No EToy for Christmas

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.

Comments

The supreme court

[Ex Machina]

One of these STUPID cases should be taken all the way to the supreme court to set a precident.

Re:The supreme court

[xscarecrowx]

Etoy prolly just doesn't have the massive amounts of money to spend on a lenghty court battle so they just gave up instead. :\

Re:The supreme court

[AugstWest]

This begs a question, and points out one of the major failings in our legal system. It's extremely clear to anyone who is informed on the issues involved that etoys.com is seriously abusing the legal system, while playing dumb.

There should be severe penalties for such behavior. Clogging up the courts and preying on people without enough money to defend themselves should be a basis for countersuit, or damages in the event of such a verdict.

Re:The supreme court

[sherpajohn]

This sounds like another case of might is right, but perhaps more so, the saddly North American idea that commerce comes before all. The current WTO protests are as good sign that some people on this contintent at least are wise to this fallacious thinking. I find it tragic and sad that in a supposed democracy, money wins over law in a court, intimidation by Federal law enforcement agencies supercedes the right of free speech (the recent shutdown of the Times Square News Year's video sight....was reported in the village voice...) Alas it appears the internet is being coopted, as we knew it eventually would, in the name of power and money. I have often thought it ironic that a technology, the roots of which are encased firmly in military research, should prove to be so liberating to citizens of the world. I now am beginning to think this hope was short sighted, it seems that even if they let us play with it for a while, now that it is firmly entrenched in popular culture, they want ownership back again.

Re:The supreme court

[bungalow]

The fact that they had to download a "fuckin" applett or a "friggin, or "freakin" sadly worked against Etoy.

Despite any noble shows of free press/expression, there is still a bias in the courts against anything midldly profane.

If the message sufficiently lacking in "good, decent, holy, Red-White-and-Blue" then its bad and evil and underground and should be thwarted.
_______________________________

Re:The supreme court

[skizyx]

I understand the frustration of etoy with being confronted with the prospect of etoys being silly. However, the court is actually acting in a rational manner. The injunction is preliminary, meaning that it will not last longer than about 15 days (I don't have my copy of the Federal Rules in front of me) and then a hearing will be held to determine if the requsite circumstances exist to warrant a continuation of the injunction. I don't think the injunction will be continued (which would also remove the $10K fine). Equitable remedies are sometimes more difficult to maintain than legal remedies, and injunctions are no exception. As for the fine, such a fine is in place not because etoy is doing something bad. The fine is there to enforce a court order. The US courts can't really go around jailing europeans for contempt of court. So the court does the only thing it can in a civil contempt situation. There is some question as to how such a fine would be enforced as the artists are not americans, but this fine is not in place to punish etoy.

Finally, the interesting thing about this entire suit is that it would not exist at all except the US ratified the Bern Convention to bring the US in compliance with the European Trademark laws! The source of the dilution statute (which is the *only* basis for etoys argument as etoy was a prior user and thus has rights to use the mark under traditional US trademark law) is european law! Not US law! Unusually, I don't think this is a situation of american lawyers messing with the system. US trademark law would have given prior user rights to etoy and the entire problem would not have come up!

Re:The supreme court

[mx80]

Speaking of enforcability: If etoy transfered their domain registration to a European registrar (AFAIK, they do register .com domains, and transfer of registration is possible), then wouldn't eToys be left out in the cold? I mean, a California court may be able to force Network Solutions to block a domain name, but can the force, say, France Telecom (ie, oleane.net)?

Timely and useful: Thank You Slashdot

[FreeUser]

This is exactly the kind of timely and relevant news I for one keep readhing slashdot for.

I have yet to start my Christmas shopping, and intend to do most of it on-line (for my nefew, four nieces aged one to six, and various other relatives). I probably would have wound up using etoys.com for at least some purchases, but in light of these events I will make a point in not doing so.

Those of us (in the US at least) conscientious enough vote every couple of years. ALL OF US vote with our money (dollars, yen, euros, whatever) every day. It is my profound pleasure to vote against the fucks at etoys.com for what they have done this Christmas season.

Re:Timely and useful: Thank You Slashdot

[turg]

Be sure to write etoys and (Very Politely) tell them this.
-
<SIG>
"I am not trying to prove that I am right... I am only trying to find out whether." -Bertolt Brecht

Re:Timely and useful: Thank You Slashdot

[The Salamander]

I totally agree! Just the other day I was
browsing etoys.com, and was very likely going to make several purchases this week.

After reading this, I can no longer support etoys.com in any way. I will not be purchasing from them, and I will be sending them a note as to why.

Sure its only $50 or so, but it doesn't take that many lost purchases to start hurting.

Re:Timely and useful: Thank You Slashdot

[gorilla]

Link to send them comments.

Re:Timely and useful: Thank You Slashdot

[elyard]

I've done so. For general interest, this is what I sent them.

Sigh. I do wish I could control the temper thing, though...


This message is for the corporate officers and lawyers who work for/at etoys.com.

Your recent work to limit free speech on the internet has me concerned enough to purchase toys from legitimate corporations and resellers. I'm sorry, but you had no business taking etoy.com to court.

As a result, I will be distrubting the story of your actions to as many people as I can get ahold of, and likewise advise them to do the same.

For years, for all the years that etoy.com has been in existence, you did nothing, and your now doing so reveals nothing but your own implacable confusion regarding what the internet is about. Basically, it is just not a tool to line your own pockets, especially not at the expense of others, others' freedoms, rights, or tolerance, regardless of which nation hosts them.

I have no use for you. I doubt anyone else I know has any use for you either, especially as there are so many other sites and places to do business. Hopefully, your actions will not taint eCommerce any further.

It would be too bad if your own stupidity and greed put you out of business, but those that sow the seed of intolerance should enjoy their bitter harvest.

Happy Christmas.

Sincerely,
Scott Elyard

Re:Timely and useful: Thank You Slashdot

[seaportcasino]

Its a bummer too because etoys does have that really set of commercials. The ones with the cool music and the parents that find gift ideas for their children by watching their interests, then going to etoys and then going to etoys and typing in whatever comes to their head.
Oh well, I won't be shopping there now. What they did was "just plain evil, man".

Once again it is time to bring out thehangingtree.com for a public hanging of the executives and lawyers of etoys!

Re:Timely and useful: Thank You Slashdot

[Deosyne]

Since we're sharing: :)

To whom it may concern, I am writing to congratulate the eToys legal department for their exceptional display of Gestapo tactics to remove a website that dared to have a similar name to yours (and two years before your site was a brainfart in some rich kids head, as well). This pathetic display of legal lynching against the people, and yes, those were real people that you folks decided to screw around with, disgusts me to my very core. You may as well continue your terror campaign unhindered in the future, as you have made all of your potential customers well aware of the organization that they may have made the mistake of dealing with, so you have no need to worry about possibly getting our business back in the future. My only regret is that I did patronize your site last year, and although I cannot take that back, at least I can make the effort to make others aware of what kind of Nazis hide behind the cheery-colored facade of eToys.com. No need to reply to this, as I would not use my real name anyhow in case you found it objectionable and decided to use fast talking to con another ignorant court into putting an injunction on me.

Of course, I understand that they aren't likely to care for our opinions, but at least they can enjoy the wrath of the Slashdot Effect until everyone forgets about this in two days. And yes, I am aware that this could have been more polite, but I think that they got the message across.

Deosyne

My personal favorite...

[GoNINzo]

My personal favorite of this argument is that they suggested that they change the domain to 'etoy.co.ch'.

'Might makes right' is something that should be and can be fought on the digital frontier. Now what can we do about this, instead of just blustering and going 'that's wrong!' Suggestions?

Re:My personal favorite...

[Trombone8vb]

etoy should have suggested that eToys.com move to a .us domain. I bet that would get some laughs.

I see a countersuit

[meckardt]

Based on the facts as stated in this article, I would say that the people from the etoy site would have the basis for a counter suit against EToys. And since EToys is worth $6 billion, it seems they can afford a multi-million dollar settlement.

