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According to the Village Voice, New York City's subway trains are running slower because the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is deliberately running the trains slower. The Village Voice obtained MTA internal documents, discovering that the decision to run the trains slower was made following a fatal 1995 crash on the Williamsburg Bridge. From the report: The subway's performance has been steadily deteriorating for many years. The authority's own internal data shows that delays due to "incidents," such as broken signals and tracks or water damage, have only marginally increased since 2012. But there is one type of delay that's gotten exponentially worse during that time: a catchall category blandly titled "insufficient capacity, excess dwell, unknown," which captures every delay without an obvious cause. From January 2012 to December 2017, these delays increased by a whopping 1,190 percent -- from 105 per weekday to 1,355. In December, one out of every six trains run across the entire system experienced such a delay. The increase has been steady and uninterrupted over the past six years.
[...]
In 1995, a Manhattan-bound J train crossing the Williamsburg Bridge rear-ended an M train that was stopped on the bridge, killing the J train operator and injuring more than fifty passengers. The National Transportation and Safety Board investigation placed most of the blame on the J train operator, who the NTSB suspected had been asleep. But the NTSB also identified potential issues with the signal system that contributed to the accident, which it found didn't guarantee train operators enough time to apply the emergency brakes even when awake. "They slowed the trains down after the Williamsburg Bridge crash," a veteran train operator who asked not to be identified told the Village Voice. "The MTA said the train was going too fast for the signal system." As a result, the MTA, quite literally, slowed all the trains down, issuing a bulletin informing employees in April 1996 that their propulsion systems would be modified so they could achieve a maximum speed of 40 miles per hour, down from the previous high of 50 to 55 miles per hour on a flat grade. But the MTA didn't stop there, internal documents show. One of the NTSB's safety recommendations was to set speed limits. As a result, the MTA began a still-ongoing process of changing the way many signals work to meet modern safety standards.

Ars Technica is reporting that "a certain model of Low Power FM radio transmitter with known vulnerabilities has been targeted in a new wave of radio-station hacks this week." Hackers have taken advantage of an exploit that was known all the way back in April 2016 to take over terrestrial radio stations and broadcast the YG and Nipsey Hussle song "Fuck Donald Trump." From the report: News of the song's unexpected playback on radio stations began emerging shortly after Trump's inauguration on January 20, and the hack has continued to affect LPFM stations -- a type of smaller-radius radio station that began to roll out after the FCC approved the designation in 2000. Over a dozen stations experienced confirmed hacks in recent weeks, with more unconfirmed reports trickling in across the nation. Thus far, the stations' commonality isn't the states of operation or music formats; it's the transmitter. Specifically, hackers have targeted products in the Barix Exstreamer line, which can decode many audio file formats and send them along for LPFM transmission. As Barix told its products' owners in 2016, Exstreamer devices openly connected to the Internet are incredibly vulnerable to having their remote login passwords discovered and systems compromised. The company recommends using full, 24-character passwords and placing any live Internet connections behind firewalls or VPNs. Reports have yet to connect any dots on why the exploit has apparently focused on the YG and Nipsey Hussle song -- though it is fairly popular, having recently finished in the Top 15 of the Village Voice's 2016 Pazz and Jop music critics' poll. Plus, the uncensored lyrics and topical nature are certainly more likely to catch people's attention, especially when played on stations with formats like oldies, classic rock, and Tejano.

DrEnter writes "Apparently, the recent very public divorce of Katie Holmes and devout believer Tom Cruise is reflecting negatively on the Church of Scientology. Adding to this are other recent issues causing problems for 'church' leadership. In response, the 'church' has decided to encourage its followers to censor online chatter and comments about the 'church' and the divorce. This Yahoo blog post sums it up nicely. In short, they are encouraging members to complain about people posting negative comments about the 'church' as violating the Code of Conduct' in the posting venue. I can only imagine they are hoping these complaints will just be rubber-stamped and respected without investigation, but I think the campaign deserves a bit more attention."

