Slashdot Mirror
etoy.com Returns
The lawyers have been on the phone, and etoy.com is finally back up, after over two months of outage. Hopefully this marks the an end to all the legal wranglings with eToys. See the most recent story for the details on what's happened over the last few weeks.
clearly in this sector delivery times are critical, and matter to their customer base much more than a bit of corporate bulldozing. Remember, your average net consumer doesn't care about (until recently) obscure European conceptual artists. They care about getting little Jonny's toy on time, and eToys were below industry standard here.
I think that the result is fantastic, and was registered on toywar a while back, but I, and the average slashdotter, are not the same as the standard net user. The stock fall had very little to do with the domain dispute.
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
The fundamental goal of E-Toys, like any corporation, is to make money for its shareholders. Have you seen what this action did to its stock price? See that peak at the left, that's when they filed suit. By Xmas, they were less than half that value, during a very busy and very profitable shopping season. By now, their share price is below their initial IPO value of $19.
There was no legal precident set, but hopefully we have set the meme in corporate minds that if you take frivolous action against people on the internet, you risk a Public Relations and Financial disaster. If the cause is just, we don't need the courts anymore.
Legal backing would have been nice, but the US Courts have an iffy record of upholding peoples rights in the face of high paid corporate lawyers, so unless the courts change I wouldn't count on their help.
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Open mind, insert foot.
Um, have you even read any of the stories on the topic? etoy owned the name years before etoys even existed
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Is the boycott over? Can I buy my Pokemon stuff now?
Isn't this just great? A gang of European homosexuals and drug abusers steals (yes, steals) the "good name" of an honest company, and the tort monster chews them up and spits them out. "Sorry guys! You don't own your own name any more!"
To put it bluntly, etoy.com didn't rip off the etoys.com name. Quite the contrary; etoy.com was up and running a full two years before etoys.com ever existed. Etoys.com is the real ripoff, not etoy.com.
And by the way, where did you ever get the idea that the etoy.com crew was "a gang of European homosexuals and drug abusers"? They are European, but I've never seen anything indicating that they were, or weren't for that matter, either gay or drug users. I very much doubt you've got proof either. Or are you just being a prejudiced bastard? The latter seems quite likely.
By the way, the only way I can see that you'd even get that idea is if you knew what it was they did. In which case, I find it very hard to believe that you wouldn't know that etoy.com had the name long before etoys.com did. Or are you one of those types that believe that those with money should be allowed to plunder those who do not, simply because they have the resources to do so?
Before I go any further I should state that I am, in fact, a capitalist. So don't go accusing me of being a socialist of any kind.
If you don't own your own name, what do you own? Not much. Just whatever pittance is left to you by the radical leftists who control the government.
Agreed, totally. Etoy.com does own its own name. Etoys.com would have stolen it given the chance, but thankfully the courts ruled for justice (a nice change).
Do they even care what a savage disincentive this is for business?
What, the fact that you can't steal from someone else? How's that a disincentive for business (well, those businesses that don't involve stealing anyway)?
"Freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength" quoth the famous Socialist George Orwell
If you're going to quote, please quote in context. You completely ruin the effect otherwise.
Yet another irrational outburst of mindless has swept Slashdot.
Yep. And I feel bad for responding to it, but you've left me little in the way of a choice, since I can't mod this one down.
By the way, I think the word you were looking for was "mindlessness." "Mindless" is an adjective; "mindlessness" is a noun. You can't have a "wave of mindless."
Ho, hum. I doubt very much that any of you have any concept of property rights at all.
You're right; you don't have any concept of property rights at all (and you're certainly a part of "any of you [Slashdotters]"). At least, not as applies to people. You appear to be the type who thinks that a business can take anything owned by an ordinary person with no compensation therefor, simply because as you seem to see it business is always right. Furthermore, you seem to be so ardent in your beliefs that you don't even bother to research the things you argue about, at least not thoroughly enough to make any real arguments. And I haven't even touched on your apparent bigotry yet. But that's for another post.