Maybe with that, the etoy people can afford to get themselves a better address... one that won't be confused with a stupid toy company.

Mike Eckardt meckardt@yahoo.spam.com

Re:I see a countersuit

[Calidon]

How completely appalling! I promply fired off an email to etoys.com telling them that I, nor anyone I could get a hold of, would be shopping at etoys.com this Christmas season. I can't believe that a judge actually made that ruling....

Re:FIRST POST

[akintayo]

wow that is amazing.

It is not surprising that etoys sought to remove etoy, it will happen a lot more as the net becomes more commercial. And while some may stand for free speech those that stand for free trade will win everytime. Has happened in the pass and will happen in the future

Supreme court ruling anyone?

[tweder]

It's very sad to live in a day when having a domain name that's similar to another company's can get your site pulled under threat of heavy fines. What's particularly aggrivating is the fact that they were around long before eToys was (especially if we look at internet time). Looks like I'd better hurry and register slashdoot.org.

Oh please...

[Anonymous Coward]

a) Who cares.. b) How stupid would you feel if you wonder into your favorite RadioShack (or Tower Records) only to find yourself in RadioShucks or Tower Ripcords run of the mill crazy place :) We are all very brave when time comes to protect something we do not really care about. O yes, right, if we do not stop that today , tomorrow some big corporation will come and sue you to take away your precious name, Johny:) Wake up and look at REAL problems...

Re:Oh please...

[Panaflex]

"Wake up and look at REAL problems..."

I'm sorry, but everybody has priorities. Just because you're not the SAME, doesn't mean it isn't important.

Alot of people have businesses or offerings that are "close enough" in name that precidents(sp?) like this could really hurt the small man.

Even if he does run a place called "RadioShucks". He deserves to have it. And, atleast in the real world, a trademark dispute will not only take the conflicting names or symbols into consideration, BUT ALSO THE PRODUCTS AND SERVICES that each offers. (Think Big Red gum, and Big Red drink. Kraft foods, Kraft financial services.)

If etoy had been a parody site of eToys, you bet your buns no judge would infringe on their first amendment right. If their just doing their own thing.. then is it right for a legal semi-truck to squish em like a bug?!

"Did somebody say, 'McDougle?'" - overheard from the oval office on a whitehouse tour.

Pan

Re:Oh please...

[Quarters]

Your double reply only doubly underscores the fact that you don't understand the article at all. If it were another business like your ficitous Radio Shuck then the dispute would have some more legitimacy. But, it's not. EToy was an established name of a group of people who are NOT a business and who are NOT trying to lure customers away from EToys.com via nefarious domain naming. They had the name and the domain years before EToys.com was even registered as a business. Their web site is being used in good faith, and they have a legitimate interest in the domain name (as it is the name of their troupe). It is not trademark infringement. So, it should not be treated as such. EToys.com shouldn't be allowed to do what they are doing.

Re:Oh please...

[parc]

There is some truth to this:
Several years ago, there was a company called AutoShack. RadioShack sued them. RadioShack won. Now there's a lot of "AutoZone"s around the country.

Re:Oh please...

[Anonymous Coward]

i care. the eToy are friends of mine. they're a group of smart, clever guys who have something to say and say it well. they've been making art about and for the internet for a long time, doing crazy and clever things, reminding us of the fragility of the online environment and the ease with which truth can be manipulated. they're a good antidote for internet hype. and they were etoy FIRST. by YEARS. a big corporation is RIGHT now coming and suing to take away their precious name. no joke. not soon, but now. it's really happening. this is not alarmism, this is war. what am i still allowed to own? if someone comes and tells me i can't go by my own first and last name any more, do i have the right to tell them to fuck off? can i even use the words 'fuck off' if fuckoff.com copyrights itself? -mykle-

am i missing something?

[pal]

how on earth does a us district court impose fines on european citizens (regardless of WHY)? isn't there a jurisdictional problem here? is the machine running the site located in the united states? if not, why would they take it down?

(ps - i don't know if i would file this under censorship. do you have a section for corporate extortion?)

- pal

Re:am i missing something?

[Phrogman]

Its all part of the American Empire. The US is the functional equivalent of a world Empire - courtesy of their economic strength and the US military which backs it.

Somehow we have let corporations become the law of the world. They have greater rights than the individual - because they have more money than that individual. This case is going to be *very* important - if Etoys.com wins this, then the entire domain name scheme is meaningless. If I register a good name, all that matters is how much money someone has if they want to take it from me. And what about .net and .org? I own a .net and the .com equivalent is registered to a company already, what if they dislike my content, can they have me shut down? I sure as hell can't afford a lawyer for more than a day.

In an equally meaningless lawsuit, and to show how patently stupid this judgement is, if I were the folks at Etoy I would now turn around and sue Network Solutions for selling them the Etoy.com domain when it was going to violate another company's copyright only a few years after the sale. Surely NS should have seen that, right?
It would make as much sense as this lawsuit.

Of course the biggest problem that the Etoy.com folks have is that their not US citizens. Were they US citizens there would be much more of a public and media outcry in the States, but since they are foreigners(sic) they have less attention/importance/rights in the world.

I suggest we promulgate a complete ban on dealing with Etoys.com - and try to convince as many other folks to boycott it as well. How 'bout a "Why I don't shop at Etoys.com" graphic you can display on your website and link to this story?
Perhaps a grass roots democratic demonstration of our collective displeasure might garner some results...

Re:am i missing something?

[Znork]

A lot of slashdot people are system admins. In these cases, Id suggest changing the ole filters to simply block out the offending sites. This would hardly violate the usual corporate standards; employees should not be using the net for private stuff and if a sysadmin 'notices' heavy private use of, for example, etoys, just shut access to them down, and suddenly they have 40000 customers less.

Now, where did I put that filter ruleset... amazon and etoys.

Re:am i missing something?

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

An easier way to take care of this would be to tell your DNS server that it is authoritative in the etoys.com domain. Then, pull a copy of the records from some site like kinky-pron.com, and tell your DNS server (easy if you're running BIND) that this file contains the records for etoys.com. I mean, an unfortunate mistake like that (maybe you added a porn site to your service in the domain "etois.com" and misspelled it completely by accident). Now, if you're a sizable ISP, you've directed a large number of people to a porn site in "etoys.com" how many of those people (assuming they want toys for their children) will return? Remember the Zelda.com fuss when Zelda 64 came out? Things could get "interesting". And, no, I am not speaking on behalf of my employer in this post. :)

ICANN rules don't override law

[turg]

Maybe I'm missing something but I don't think the ICANN rules will prevent this type of lawsuit.

First, national trademark law overrides the agreement -- the agreement can't prevent people from defending their trademark (or it would erode everyone's trademarks -- trademark law is generally 'defend it or lose it').

Second, the agreement is between ICANN and the current owner of the allegedly infringing domain, not the person/entity doing the suing -- it's even possible the plaintiff has never heard of ICANN. And even if they do own domains, thus having entered into this agreement with ICANN, the agreement applies to domains they already own, not other people's domains that they don't like.

-
<SIG>
"I am not trying to prove that I am right... I am only trying to find out whether." -Bertolt Brecht

Re:ICANN rules don't override law

[SilverFate]

There is one problem with that, etoy did not violate trademark law since they where not trying to defraud the public into thinking that they where e-toys. Any lawyer who does not see that should be stricken from the bar.

SilverFate
[Y]our wise men don't know what its like to be thick as a brick - Ian Anderson, "Thick as a Brick"

Re:ICANN rules don't override law

[twinpot]

Ahh, but WHOSE _national_ trademark laws apply. Whose jurisdiction applies. Maybe etoy should sue etoys in Switzerland or one of their other resident companies.

This is only going to become more and more of a problem.