An anonymous reader writes "Passwords and personal data for 1.3 million Gawker Media readers — this includes readers of sites like Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Kotaku, and io9 — have been released as a BitTorrent by a group of hackers called Gnosis, who also managed to gain access to both the Gawker CMS and Gizmodo's Twitter account. Gawker confirms and urges readers to change their passwords: 'Our user databases do indeed appear to have been compromised. The passwords were encrypted. But simple ones may be vulnerable to a brute-force attack. You should change the password on Gawker (GED/commenting system) and on any other sites on which you've used the same passwords. Out of an abundance of caution, you should also change your company email password and any passwords that may have appeared in your email messages. We're deeply embarrassed by this breach. We should not be in the position of relying on the goodwill of the hackers who identified the weakness in our systems.'"

Ellis D. Tripp noted a village voice article about attempts in NYC to pass a law requiring permits for air monitoring devices including apparently geiger counters. I'm sure everyone will feel much safer not knowing anything.

pilsner.urquell points out a story in the Village Voice from a stockholders' meeting at the New York Times. It seems that the media giant is now eager to data-mine visitors to its Web properties. Of course anybody with a site who profits from advertising is likely to be doing something of the sort. It's just a bit surprising that the Times would use the words "data mining" out loud in public. From the article: "Barely a year after their reporters won a Pulitzer prize for exposing data mining of ordinary citizens by a government spy agency, New York Times officials had some exciting news for stockholders last week: The Times company plans to do its own data mining of ordinary citizens, in the name of online profits... [T]he problem with reading papers electronically is that they can also read you."

dchallender writes to tell us that Inga Chernyak, recently featured in a VillageVoice piece entitled "Code Warriors", has been fired from an IP firm in NYC for having "incompatible views". From the article: "I was, and still am, a student interested in the scope of copyright law, and determined to pursue a career in the field. I wanted to gain an understanding both of the theory of copyright, which my work with FC provided, and its practice. The firm exposed me to the day to day operations of an IP lawyer, and I was nothing if not receptive to these lessons. I was baffled that someone saw fit to fire me over an expression of dissenting views. Doesn't the field become richer when the wider spectrum of legal thought is explored and encouraged?"

An anonymous reader writes that "Village Voice has a small article by Julian Dibbell about the Machinima Film Festival that takes place this Saturday (Nov. 12th) at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria. The festival is also holding their annual awards on Friday night. For me, the highlight is their honoring David Wright for creating Keygrip (the program behind the creation of Quake movies like Blahbalicious and Operation Bayshield) - which is a nice nod to machinima's roots. "

An anonymous reader writes "Nick Mamatas was sued by and subsequently settled with the RIAA for file sharing. He wrote a piece for the Village Voice describing his experience, and he goes on to briefly discuss the implications of "John Doe" file-sharing lawsuits. He argues that the labels are using these suits as a source of profit; he also claims that when his lawyer contacted the RIAA to discuss the suit, he was put in touch with a regular staffer, not another lawyer. 'It feels like they're doing a volume business,' Mamatas' lawyer notes."

theodp writes "With one dissenting opinion, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that an AZ sheriff's use of Webcams to broadcast prisoners being booked and held in cells constituted a profoundly undesirable level of humiliation, rejecting the sheriff's argument that the Webcasts deterred crime and showed the public how jails work." The Village Voice has a good article from a few years ago detailing how the jailcams work.

An anonymous submitter writes: "In totalitarian states the military can compel scientists to perform research for weapons systems. That's not true in the United States, yet American scientists who refuse military work are exceedingly rare today. This may be in part because scientists, like most other citizens, agree that the U.S. is facing dangerous foes. But some dissidents argue the cause is more likely that Pentagon cash has become an addiction that scientists rationalize by working on 'dual use' technologies -- radar that maps planets and guides missiles; robots that peer through smoke in apartment fires to rescue victims, and through battlefield smoke to find human targets."

