first if they accept eToys move as substantial.

Then they must decide if they want to fix the power shift in keeping
their domain or to translate net.art's power gain into a substantial
economic (re)valution of net.art. Maybe they negotiate a combination
of political and financial elements.

It's already clear that the last decision must be made by the
etoy.shareholders.

For aesthetical nomads a domain name is nothing more than
a toy to play with.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

From: "Felipe Rodriquez" <felipe@xs4all.nl>
Subject: WIRED: EToys Relents, Won't Press Suit
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 1999 12:08:41 +1100


http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,33330,00.html

EToys Relents, Won't Press Suit 
by Craig Bicknell 

11:50 a.m. 29.Dec.1999 PST 
EToys has given up its unpopular fight. 

After being pilloried in news groups and
deluged by angry email, eToys said on
Wednesday it would not press its lawsuit
against the Swiss art site etoy. 

"People are telling us they want the art of
etoy and the e-commerce of eToys to
co-exist," said eToys spokesman
Jonathan Cutler. "We've agreed. We're
not pressing the lawsuit." 

EToys, the popular e-commerce site that
sells toys, had sued etoy over rights to
the name, even though etoy had been in
existence well before eToys even existed.

Etoy declined comment, saying it had not
yet been contacted by the toy seller. 

EToys said it would immediately notify
etoy of its decision. Cutler stopped short
of saying the lawsuit would be dropped,
saying instead the company would not
"press" the suit. 

"We're moving away from the suit, and
that's all I can say at this point," Cutler
said. 

He declined discussion of any conditions
that might cause eToys to move back
towards the suit in the future. 

Cutler stressed that eToys never wanted,
as critics charged, to stifle free
expression on the Net. 

"Our intent was never to silence free
artistic expression," he said.


#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net