I recall a related incident in NZ. A small shop in a small town in NZ had a name like Harrads, which was the name of the original owner. Harrods (UK) took exception and tried all sorts of bully boy tactics against the shopcompany. In protest, the whole town renamed all business to Harrads ...... and the town changed its name. Harrods backed off ;-)

Re:ICANN rules don't override law

[silvwolf]

And who's to say that etoys.com isn't violating on the rights of etoy.com. What if I had heard of etoy offline and wanted to go see their website. Being forgetful, I may accidentally go to etoys.com and be presented with a bunch of Legos that I want to order.

I buy too many Legos and go backrupt (hey, I'm in college, a few hundred dollars of Legos could do that!), all because some low lives put up a toy store using a name similar to that of a group of starving artists.

Sheesh.

Re:ICANN rules don't override law

[wolf-]

The judge in this case needs to really re-read his trademark law books. He seems to be siding with a "registered trademark" holder over a "non-registered trademark" holder. In the United States, one can have a trademark and/or servicemark be legally recognized through use, and not just via registration. In hind site, the etoys.com trademark registration should have been challenged by etoy.com WHILE they attempted to file their own registration. They had had their name in use, nationally and international for 2 full years before the etoys.com registration.

As far as ICANN goes, the organization is a joke, without any real or political power.

No E-Toys

[Dr Caleb]

Does anyone remember the good old days? When Gopherspace could get you anything you could think of? When the internet was a place for sharing ideas? Who let big business in here anyway? It's all one big commercial now!

Wow

[finkployd]

Three stories in a row about big business screwing over little people in a globalist setting. Very interesting. Throw in the Co$ story, and ./ is becoming a dangerous, subvertive site that needs to have some government agency shut it down before it causes some civil unrest.
Hear that FBI/BATF/CIA/WTO/etc? Something needs to be done about this site! Think about the children!

Finkployd

How can this be enforced?

[Nicolas MONNET]

How can an US court enforce a $10000 fine on Europeans? Also ... in this kind of cases, I *think* that normally, at least here in France, the ruling court should be the in the defendants' jursidiction. But IANAL.

Re:How can this be enforced?

[fprintf]

IANAL either, and I certainly don't know that much about the Internet... but isn't the fact that it is a .com site make them subject to US Law regardless of where the actual server is?

Re:How can this be enforced?

[Zemran]

Even if I registered a .us name I would not be subject to US law unless I were in the US. A .com address does not in any way signify any relationship with the US except that US companies are usually arrogant enough to think the US is the world.

...

[Signal 11]

This has been forwarded to my friends and family not to shop there.

Now to the heart of the matter - we already know who's going to win this one. The domain dispute policy will be amended to allow etoys to excercise it's unfair domain grab, and in a few months nobody will care. That's how it happened with dozens of other sites, modulo a few featured here on slashdot. The question is, of course, why haven't we forcefully lifted control from the government and InterNIC? We have the authority to reprogram our own, personal DNS servers with whatever information we see fit. People are under the impression that the internet will fall apart if we don't maintain The One True Registry. Well... my vote is for The One True Democratic Registry. We need a digital haven - some place on the planet where politicians can stick a hot poker up their butt if they disagree with the content or purpose of the site (or for that matter, greedy corporations). Freedom of speech taken to it's logical conclusion.

My vote? Sysadmins of the world, unite! Form a second registry and use it. In the meantime.. anybody know if there's a country around that I can get enough access to kick of a "digital haven" - a country with no laws barring any online conduct and outside WTO and US control?

Re:...

[Bogey]

actually, i think there already is a similar effort: alternic. but they don't seem to be doing well at all and i believe one of the head honchos went to jail for hacking into internic servers.

i believe you idea is booth a Good Thing(tm) and a Truly Horrible Thing. imagine a world where everyone fights bitterly over not only which OS or browser to use, but which toplevel dns. some sites won't be accessible from some dnses (you can type the ip directly, sure, but in the age of virtual hosting that's not always enough), mail servers will reject mail from entire topdomains. and you can bet your sweet ass that a certain company will embrace and extend the market by launching ActiveTopDNS.

on the other hand, it's a good idea because it will give the people at internic something to think about.

--bogey

Re:...

[humphrm]

This has been forwarded to my friends and family not to shop there

And, in fact, your friends and family will be much better off. I found that except for ONE item on my son's wish-list, all were cheaper at other toy sites and even at brick-and-mortar sites than at etoys.com.

Examples:

• LeapFrog Phonics Bus: $19.98 at Noodle Kidoodle, $29.99 at eToys. $24.99 at ToyTime.
• New Bright Power Horse Loader: $19.99 at Noodle Kidoodle, $34.99 at eToys, $21.99 at ToyTime.
• The popular Elmo's Radio Controlled Roadway was also $60 at eToys up until yesterday, when ToyTime put it on sale at $39 and so eToys matched it. Up to that time, eToys was $10 more than the brick-and-mortar venue.

In my opinion, eToys is just capitalizing on the growing popularity of e-commerce without actually offering the benefit that e-commerce is supposed to provide: lower prices. They've got their gorilla advertising dollars to spend on T.V. ads to get people shopping there, but an intelligent consumer would soon quickly learn that their prices aren't the best.

Re:...

[ddstreet]

Alternic.org has been around a long time. The problem is, you need to use their nameserver, since your local (ISP) nameserver won't be checking their DNS registry. So other people would have a hard time finding your site.

Re:...

[yek401]

the crypt (a la cryptonomicon)?

Re:...

[drewpt]

It's about convenience. No lines, no crowds. Comes straight to the door.

That's the advantage.

Re:...

[Deluge]

Maybe for some... I for one enjoy takin' the car out and driving around, walkin' through the mall, etc. It's just more fun than sitting in front of a computer, something which I do all day at work. The only reason I *HAVE* bought things off the internet is because they were a) significantly cheaper or b) they were simply not available at local retailers.

---

Re:...

[humphrm]

That's not the case at all. Catalog shopping has been around for a long time; in fact computer-based shopping member-only clubs (via a private dial-up number) came and went in the 80's with little success.

It's all about prices, IMHO. Oh, yeah... and skipping out on sales tax, but that goes to price also.

Re:...

[drewpt]

Online ordering is a lot more convenient than catalog shopping. What, I don't have a catalog? No biggie, with online ordering you don't need one.

People can hop on the internet, jump to a place like buy.com and buy all their presents within minutes. Don't kid yourself, it's about convenience, and in some cases, money. The negative aspect of catalog shopping is you don't always have a catalog with you.

The internet helps negate all the negatives of catalog shopping.

I live in LA. This city is about convenience. For god sakes, we have valet parking at our malls.

First come, first serve?

[legoboy]

First come, first serve? Listen to the money talk.

Domain Name: ETOY.COM
Record created on 13-Oct-1995.

Domain Name: ETOYS.COM
Record created on 03-Nov-1997.

------

can we say BOYCOTT boys and girls?

[Oo.et.oO]

that's good. now say it again with me:
BOYCOTT etoys.com (with an s)
they are not getting any of my hard earned $$.
this kind of shite gives me the chills.

Re:can we say BOYCOTT boys and girls?

[alexy]

I have purchased from them before, and just sent them email saying that because of the etoy.com I am forever gone as a customer and will not recommend their web site to anyone. .

Well, laws don't apply to the big boys

[pngwen]

Remember, money controls the government. I'm sure that eventually it will be illegal to register a domain if you don't own the trademark to each of the letters in it. Oh well.

I'm sure that some slashdot readers could give some legal advice to the guys over at etoy.com. And if you are a corporate lawyer, shame on you. You should not defend the monsters.

There are always a few addresses you can use...