An anonymous reader writes "Yale University hosted a conference on transhumanism which organizers say served to coalesce transhumanism from a subculture to a 'movement.' They're even sketching out where the role of violence becomes legitimate in the quest to become a cyborg. But most of the talk was of peaceful integration and continuation of democratic values."

Gregus writes "The Village Voice delves into the DARPA's latest plan to track people and vehicle movement in cities, ostensibly for urban warfare, though this would be really handy watching 'suspicious' people in any city. "The goal, according to a recent Pentagon presentation to defense contractors, is to 'track everything that moves.' " The actual DARPA RFP and briefings. I just feel more safe all the time."

Mark Baard writes "The hydrogen economy will at least in part be based on nukes. The DOE will build a pilot high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor (HTGR), which theoretically can co-generate electricity and hydrogen, side by side, inside a cheap modular unit."

An anonymous submitter writes "Some of the powers that be -- not just talking heads -- go on record about our genetically enhanced future in this Village Voice article. The anti-doping watchdogs of the Olympics say they'll ban GM athletes, and even athletes who have a grandparent with an enhanced germ-line. Would Ivy League schools slap a quota on these people to fend off the enraged parents of the "normal majority?" Imagine how a politician would fare if it became known she'd been tweaked in utero. Human history is rife with aristocide and mob attacks on perceived elites. Today lawmakers and regulators are eager to ban the technologies that would be needed to create a new breed of intellectually and physically superior people. But who's willing to stand up for the rights of this future generation? Environmentalists already deride GM crops as "frankenfood," so how far behind could the demonization of GM people be?"

Erik Baard writes "Several lines of research to prevent the formation of post traumatic stress disorder might also have the effect of stunting the development of healthy feelings of remorse over one's wrongdoings. With such therapies available one day, will soldiers or police officers be less hesitant to use lethal force in questionable situations? Will rapists and murderers qualify for treatment? This Village Voice article explores the ethical implications without pointing to any single answer."

Erik Baard writes "I wanted to bring you the last on a story that was slashdotted in June: NASA's investigation of the 'hydrino' rocket. In June I reported for wired.com that the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts was funding a six-month study of rockets propeled by plasmas created by BlackLight Power Inc. The company claims that energy is released when it shrinks hydrogen atoms, bringing the electron closer into its nucleus than thought possible. Here's the scoop: the researcher told NASA that *something* was indeed generating plasmas with more kinetic energy than would be expected for the power input. And the kicker is that BlackLight founder Randell Mills scored a paper about his plasmas in the mainstream Journal of Applied Physics -- after a few years of following this bizarre startup, that floored me." Here's the Village Voice story with these updates.

ADiva writes "There's a detailed, three-dimensional, interactive map of New York City which captures the five boroughs down to the square foot, incorporating everything from building floor plans to subway and sewer tubes. Could the city be rebuilt if destroyed? Should it?" As a New York resident, let me say that if something Bad happened to the city, I hope it is built anew rather than trying to recreate the 1910-era buildings that make up half the city's housing. An "Old New York" in the Metaverse might be fun to visit, though.

A reader writes: "Our biggest privacy issues might not be Internet auditors after all. The federal government may be using consumer data to hunt for terrorists, including private information with the cooperation of companies or individual employees. Apparently an IT/marketing employee turned over buying records from a national grocery store chain to investigators and the company hid that violation from its customers. The story mentions, toward the end, the Gilmore lawsuit that was discussed on /. but goes way beyond that issue. http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0230/baard.php "

jonerik writes "Any short list of influential rock albums of the '70s is likely to include David Bowie's 'The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars,' the story of a futuristic alien rock star and his demise during the Earth's final years. Originally released in June 1972, Ziggy is celebrating his 30th anniversary this year in fine style. First of all, the album is being reissued today in a limited edition 2-CD set. Secondly, the 1983 documentary, 'Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars,' directed by filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker ('Don't Look Back,' 'Monterey Pop') is being re-released this month and John Cameron Mitchell has an interesting interview with Pennebaker about the re-release in this week's Village Voice."

jonerik writes "Any short list of influential rock albums of the '70s is likely to include David Bowie's 'The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars,' the story of a futuristic alien rock star and his demise during the Earth's final years. Originally released in June 1972, Ziggy is celebrating his 30th anniversary this year in fine style. First of all, the album is being reissued today in a limited edition 2-CD set. Secondly, the 1983 documentary, 'Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars,' directed by filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker ('Don't Look Back,' 'Monterey Pop') is being re-released this month and John Cameron Mitchell has an interesting interview with Pennebaker about the re-release in this week's Village Voice."