[stienman]

There are always a few addresses you can use...

admin@etoys.com
abuse@etoys.com
sales@etoys.com
legal@etoys.com
webmaster@etoys.com
hostmaster@etoys.com

And, of course, they would be more impressed if we snail-mailed them and *gasp* called them or faxed them:

eToys
3100 Ocean Park Blvd., Suite 300
Santa Monica, CA 90405
US

Administrative Contact:
- Admin, eToys
- admin@ETOYS.COM
- (310) 664-8100 Voice
- (310) 664-8101 Fax
Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
- eToys HostMaster
- hostmaster@ETOYS.COM
- (310) 664-8100 Voice
- (310) 664-8101 Fax
Billing Contact:
- Admin, eToys
- admin@ETOYS.COM
- (310) 664-8100 Voice
- (310) 664-8101 Fax

I suppose that those who host their DNS info really don't have anything to do with it, but it might be a reminder for them to know who their customers *really* are if we sent a *very* polite email referencing this article, and asking what their opinion of their customer's actions are...
DNS Servers:
NAME.ROC.FRONTIERNET.NET
NAME.PHX.FRONTIERNET.NET
NS1.IDEALAB.COM
NS2.IDEALAB.COM

PLEASE be nice in any and all communications with anyone! (Man, I wish I didn't have to say that!) We can be nice and still express displeasure in someone's actions.

-Adam

"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence" - Napoleon Bonaparte.

Re:There are always a few addresses you can use...

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of you in the US. Express your view via voice, it will cost them more:

Customer Service Contact
If you would like to speak to a customer service representative about your order, please call us at 1-800-GO-ETOYS (1-800-463-8697). We are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

This is a troll -- moderate down

[Anonymous Coward]

what if {
There was a coordinated DoS attack against the rat bastards at etoys.com ... right before xmas?
Might these lawyer happy companies realize that the net has it's own rules and they can't just shove whatever they want down our collective throates?
} end hypothitical situation

I wouldn't _advocate_ such a thing though -- that'd be illegal :-(

This is insane

[SilverFate]

The easiest and most obviouse thing to do is to move their site to a server to a country that is lax on copyright enforcement. This would probably meaning changing the .com, but a US judge would have no authority over property in another country which legally owned by some one who is a citizen of another country.

SilverFate
[Y]our wise men don't know what its like to be thick as a brick - Ian Anderson

clueless judges

[emmons]

This makes me mad and sad at the same time. My god, the judge should have thrown the suit out of court in the first place. The judge should not (can not?) even take into consideration the other actions of the organization, which have nothing to do with the trademark! They have nothing to do with the ownership dispute. If a person is mearly accused of slander a judge can't fine him if he drives his car (assuming he hasn't done anything illegal having to do with the car). That's about as rediculous as this is.

It scares me to think that a judge can be so stupid and willingly ignorant.

-----

Re:clueless judges

[Gallowglass]

Well, as a Canadian, my tuppence ha'penny's worth of opinion is,"That's what you get for electing your judges. You get popular, know-nothings." Ah, well. YMMV

Re:clueless judges

[emmons]

actually federal judges are appointed. which usually means they've helped someone sometime... still stupid.



-----

watch out...

[TheTomcat]

Those guys over at toywar.com better be careful:
toywarS.com
(-;

Contact Info for Etoys.com

[Sabotage]

Here's a link for contact information at Etoys.com.
I'm sure that some people will use this properly, and some will not, but I'm not the babysitter, just the messenger. I plan to get a hold of them and tell them that I refuse to buy anything else from them until they stop this nonsense.

eToys contact addresses

[James Ojaste]

The eToys contact page is at http://www.etoys.com/html/about_i nformation.shtml They've got a service address (service@etoys.com), a VP of communications (kross@etoys.com), a Director of Investor Relations (ir@etoys.com) and the most likely addressee:
Jonathan Cutler, PR Manager (jcutler@etoys.com)

Time to move from News to Action

[Dale_Carder]

I am tired of hearing news of this again and again, and I only see it increasing in frequency. We are not too far from the point (or perhaps we are there allready) that when starting a new website and choosing a domain, we have to evaluate who we are going to piss off, and how much money they have.

I understand the difference between a site demonstrating it's right to free speech, trademark infringement, and cyber-squatting. The difference needs to be clearer, and likewise judges need more technical background on the difference between content on a site, and an off-site link. A precident NEEDS to be set! Right now, it is a contest for who has the highest paid lawyers. That makes the artist's counter-suit that much harder as well.

More information on etoy ot dmoz.org

[mx80]

I set up an ODP category for etoy and media coverage of the "toywar" at
http://dmoz.org/Society/Activism/Media_Activism/Cu lture_Jamming/etoy/

If you find sites or news items related to etoy, please submit them there.

Contacting the website.

[TagrenHawk]

Click here to go the Contact us page for their website. While a message may not go directly to someone in charge of the company, it might get circulated around. Don't we, as consumers, have a right to voice our opinion to the company? Here is a good way to picket the company without leaving the comfort of our homes. If enough of us contact the website, we might be able to do some good. Consumers, unite!!!

Re:Contacting the website.

[TagrenHawk]

Here is the comment I sent to eToys.com:

After reading a disturbing report online about how your company manhandled the artists who RIGHTFULLY OWN the etoy.com domain, I, as a consumer, have decided that my family will never use your site to order any products. I realize that as a large company you could care less if one person, or even a family, should decide to not spend their money at your establishment. What happens, however, when thousands upon thousands of consumers find out that eToys.com doesn't play nice in the market? You may draw your own conclusions.

A concerned and active consumer

Thankfully No

[SilverFate]

I got the impression that this site was partly owned by an american as well, however federal courts have struck down laws regulating internet content that would hold people who live and run their sites from other states. The same theory should apply here.

SilverFate
[Y]our wiseman don't know what its like to be thick as a brick - Ian Anderson, "Thick as a Brick"

All going to end with internet taxes

[heroine]

In 24 months when governments start taxing e-commerce there won't be any mom and pop operations to begin with. E-commerce will be more expensive and complex than starting your own brick and morter business in California, so expensive that only the richest will be able to do it. Suddenly the name patenting will dissolve and the issue will be more of who gets to participate in e-commerce in the first place.

.not ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been thinking this for a while.
add a short domain to the end and it could even coexist nicely

Someone just has to start it.
I would at least look at it also

Re:FIRST POST

[miscellaneous]

Hmmm....maybe, maybe not.

I wonder if EToy could file a countersuit? I mean, this lawsuit appears to be so silly that it *must* have been brought in bad faith...

They just lost a customer

[newton62]

As I am trying to do as much Christmas Shopping online this year as possible, I have already bought one present from etoys and was planning on a lot more. I chose them mostly because they are running linux, but this crap out weighs that.

Vote with your feet

[lar3ry]

As a father who had been considering one or two online purchases for his children for the coming Christmas season, I can say that my feelings about this is "I'll go anywhere but etoys.com." Such a thing at least makes me feel good.

A boycott could only work if it is sufficiently advertised. Hopefully, there are a few news services that monitor Slashdot and may make this case a bit more public. Maybe etoys.com can be made to withdraw the lawsuit. Who knows.

Ten years ago, reading USENET only generated smirks from the MBA types, telling me that I was wasting my time and to get a life.

Now those same MBA's have "discovered" the Internet, and are looking to push us out of "their" sandbox.

It's not going to work that way, fellas. Sure, you can sue all you want. Lawsuits don't generate good feeling by potential customers, though. The "little guy's" only recourse is to publicize such abuses as much as possible.

Of course, the next step is to have slime molds like etoys.com purchase cnn.com, msnbc.com, etc. and they won't have to worry about people hearing about such abuses.

So... as I wait to see the 1900's odometer turn, it is heartening to see Slashdot making at least SOME people aware of these types of things.

I still wonder what kind of Internet such companies are going to end up with. And what kind of Internet replacement that WE will come up with so that we don't need to swim in such soiled refuse-ridden sewage.
--

Opensource friendly tyrants?

[LinuxGeek]

Response from Netcraft:
www.etoys.com is running Etoys Web server 1.2 on Linux

First, what the heck is "Etoys Web server 1.2"?
Second, they seem to be stomping all over the spirit of the GPL and its encouragment of sharing and technical fellowship. What a shame that the GPL has no 'asshole' exclusionary clauses.

Attention Fat Corporate Bastards!

[ch-chuck]

recently spotted this in LinuxJournal and was rofl.

Chuck

ok so

[nostrodecus]

i'm sending everyone i know who shops online a link to this story and asking them not to shop @ etoys.

oh, wait, can they sue me for writing those 5 letters in that order without acknowledging their trademark?

etoys.com feedback pages

[mharder]

Here are two pages at which you can leave etoys.com feedback: http://www.etoys.com/cgi-bin/cs_print_page.cgi?men upage=1&pagename=t9 http://www.etoys.com/cgi-bin/cs_print_page.cgi?men upage=1&pagename=t10 The first link is to "report a problem with the site", and the second is to "send feedback." I'd say this qualifies as both.

etoys.com feedback pages

[mharder]

Here are two pages at which you can leave etoys.com feedback:

• http://www.etoys.com/cgi-bin/cs_print_page.cgi?men upage=1&pagename=t9
• http://www.etoys.com/cgi-bin/cs_print_page.cgi?men upage=1&pagename=t10

The first link is to "report a problem with the site", and the second is to "send feedback." I'd say this qualifies as both.

eToys.com feedback form

[Incendiary]

https://www.e toys.com/cgi-bin/cs_print_page.cgi?menupage=1&page name=t10

Re:Nice website you have here...

[Kintanon]

Personally I think I'll write up a quick Delphi prog that sits and reloads the page a few million times. Only takes about 30 seconds to make, but my cable modem can eat a lot of bandwidth...

Heck, if 5 thousand people did that their site would crash and stay crashed.

Kintanon

Boycott Etoys.com

[popo]

-

The solution is simple:

BOYCOTT ETOYS.COM

Doing your Christmas shopping at Etoys is a great way to show your support for censorship.

Jam the WTO... Jam etoys.com (and /. censorship)

[The Other JoshG]

(a different) AC wrote:

Nice website you have there... it would be a SHAME if something HAPPENED to it!

I'm not advocating this... But if all of the people who thought this was unfair would start just ONE ping process pointing at etoys.com, it would ruin their Christmas, too.

I was initially replying to this, but it was moderated down by the time I finished writing my post.

Actually, this seems like a plausible non-violent way to deal with the situation, and doesn't deserve the immediate down-moderation that it got. For all the /.ers who think DOS attacks are automatically wrong, take a look at how slanted this situation is against the little guy, and how the courts seem to be willing to rule for profits and against common sense, and think again.

If the powers that be had half a brain, we wouldn't have to think about stuff like this. But they don't, so we do.

Liberal minded moderators... keep an eye out for stuff like this and moderate it back up. We're part of /. too, and I for one don't buy the party line that attacks on computer systems are automatically wrong. etoys.com is using unjustifiable legal coercion, and they have no right to complain if people retaliate with a different form of coercion.

Re:Nice website you have here...

[MoToMo]

This all sound well and good, but it's like that Trane commercial in the US if you've seen it...

If they used NT, we could likely crash 'em, but son, they use Linux, it'll take a lot....

-Dan

(Netcraft: www.etoys.com is running Etoys Web server 1.2 on Linux )

Slashdot also in danger?

[Enoch Root]

I wonder how long it will be before Slashdot.com becomes an IPO and gets a court injunction against Slashdot.org. As this case proves, precedence is worth f*-all when faced with lawyer-friendly capitalists.

Scary.

(I wouldn't mention Slashdot.com, but I figure someone should bring it to public attention that guys out there are making money off of mis-hits to /.)

Re:Slashdot also in danger?

[malice95]

Slashdot.org has a pending trademark application on the name.

Mike

NOetoys

[cabalamat]

So is anyone going to set up a NOetoys?

Shut up you anonymous ass ...

[EatAtJoes]

What real problems? Radio Shack and Tower Records and other shitty corporate behemoths have only themselves to blame if their brand is so weak that imbeciles like you can't tell the difference.

Don't tell us to wake up, asshole, especially if you post anonymously.

How is this any different than any other time?

[vitaflo]

First of all, I'd like to say that eToys (like Amazon) will not get any business from me by pulling legal crap like this.

With that said, I think eToys should figure out that by owning the domain etoys.com, they Do NOT own etoy.com, or itoys.com or itoy.com, and on and on, ad nauseum, and as such can't just go around forcing sites to shut down "just cuz they have a similar name".

Now, I could see if etoy.com was selling toys, and marketing themselves like eToys, and came out after eToys went public, but that not the case. So how can this even be considered fair!?!

eToys to me seems like a paranoid, big bully company. There are tons of sites that have similar domain names to big sites and have "controversial" material (not that eToy.com was really controversial). My main example of this is the company I work for imaginet.com. There's a website out there called imagnet.com, that's a porn site, but do you see us threatening them? No.

Wanting to buy the domain from them is one thing, but if someone doesn't want to sell it, you don't go off suing them, especially when they were around first, and it's just some experimental web design site. Jeez, don't these people check all domain name options BEFORE deciding on one? Guess they figured they could just "eliminate" the competition when they got big enough.

Makes me sick.

I don't give a damn about spammers

[ragnar]

I have received over 5 spam email messages from this group even though I tell them to stop contacting me. I can sympathize with their problem, but all I have ever seen from them has been net abuse. I hope they win, but they aren't going to do it by trying to raise "grassroots" awareness through spam.

Re:I don't give a damn about spammers

[reverse solidus]

I was wondering if I was the only one. I get a long email from these people once every couple of weeks, and it's to one of the email addresses I try to keep spam-free. That loses them any sympathy they might have gotten from me.

Anybody else getting spammed by them?

contacts for etoys

[lazlo]

Well, it may not do much good, but by registering their domain, they do give up some privacy. whois lists their billing and administrative contact as admin@ETOYS.COM, and their technical contact (which would probably be the least helpful) as hostmaster@ETOYS.COM. One of these would probably be able to answer questions as to who to contact for "customer service", comments &cetera and their legal department.

Or, you could always send them a letter.

etoys (ETOYS3-DOM)
3100 Ocean Park Blvd., Suite 300
Santa Monica, CA 90405
US

They might even care. (but probably not).

Or start a rumor. That's the address that Santa lives at. spread it among the children. ;)

eToys.com should change their name

[weld]

If eToys.com is REALLY interested in kids getting confused they should change their name. They did not do due dilligence when they picked their online retailer name. They picked a name 1 character away from a name that was already in use. The shareholders of eToys.com should suffer because their management team made a mistake. Why should an already established web site suffer for the blunders of a jonny com lately company onto the net. Makes me sick. -weld

Rob?

[pen]

I think it's about time that Slashdot got a new section to deal with I-want-that-domain lawsuits. :(

No, Virginia...

[Kid Zero]

there isn't a Santa Claus. He ran afoul of of santaclaus.com, and was forced to change his name back to Kris Kringle. next day he recieved a letter threatning lawsuits unless he changed his name, signed CEO Kringle.com. St. Nick, Sinter Klaus, they all were taken by someone on the net.

broke, depressed, and alone, he sits at home at the north pole, watching Direct TV...

Cause no one wants presents from John Doe.

Let's give the bite of a boycott some teeth

[CoughDropAddict]

How often do things like this happen? How many companies do we threaten to boycott for bullying the little guy? Can we even keep track of them all? Of course not.

But we have the power of computers and databases on our side. Why not organize a list of online corporations we have gripes with, and interface it with client-side software that will warn us when we attempt to visit "sanctioned" sites?

ALERT: Amazon.com is currently filing a lawsuit against Barnes and Noble for violating their patented concept of "one click shopping." Though they do have a legal patent on the technology, this is an obvious non-innovation, and this patent and lawsuit is considered by many to be abusive and frivolous. Visit http://link.to.the/news/story.html for more information. Do you wish to proceed?

We can't personally keep tabs on every corporate bully, but to organize and be a veritable force for companies to be wary of, perhaps we can convince them our voices really do matter.

One might worry such organization would be forced to make overly subjective decisions, and eventually become political, but the choice would always be left to the user. The software and database would prodive the information (hopefully a link to a [mostly] impartial news story), and the user would choose, based on the information provided, whether to personally avoid the site or not. Personally, I imagine many would opt to support these boycotts.