Erik Baard writes: "The peer-reviewed journal Science is carrying a cover story about the possibility of table top fusion. Not cold fusion, mind you, but the apparatus might look that way to some. Oak Ridge and other labs say they have gotten the fingerprints of fusion (neutron production) from collapsing bubbles in liquid, a process that heats a local area to temperatures as hot as the surface of the sun, and releases photons. The disputes are already here -- notably from Dr. Robert Park of the American Physical Society and from critical reviewers who say they haven't repeated the neutron production. But the authors say the critics didn't calibrate their equipment correctly. Articles regarding the discovery can be found on Eureka Alert " CD: Looks legit, but Pons and Fleishman (and the University of Utah for that matter) talked a good game. I suppose I'll belive in tabletop fusion when a generator comes atached to my next laptop. The author of this post also has a longer article up at the Village Voice

Peter Meyers points to this article in the Village Voice, one of the best I've seen on the growing guerilla-networking scene. He excerpts a bit for your pleasure: "Along with some 30 other volunteers in a group called NYCwireless, Townsend's on a crusade to set up wireless Internet access zones: small areas, often called free networks, where people can tap into high-speed connections, without cables or phone lines, at no cost. Call it a marriage of the Web and pirate radio, forged even as big telecom interests bicker over the rights to wireless-spectrum licenses."

Peter Meyers points to this article in the Village Voice, one of the best I've seen on the growing guerilla-networking scene. He excerpts a bit for your pleasure: "Along with some 30 other volunteers in a group called NYCwireless, Townsend's on a crusade to set up wireless Internet access zones: small areas, often called free networks, where people can tap into high-speed connections, without cables or phone lines, at no cost. Call it a marriage of the Web and pirate radio, forged even as big telecom interests bicker over the rights to wireless-spectrum licenses."

Starfish writes: "Police and protesters are asking if new technologies used by both sides will turn street protests into bloodless, but also meaningless rituals. Real protest robots, phaser-like weapons, and other cool gadgets are discussed in this Village Voice article. Good heads up about the Ruckus Society's tech action camp in October."

John Holkeboer writes: "Is biotech all that bad? The scourge celebre of environmentalists is gaining supporters right and left for nothing less than its environmental soundness. Genetically engineered corn requires less pesticide spray and is a renewable resource that could replace petroleum. For example, Dupont is developing "Sonora"- a stretch resistant fiber that can compete with polyester but isn't 100% petroleum-based. As one industry chemist points out, "Clearly, for the chemical industry, sustainable development is the future."" The Village Voice also has a good biotech article this week, talking about the genetically engineered bollworms that we mentioned a few months ago.

An anonymous reader sent in links to two LOTR pieces in the Village Voice - a short bit about the LOTR excerpt shown at the Cannes film festival, and a longer piece about Tolkien and geekdom written by the guy who wrote A Rape in Cyberspace. I don't think I really agree with him, but it's an interesting read nonetheless.

An anonymous reader sent in links to two LOTR pieces in the Village Voice - a short bit about the LOTR excerpt shown at the Cannes film festival, and a longer piece about Tolkien and geekdom written by the guy who wrote A Rape in Cyberspace. I don't think I really agree with him, but it's an interesting read nonetheless.