Every dollar the monstrous corporations have came from someone's pocket.

Grrrr!

[Mendax Veritas]

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Time to boycott etoys.com. Unfortunately, I've already finished my Christmas shopping. Guess what I got my nieces and nephews? Right... gift certificates from etoys.com! Now I just want to jump and down screaming profanities. But I'm in the office, so that probably wouldn't be a good idea. I'll just stew in my anger for a while, maybe take it out on some hapless C++ code that through no fault of its own was written by one of the office morons.

I hate lawyers.

Send this article to all your friends

[drMental]

I suggest we send this article to all our friends and ask them to pass it along to others....

And please email or snail mail etoys and let them know what you think.

I certainly will do so.

Boycott etoys.com

Cant they just move the server?

[Caspuh]

I was wondering, could'nt they just transfer the domain name to someone in another country and run the server from there?

Great article jamie

[|DaBuzz|]

You've written a great article jamie. Concise and well thought out articles is what slashdot needs more of.

Keep it up!

Re:/.'ers never read the ruling do they....

[Ralph]

It appears that etoy may have been exploiting the resembilance between etoy and etoys to confuse potential investors. This is not just another big company stealing a website, this is possible fraud.

Maybe you would like to tell us how they wanted to do that without the ability to travel in time? etoy.com was registered in Oct. 1995, while etoys.com didn't register their domain before Nov. 1997.

It's close to impossible to foresee that a big Toystore is going to use a domain exceedingly similar to your domain 2 years in advance - or did I miss something?

Ralph

No joke, but ...

[Eric Green]

the problem with Slashdot is that it has no "memory". We gripe and moan and groan, and then the next day we forget all about it and move on to whatever that day's "cause" is.

I'm sure the government actually likes us posting to SlashDot, because if we're posting here, we're not actually DOING anything.

Oh: to see what's really happening in Seattle (jack-booted Gestapo thugs tear-gassing and rubber-bulleting peaceful protestors while allowing anarchists to do whatever they want in order to get an excuse to invoke martial law, which they did in a 40 block area of central Seattle), see the links on Salon's "Anti-WTO Activist Web Pages" page. Now THAT is subversive. Slashdot? Get real!

-E

Re:No joke, but ...

[dilger]

Huh? Who is this 'we' you speak of?

You have NO idea what I do with my time. You don't know what I do after I finish reading Slashdot. Or before. You are absolutely ignorant of the ways I DO things based upon what I read here and elsewhere.

I do NOT forget what I read, and I DO make decisions which have political and economic impact based at least in part on what I read on this site.

I imagine I am not the only Slashdot reader who fails to match your stereotypical profile (as those professing boycott in this thread clearly indicate).

bradley

give 'em a call

[yek401]

Administrative Contact: (310) 664-8100 Voice

one word: dialpad

Talk to IdeaLab (parent company) too

[turg]

Though etoys has been spun off, it would be interesting to get a response from the people at their parent company, IdeaLab

-
<SIG>
"I am not trying to prove that I am right... I am only trying to find out whether." -Bertolt Brecht

Re:Talk to IdeaLab (parent company) too

[shinji]

Anyone noticed that IdeaLab owns OpenSales, makers of OpenMerchant (open source e-commerce program). I think it is apporiate to boycott this free software also.
opensales

Re:Talk to IdeaLab (parent company) too

[isaac_akira]

> Anyone noticed that IdeaLab owns OpenSales,
> makers of OpenMerchant (open source e-commerce
> program). I think it is apporiate to boycott
> this free software also.

Or just don't use openmerchant cause it is pretty lame software. Have you looked at the code? ick! I could hardly believe it was coming from such a hyped-up company, with backers like IdeaLab. The distibution is ugly, with tmp files left in by the developers, and the high-level design of the software doesn't look like it had much thought put into it. And they don't use CVS! =P

- Isaac

Re:Talk to IdeaLab (parent company) too

[mx80]

IdeaLab had the nerve to submit their site to the etoy dmoz.org category today!

You didn't read the article

[turg]

These claims are discussed in the Village Voice article -- they are pure FUD. "digital hijack" sounds bad but it was the name of a pretty tame demonstration of the innacuracy of search engines. The "shares" were another artistic project which no-one could confuse with etoys stock. They are scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for mud to sling.
-
<SIG>
"I am not trying to prove that I am right... I am only trying to find out whether." -Bertolt Brecht

ETYS stock down $15 since this ruling

[turg]

Etoys stock has fallen from $70 to $55 since Monday, the day this ruling was given.
-
<SIG>
"I am not trying to prove that I am right... I am only trying to find out whether." -Bertolt Brecht

Re:ETYS stock down $15 since this ruling

[Manax]

Although on the surface this looks good, if you look at the price over a slightly longer period, the whole month of Novement they were in the $50-60 range. Only recently did they jump up, and besides, it looks like their stock price is pretty volatile.
Sorry... :(

Re:juridistiction?

[Trombone8vb]

Couldn't a judge just order NSI to pull the domain name? Not that I really know anything about this sort of thing, but just a guess.

Address for comments

[nctrl]

Etoys has a "website problem" form you can fill out at the following address.

I used it to complain.

http://www.etoys.com/cgi-bin/cs_print_page.cgi?m enupage=1&pagename=t9

Bad companies website?

[Nodatadj]

Is there anywhere that you can find out about what companies are being naughty (like etoys, hasbro, amazon etc...) and why they are on the site, and why we should boycott them, or write them nasty letters telling them off?

If not, I think there should be.
iain

Re:Bad companies website?

[greenrd]

Try

Dmoz: Allegedly Unethical Firms.

As you can see, Monsanto (responsible for GM foods, the Terminator gene [though they backed off on that one], pesticides, Agent Orange...) and Wal-Mart have categories all to themselves!

Internet Patent

[dallas]

I fell that the Internet should not be allowed to be patented in anyway!
If you are making a new kind of product then sure patent it.
But in the way of the Internet copyrights should only be allowed.

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

Down with Internet Taxes!

etoys email contacts

[kill bikini-bot kill]

I just browsed through the etoys site and found a contacts page with email addresses.

I would suggest that we all contact investor relations and politely explain our displeasure. You may wish to point out to them that they are not only wrong, but they are also throwing away potentially very lucrative business from computer-savy young professionals. I think this is just the kind of things investors would want to know about; we should let them know.

Re:Nice website you have here...

[Nodatadj]

Yes, and they'd say, "See all those nasty hackers, they're bad they are", and EToys.com would become the victim.

So no, this was a bad idea.

No!

[Nicolas MONNET]

FYI, there are several other registries than NSI now, including, among others, France Telecom ...

Re:No!

[drewpt]

But don't they only make a connection to NSI's database? The database I believe is still on NSI servers.

Re:No!

[Nicolas MONNET]

The central database has to be SOMEWHERE. Duh.

Re:No!

[drewpt]

Yes, and since the DB is on American soil, those servers are regulated by American law. Duh.

Another way to show protest

[UncleRoger]

I don't know about other webmasters, and I certainly don't run a site as a profit-making enterprise, but I do check (when I have time) my logs. Not only do I want to see what pages people are looking at, I am interested in seeing where they came from.

I have to laugh at all the perverts who end up at my site after doing a search for the Mitchell Brothers' adult theatre. (I mention them on my page because of the great (G-rated) murals on the outside of their building.)

What if all the gazillions of Slashdot readers went to the eToys web site but didn't buy anything? If their webmaster checked the logs, he/she would see tons of hits, all originating from this story. Presumably they would check out the story and think "Omigod, look at all these people that aren't buying anything, and it's because we screwed eToy!"

Normally, they might just think, "Oh, the only people that will really care about eToy are a handfull of geeks, so we can go harass eToy," but if they see how many people really do read Slashdot, they might just change their minds.

Just a thought. In any case, I'm going to slide on over and not buy anything. (Funny thing is, I was going to buy some toys for my niece from them, until now.)