Anonymous Coward writes: "While the world is scrambling to nail down the 1972 treaty of biological and chemical weapons, scientists are bracing for GM weapons. Some top experts in the field speculate in an article about "genetic assassination," "lifestyle targeting," "superweeds" to kill GM crops, etc. This goes way beyond just beefing up known pathogens or splicing a couple of them together, even beyond the 1997 fears of an "ethnic bomb." All very over-the-horizon, but fascinating. I'm glad these scientists stuck their necks out to discuss these controversial topics. Especially the step-by-step instructions for making a virus with one person's name on it given by William Nierman, the director of research of the Institute for Genomic Research, and a "lifestyle" weapon conceived by a Harvard geneticist. There's comment from the White House and others, too. At very least a fun read." A little premature reading about this today, but give it a few years... Reading about nuclear weapons in 1940 would have seemed outrageous too.

ag writes: "Paul Garrin is on a crusade to break the U.S. stranglehold on the Web. Access to the "root zone," the master file listing the so-called top-level domains--.com, .org, .net, .gov, .edu, .mil--and some 244 country-code domains, is currently in the hands of the privileged few. Through Name.Space, his own root server, Garrin is hoping to 'reterritorialize the Net, bringing it back to its original ideal of virtual space without borders or hierarchies.'" The article brings out the conflicts between Name.Space and the Open Root Server Confederation.

An unnamed reader writes: "From the latest Village Voice: 'You've got mail--and moral conundrums! A former AOL "censor" comes clean about the messy ethical dilemmas spawned by anonymity.'" This is one of the ickiest workplace accounts I've read in a while, but parts of it may make you laugh as well. You know that AOL has people watching the online traffic -- well, this proves that the job is not as glamorous and fulfilling as it sounds, but it does have some odd twists. See also this older Salon story for further insight on AOL acceptable use policies.

Daruka Krishna Das writes "Jonah Peretti turned Nike's corporate creativity against itself in a stand against third-world exploitation labor. Peretti's protest made use of the swoosh brand's Nike iD Web site, which allows customers to "build your own" sneaker, complete with a word of your choice, or "iD," printed on the side. For his iD, Peretti selected "sweatshop," which generated the e-mail exchange archived on Jockbeat's Web site here."

The Village Voice is running a story about New York City's troubles with the vendor who built the subway Metrocard system - magnetic swipe cards that work so well, I almost got arrested once because the system was... deficient. Though the story is about a specific situation, the general problem (municipalities becoming captive to corporations with specialized expertise) is extremely common. (And governments spend a fortune on such contracts.) The author-recommended solution is that the municipalities develop communal, reusable systems. I can imagine plenty of systems that would benefit - start with the air traffic control system. Is this the future of government-developed code? Or will it continue to be one-off, hideously expensive, closed code?

AG writes: "In this week's Village Voice, Jeff Howe continues his coverage of the legal battle the MPAA and Hollywood film studios are waging over DVD decryption. The current article finds MPAA president Jack Valenti not quite sure who or why he's suing." We've already gone over this on Slashdot, but it's nice to see the Voice covering this whole issue with truth in mind (the other NYC papers are either printing Valenti's Op-Ed piece or writing their own about all the Internet DVD pirates). This article does contain one interesting bit: Valenti saying playing DVDs on Linux is illegal was supposed to have been redacted from the transcripts.

AG writes: "In this week's Village Voice, Jeff Howe continues his coverage of the legal battle the MPAA and Hollywood film studios are waging over DVD decryption. The current article finds MPAA president Jack Valenti not quite sure who or why he's suing." We've already gone over this on Slashdot, but it's nice to see the Voice covering this whole issue with truth in mind (the other NYC papers are either printing Valenti's Op-Ed piece or writing their own about all the Internet DVD pirates). This article does contain one interesting bit: Valenti saying playing DVDs on Linux is illegal was supposed to have been redacted from the transcripts.

Phantom writes: "The Village Voice has great story (here) about DeCSS, 2600.com, and the legal battle about to ensue. Looks like the MPAA may be in some trouble. " Well written piece - things have been quiet here for a while, but I think both sides have been lining up necessary support. The lawyer, Martin Garbus, is going to be defending Eric Corley aka Emmanuel Goldstein, and is a /very sharp/ cookie.