Re:Another way to show protest

[Maserati]

This page is etoys.com's feedback page. I just typed in a short note and sent it in. The usual stiff note to a company I'll boycott. My theory is short, blunt, but polite.

Re:Another way to show protest

[consumer]

Actually, the tech team here at eToys all reads Slashdot already.

Re:Another way to show protest

[UncleRoger]

Hmmmm....

Actually, the tech team here at eToys all reads Slashdot already.

Perhaps then the tech team knows they should be looking around for new positions? 8^)

But seriously, this isn't something the MIS staff did, it's the legal department. And unfortunately, most such departments don't know any other way to do business besides playing mean and dirty.

It's really too bad, because eToys is a nice site with some good info. I actually thought they "got it".

Re:Another way to show protest

[djneko]

Or how about this idea. Go to the eToys(R) website and search for items likes "wrongful suit against etoy.com" and "illegal litigation", etc. etc. Search for ten things or so, browse their website, and then leave without buying anything, and maybe leave some feedback first about their search engine not bringing up anything for your search terms (don't mention what they are, so that way someone might check the logs and freak out).

Happy hunting!

Moderate UP, please?

[DanJose52]

I think this should be moderated up...money speaks to anything incorporated...

Dan

Contact your local media

[Malc]

Just a thought...

Want to get eToys where it really hurts? Contact your local media outlets. Local TV affiliates are always looking for cheap news. If they get enough emails/phones calls/etc and it is a quiet news day, they might just run something primetime. Such comsumer news would counter millions of dollars of marketing for those *#@$*$#$% at eToys.

Etoy Contacts

[crackmonkey]

After reading this, I decided to email the folks at Etoys.com, and here's what I wrote:

To Whom It May Concern,
I have recently read several articles concerning your company and it's lawsuit against eToy.com. In hopes that what these stories purport is false, or maybe mis-represented, I would like to ask you what you stance is concerning eToy.com, and what actions you have taken against them.

The articles concerned were :
http://slashdot.org/yro/99/12/01/2156208.shtml
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/9948/barliant .shtml

These articles do not show your company in a good light, and it is believed that a great offense against the community at large has been committed by your company. This is the lowest and worst type of internet abuse, at least what's reported in the articles. Please debunk these statements if they are untrue.

-----

Anyway, the idea was to see what they'll say. I figure you give em a chance to air their side of the story, although Im not terribly optimistic.

Anyway, don't send email to legal@etoys.com, it won't get there. Use service@etoys.com, or so their mail servers, to get to them.

If I get a response, I'll ask them to allow me to post it, or I'll just paraphrase and put it up. Enjoy.

My email to eToys.

[vitaflo]

I sent this to Jonathan Cutler, Public Relations Manager (jcutler@etoys.com). If you disagree with eToys stance, I suggest you do the same:

I have read recent reports of a case concerning the forced shutdown of etoy.com by etoys.com. When I first heard this I thought it was nothing more than a copy cat company trying to steal the thunder from etoys.com. If this were the case I would have backed your decision to take up legal action against etoy.com. However after reading what etoy.com was about, I became quite surprised that a company such as yours, with so much money in the bank would even care to take action against a site that is little more than people doing experimental design and having fun on the web.

I think what eToys needs to realize is that the web is a FREE place. Free in the sense of free speach. Unfair business pratice is one thing, but the web has been, and will always be about Open Information for anyone. The fact that etoy.com was running over two years before eToys.com and the fact that is has NOTHING to do with eToys nor is it a direct threat to eToys.com makes me wonder where your best interests are going after and attacking them.

I'm not void of these problems myself. I work at a company trying to make its name on the web, Imaginet.com, and we're doing VERY well on the web. Imagine my surprise when I found out that the domain imagnet.com was a porn site. But did we go after them to try to shut them down? NO. Why? Because that's not fair and that's NOT RIGHT. You cannot sue someone simply because they domain names are "similar".

I also own a personl domain, vitaflo.com. Vitaflo.com is an experimental graphic design and open source information site. Now imagine that in a year from now, someone sets up vitaflos.com, starts selling Farm equipment, and gets rich off of it. Then someone goes to my website, sees a swear word or some "unappropriate" material and then vitaflos.com tries to shut me down. Would I be pissed? You bet. Would I fight it? Till the day I died. This is exaclty what your company has done to etoy.com.

It makes me sad to see a company with so much potential throw so much of it down the drain. You can be sure I will never shop at your site ever again, and I have written to everyone I know to tell them the same (as I'm sure many others have done that have heard this news). As the PR Manager, I think it should be your job to keep the companies best interests in mind in how it deals with the public. This is NOT in your best interest. You will lose a lot more money playing the roll of "Bully" than you ever would have by just ignoring etoy.com. I am hopeful this letter, and letters like it, will help to reverse this aweful trend in online lawsuits that has been occuring so much recently. Set the precident, be the one company to actually LISTEN to its customers. We will all thank you if you do.

Thank you for your time,
-Brent Gustafson

Re:My email to eToys.

[ThreeTee]

If any of you decide to send this letter, I would suggest that you spellcheck it first. No offense meant to Brent, but nothing destroys credibility more than poor spelling, poor grammar, or the use of colloquialisms such as 'pissed'.

personl -> personal
unappropriate -> inappropriate
aweful -> awful
precident -> precedent
speach -> speech (as was mentioned before)
exaclty -> exactly (probably a typo, but still incorrect)

Re:My email to eToys.

[vitaflo]

If any of you decide to send this letter, I would suggest that you spellcheck it first. No offense meant to Brent, but nothing destroys credibility more than poor spelling, poor grammar, or the use of colloquialisms such as 'pissed'.

Doh! ThreeTee is right, if you do want to use that letter, do spell check it. I was in a bit of a rush (I wrote all that up during work and I'm not the best writer so it took me a bit), and thus forgot that important step. Profesional sounding letters do wonders. But just don't copy me, write your OWN letter and voice YOUR opinions! They do count!

Assignment of Blame

[pwagle]

Why are we blaming etoys instead of the judge?

Re:Assignment of Blame

[Glytch]

Because they're the ones whose legal department started the whole mess.

Re:Assignment of Blame

[pwagle]

If you have an endless stream of dozens of wasps in your home, do you just keep dealing with the wasps, or do you locate the nest?

In this analogy, etoys is the current wasp buzzing around our heads, and the US legal system is the nest.

Send this to your e-buddies.

[AftanGustur]

Maby if we all send something like this to our e-buddies:

Subject: Don't buy from ETOYS.COM this christmas !

This is just a short notice to make you aware of how big multibillion dollar
companies screw the little folks. (European artists in this case).

Short version: in 1994 a group of European artists founded etoy.com, a site they played with to express their creativity on the web.

Now in 1999 a company that dates their presence back to 1997 has suceeded in getting www.etoy.com off the web by using there excessive force of money and lawyers.

You can read the full story at:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/12/01/2156 208&mode=thread

The message is this Don't buy anything at etoys.com this year !!

Please pass this message on until the end of december.
--
Why pay for drugs when you can get Linux for free ?

http://etoy.com !!! Loophole?

[AtariDatacenter]

I've read that the judge enjoined them from running an website at the domain "www.etoy.com". However, that does NOT prevent them from running a web site at "etoy.com".

Of course, technically, you could run a domain redirector at www.etoy.com, but I don't think the judge would see the distinction as clearly. Heh.

CEOs name for letters: Mariam Naficy & Varsha Rao

[turg]

eToys CEOs are Mariam Naficy & Varsha Rao -- address your letters to them, so they at least get past the customer service level.

-
<SIG>
"I am not trying to prove that I am right... I am only trying to find out whether." -Bertolt Brecht

Boycott free software? What's the point?

[Nicolas MONNET]

They won't get any money anyway, so what's the point?

Re:Boycott free software? What's the point?

[dhwang]

I think a boycott of all of Idealabs companies are in order. GoTo Networks (another public Idealab company) went after Disney and lost. I guess Disney can afford better lawyers than "starving artists".