James T Ensor writes "According to this story in the Village Voice S. 486 has already passed the Senate and is waiting for House approval. According to the bill, it would be illegal "to teach or demonstrate the manufacture of a controlled substance, or to distribute by any means information pertaining to, in whole or in part, the manufacture or use of a controlled substance." That includes Web sites, guys. And seeing the way things have been going lately, links to those Web sites as well. " You can read the bill by going to Thomas and searching for "methamphetamine".

Richard Finney writes "The Village Voice does a good article on 'Battle Bots.'" I've attended a Robot Wars event, and these things are a lot of fun, even if you haven't entered a weapon of mass destruction. Highly recommended.

N. D. Culver sent in an interesting Village Voice story. Here's a quote: "...Randell Mills, a Harvard-trained medical doctor who also studied biotechnology and electric engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says he's found the Holy Grail of physics: a unified theory of everything." And, the story says, Mills' company, BlackLight Power, has rounded up over $25 million in investment capital to exploit practical applications of Mills' work, which traditional physicists claim is nothing more than cold fusion rehashed. Is Mills a charlatan, or is this cutting-edge science? Read the story and decide for yourself.

It's been a long week for etoy.com. On Monday, a judge issued a preliminary injuction fining them $10,000 each day that their website was hosted at their domain. They shut it down right away, of course. They're just internet artists. They don't have six billion dollars like the company that filed the suit: eToys.com. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Click More. Update: For more information about etoy, see the freshly-updated dmoz category.

etoy was founded in 1994 by a group of European artists who worked on the cutting edge, doing performance art at techno events and raves. Their focus has always been on the internet as new medium; this interview gives a feel for their perspective.

They picked the name "etoy" literally by consensus and running code. Being from Italy, England, and Switzerland, physical collaboration was difficult, so they got together on an IRC channel and went through a list of random names generated by a perl script. When "etoy" came up, they all knew that was the name they wanted; they first used it in October of 1994. In October 1995 they put up their website at etoy.com.

Christmas 1995 came and went.

In 1996, etoy won their first artistic award. Their work typically blurs the line between real world and art; in this case, they had undertaken to demonstrate how important and yet how fragile the system of search engines was. By subverting the meta tags of prominent websites like Playboy, they pulled inexperienced surfers to their site, where they put in a plug for Kevin Mitnick, and had a few laughs at the newbies' expense. They called it the "Digital Hijack."

A curious kind of art. In 1996 it was original enough to win an award from Ars Electronica. Nowadays everyone knows the trick, the search engines find it and disregard it, and some underhanded websites try to make a fast buck by stealing trademarks - but etoy did it first, for fun.

Christmas 1996 came and went.

In June 1997 etoys.com, with an S, began operations. It wasn't until October that their website went online. They filed for a U.S. trademark on their domain, at which point etoy got a little alarmed and filed for their own trademark on their own domain. Maybe because they're based in Europe, or maybe for some other reason, etoy says their application is still pending on some technicalities.

But it doesn't matter when their trademark is granted. Their website went online in October 1995, two full years before etoys', and it's date of first use that's important - not the date of filing.

Christmas 1997 came and went.

Christmas 1998 came and went.

But now it's 1999, the year of the e-tailer. Suddenly etoys.com, with an S, has gone public and is worth six billion dollars. Meanwhile etoy.com, without an S, again putting the spotlight on corporations and society, has raised money by "selling shares" of itself. I'm not quite sure how they did it, but at an artists' gathering, a half-serious, half-mocking exhibition-slash-fundraising they pulled in something over ten thousand dollars. (Which they then donated to their friends in the U.S., also working at the boundary of society and corporations, RTMark, best-known for their George W. Bush parody site.)

In the year of the e-tailer, what kind of speech scares corporations more than anything? Disrespect. Artists who don't play by the rules. People who don't understand that business is serious business.

Etoys.com, with an S, wants etoy.com, with no S. They offered money. At one point they were offering cash and (mostly) stock that would have been worth almost half a million dollars. No sale.

But that should give us an idea of how much they're willing to spend on lawyers.

Finally, in September, eToys filed a lawsuit against etoy, on the grounds that a potential customer had mistakenly gone to the wrong site and had seen the message that - if they wanted to enjoy etoy.com to its fullest extent - they should download "the fucking flash plugin." They also didn't like the pierced breasts or etoy's sense of humor.

To be precise, they claim that "the antisocial, obscene, and offensive images associated with defendants' use of the mark 'etoy,' both on the Internet and elsewhere, have tarnished the ETOYS® mark and the eToys brand name..."

Let this be a lesson to anyone whose domain is coveted by a multi-billion-dollar company: careful with the F-word.

In October and November the case was bounced from an L.A. court to U.S. District Court, and finally to a California State Court. In late November the judge refused a request to let the European artists attend the proceedings by teleconference. In those proceedings, the judge was told that the artists had engaged in "digital hijacking" (the 1996 project), and had sold shares of stock without being properly regulated on an official stock exchange (the 1999 fundraising exhibition). Worst of all, they were hosting illegal hardcore pornography (which was actually just a link to another site).

They claim:

"Defendants use the mark ETOY indiscriminately and in random association with unrelated concepts. For example, on the etoy web site alone, defendants use the mark ETOY in conjunction with other, randomly selected words to create phrases such as: 'etoy.research,' 'etoy.eternity,' 'etoy.timezone,' 'etoy.history,' 'etoy.servers,' 'etoy.strategy,' 'etoy.journeys,' 'etoy.universe,' and 'etoy.crew.'

"By using the mark ETOY in this random, indiscriminate manner, defendants cause both ETOY and the ETOYS® mark to lose any distinctive, signifying meaning."

Serious business.

The lawyers also kindly suggested that, since at least one etoy member is from Switzerland, they really would be more suited to a website in the .ch domain: etoy.ch. Never mind the years of work and the reputation that the artists have built around etoy.com - we all know that "dot-com" belongs to America!

Faced with a torrent of buzzwords, the judge issued a preliminary injunction barring etoy from: operating a website in the etoy.com domain; associating their domain name with the "digital hijack"; or selling their "shares" in the U.S.

Penalty for disobeying the injuction: $10,000 per day in fines.

On November 30, etoy.com shut down its Apache webserver. Its last access came from the eToys law firm (which has been monitoring it closely). They had no choice, really. In fact, when I talked with a member of etoy, he was very nervous about saying things which might get him in more legal trouble. Suddenly, the artists are afraid to speak.

How can this be, when, as the Village Voice wrote in an excellent article, this lawsuit doesn't even pass the "giggle test"? It's absurd to think that one website can shut down another for having a similar domain name - when the second site is not a domain poacher and has been operating two years longer than the first.

The date of the next court hearing, at which this preliminary injunction will surely be overturned: December 27th. How convenient! Just after the Christmas shopping season.

If you'd like to see more about etoy, their domain is down of course, and I don't know of any mirrors, but their fans have constructed a site at toywar.com that has some information. And etoy may put some or all of its site back online at its IP number (not name!): 146.228.204.72:8080.

Good rules have been written to prevent things like this from happening. Unfortunately, the rules have not taken effect yet for most domains. Even after they do take effect, their legal status will be uncertain until they are tested in court.

Those rules are ICANN's Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. This policy ensures that the conditions under which a domain name can be disputed are strictly limited. For such a dispute even to proceed, a complainant must assert that each of three things is true:

your domain name infringes on a trademark;

you have "no rights or legitimate interests" to your domain;

and your domain name is being used "in bad faith."

As long as you're operating in good faith, or you have any legitimate interest in your domain, there is not even cause to bring up a dispute over a domain. Clearly this puts etoy.com on firm ground, because regardless of the trademark issue (which should be resolved once their mark registration is granted) they win on the other two points. This doesn't stop clueless judges from issuing injuctions, of course. But having these rules codified as official policy will give the legal system better guidelines to operate by.

These rules went into effect for some domain name registries on Wednesday, but will not apply to the most popular registry, Network Solutions, until January.

I can't even complain to eToys.com. I clicked all over their website looking for an email contact address and couldn't find one. When I filled in the web form to ask that someone get in touch with me for this story, all I got was a email form letter:

It is our goal to respond to all order-related e-mail within 24 hours. If your e-mail is not order-related, we will do our best to take care of your questions, concerns and suggestions as soon as possible.

It's 72 hours later, so my email must not have been sufficiently order-related.

In the meantime, I can at least have the satisfaction of taking my order-related business elsewhere this holiday season. I'm sure eToys couldn't care less, but it will serve me as a small comfort during the remaining 22 holy shopping days. In a world run by retailers, e-tailers, and lawyers, I need everything I can get to help me make sense of the bizarre orgy of spirituality-soaked commerce that serves as the endcap of each year. Hohoho.

An AC sent in this Village Voice story - "In a highly unusual move last week, FBI agents called mike zieper, an independent artist who goes by the name Mike Z., and "requested" that he remove his site from the Internet. When he declined, the FBI worked in tandem with the U.S. Attorney's office to persuade his Web host and its server to pull Zieper's site--18 days after it went up--without having a subpoena or court order of any kind." The site was apparently crowdedtheater.com. What annoyed the FBI? Apparently the site had a video about rioting on New Year's Eve. Will the FBI shut down every site mentioning disruption on 2000-01-01?

Update: 11/24 08:11 by michael : One of our alert /. readers apparently saw and saved the video while the site was up, and has put up a mirror.

Catatomic writes "The Village Voice has an interesting article about Katz "Voices From The Hellmouth" Check it out here. " Well, interesting is one way to put it; incendiary is another. Worth checking out though. Click below to get a response from Katz, who was interviewed for this article. I'm not a big fan of intra-media incestuous disputes, and I take plenty of criticism and disagreement without complaint. But I'm getting a lot of e-mail about this, and I feel strongly about the Hellmouth series, so I feel ought to respond. The Voice piece was, in my mind, neither an honest nor accurate reflection of a very brief, hurried interview I gave on the phone with the writer who calls himself Jane Dark a couple of weeks ago. First off, I made a huge point of not comparing these experiences to the Holocaust. Not a single e-mailer made that comparison, and I think it's ludicrous, although the pain in these messages was truly breathtaking.But to liken their experiences to the Holocaust has never occurred to me, or to the thousands of kids e-mailing me. Many did compare the experience of being outsiders to being gay.

I said the e-mails had the feeling of testimony, which survivors of disasters often used. He asked me if this were like the Holocaust, and I said I suppose the idea of testimony was similiar, but that they weren't comparable experiences. So here's a lesson in how media work.

Dark asked me a half dozen times if these were all middle-class males, and I said no: nearly half were women, and my impression -- Î couldn't know for sure -- was that a huge chunk were working class kids. The Voice piece obviously reflects a pre-conceived and provocatively contrarian point of view, to which the writer is perfectly well entitled.

But I think it's pretty snarky to misrepresent what I said in support of it. He could just say it himself. I don't know why he even bothered to call. And I'm not into squawking about what reporters write. If you dish it out, you ought to take it.

Then, of course, there's the profoundly stupid idea at the heart of the piece that middle-class kids bring victimization on themselves, or don't deserve sympathy if they are harassed, humiliated, excluded, or sent home or suspended for being different from most other middle-class kids. In fact, it's so foolish an idea I doubt he even believes it.

This may be an honest difference of opinion, but it sure wasn't honestly gathered.So I'm telling the people e-mailing me to move on. Let's not play.

Jen Matson writes "Village Voice writer Austin Bunn examines the Gnome GUI, Linux, and (in a sidebar) his own experience trying to install Linux on his IBM laptop computer. "

Jen Matson writes "Village Voice writer Austin Bunn examines the Gnome GUI, Linux, and (in a sidebar) his own experience trying to install Linux on his IBM laptop computer. "