Here's the link to an article on Yahoo business news

Re:Boycott free software? What's the point?

[dhwang]

Sorry. Here's the right link

There is a feedback form...

[UncleRoger]

And here is what I wrote in it:

My father had a serious stroke in July. He is now, unfortunately, confined to a wheelchair in a nursing home. (The ongoing story can be found at if you care.)

So this year I figured he and I could sit down in front of his computer and do his holiday gift shopping on-line. It would be fun and he could be the coolest dude at the home.

Naturally, we figured that much of our shopping (I plan to do my shopping online as well) would be done at eToys.com -- It seems easy to use, has good info, etc.

That was until I spotted the story at telling a tale of corporate greed, censorship, and bullying.

Needless to say, I will be taking my business (and my father's) elsewhere. (There is, of course, toysmart.com, toysrus.com, kbkids.com, etc.)

Just so you know, the consensus at Slashdot is pretty clearly negative towards eToys. And you might think that Slashdot is just a few geeks who don't matter, but that would show your own naivite' -- you've obviously never heard of the Slashdot effect. (Check with your tech staff, or do a web search.)

Remember also, that as more and more of Joe Public turns to online shopping, the people that they will turn to for advice and assistance will be those very same geeks.

You have an interesting future ahead of you.

Be sure to be polite, but firm!

Just how does a California judge have jurisdiction

[SvnLyrBrto]

The article says these etoy guys operate out of Europe (doesn't say which country i think). So just HOW the HELL does a Californis judge have jurisdiction over them????

Do they reside in CA now? The article led me to belive that they are still in Europe. Is the server hosting the site in the US somewhere?

If the answer to both these is no, why don't they tell that jackass of a judge to get stuffed, make sure the server's in Europe somewhere nicely out of his jurisdiction (preferbaly in a European country where etoys is not incorperated), and go on their merry way?

IANAL. But I don't see how some two bit yokel of a judge plans to enforce a fine on foriegn nationals who don't reside in his jurisdiction.

john

I would have taken the $500k and here's why..

[Carnage4Life]

OK let's say I'm one of the artists at etoy.com right, chilling at the office with my fellow artists then suddenly we get the offer from eToys.com.
Here's where I go into logical reasoning mode and postulate what happens if we refuse and they take legal action.
"Ok guys what could happen if this goes to a court or similar regulatory body?".
Well the judge on one hand sees a bunch of artistic types who use profanity on their website and on the other hand sees a legitimate business. Score 1 against us...(I've been to court that is how judge-types think.)

Secondly what hapens if we win a.) eToys.com (a legitimate business) stands to loose a number of customers who come to our site by accident and loose some reputation among the unknowledgeable b.) eToys.com is decides to forego the website and creates a new one, has to start a new marketing campaign and maybe change its stock ticker. What if we loose...well the judge says buy another domain for $70 bucks and do what is currently done at slashdot.com . So the judge has a choice of costing a legitimate business thousands to millions of dollars or costing a bunch of artists $70.

I wonder what he'll choose?

At this point my friends and i accept the stock, sell it, buy ourselves some kick ass SGI boxes and some killer software and keep doing what we do at another domain name.


PS: I can't get over the way people on slashdot make it seem like a domain name is some necessity of life like food, air, water or shelter. We were not born with them and they'll be gone before we die. So what's the fscking point of all this ruckus. If a new domain naming scheme comes into effect tomorrow all domain names will be null N void. If slashdot changed it's name to geeknews.com or something all that would happen is a bunch of geeks would have to update their bookmarks. no crying, no sickness, no famine, no plague, just updated bookmarks.

sheeesh!

Bad Command Or File Name

Re:I would have taken the $500k and here's why..

[Saige]

You make it sound like it's acceptable to make etoy.com change their name because otherwise etoys.com might lose some business, and it won't bother etoy.com as much to make the change. That's utter BS. etoy.com was around long beforehand, and they shouldn't have to change just because they didn't think about the future and pay attention to similar domain names.

The law isn't about causing the least trouble. If the president of the US came up and shot you in the head, should the court that he/she shouldn't have to go to jail because it'll cause much more trouble than is we just let him/her go?

The law is supposed to stand up for what is right, regardless of who's inconvienced. It's the principal of the matter. Big companies don't get to take things from little people just because it might be annoying for them if they don't have it.

You don't build a huge supermarket in a small lot and then try to force nearby businesses to give you their lots just because otherwise you'd have to go somewhere else or build a smaller market.
---

Pat Buchanan would be a genius...

[Wakko Warner]

...if he wasn't so fucking stupid.

On that Salon page, he whines that the WTO is putting Americans out of work, when the unemployment level in the U.S. is at the lowest level ever. This guy thinks he can be President? (Then again, look at the two front-runners. They think they'd make good presidents too.)

- A.P.
--

"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

Feedback URL for etoys.com

[Anonymous Coward]

The URL for the feedback page at etoys is:- http://www.etoys.com/cgi-bin/cs_print_page.cgi?men upage=1&pagename=t10 Let them know what you think.

OOOPS! THAT'S WRONG! It should be: TOBY LENK

[turg]

My eyes musta moved up a row when looking at the list of idealab companies
-
<SIG>
"I am not trying to prove that I am right... I am only trying to find out whether." -Bertolt Brecht

Re:OOOPS! THAT'S WRONG! It should be: TOBY LENK

[m.o]

That's right, Mariam (she's a CEO of eve.com) is very nice and would never do anything like that

Alternative Authority

[Anders Andersson]

While this is a good idea in principle, I'm afraid it won't work out very well in practice. For one thing, only a tiny minority of sysadmins (weighted by the number of users they can influence) will likely bother to switch root servers just to thumb their noses at the likes of ebays.com, and that's assuming that the alternative servers are just as reliable with respect to all those other domains that haven't become a matter of dispute. Is somebody really willing to take on the task of replicating the 5 million (or whatever) domain .COM zone, or would the idea be to simply perform recursive look-ups after catching queries pertaining to the "banned" domains? Also, with history already including AlterNIC, I wonder if a successful effort could avoid DNS forking when people start disagreeing on what the real domain rules should be.

Instead, how about adding some dissenting voices to the web browser, similar to Slashdot moderation (i.e. don't delete the junk, but rather moderate it down to render it invisible to most users)? When looking up a particular domain or URL, the browser could check for alternative opinions on that particular address (using some distributed database scheme), and act on them according to the user's preferences. For example, a host look-up for ebay.com could be accompanied by a PTR or TXT look-up for ebay.com.dissent.net, and if some records are found, they may refer the browser to comments, criticism, spoofs, overlay graffitti or something else of relevance to the target address.

Compare it to asking your local librarian for a copy of Dante's Inferno, which she gladly provides, while saying "by the way, you may also want to read Gary Larson's hilariously funny spoof of Dante's Inferno", since she knows you appreciate a good laugh now and then. Your browser should be your librarian. In this way, if you ridicule a commercial site according to the given protocol, and the users agree to read your satire, it should be a lot more difficult than it is today for lawyers to cry "trademark dilution".

Sure, developing another browser isn't done in an afternoon, but neither is supplanting the present domain hierarchy, and it would be really neat to be able to support dozens or even hundreds of alternate, independent pages associated with a single domain name or URL. Also, fewer users would be dependent on their sysadmins to install such a browser for them, than would have to file requests for an alternate set of root servers to be considered.

This is the fucking point

[Kaa]

OK let's say I'm one of the artists at etoy.com... [snip] ... my friends and i accept the stock, sell it, buy ourselves some kick ass SGI boxes and some killer software and keep doing what we do at another domain name.

PS: I can't get over the way people on slashdot make it seem like a domain name is some necessity of life like food, air, water or shelter. We were not born with them and they'll be gone before we die. So what's the fscking point of all this ruckus.


In Germany they first came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up becaues I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up becaue I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me - and by that time no one was left to speak up.

-- Pastor Martin Niemoller


Kaa

Re:This is the fucking point

[netwiz]

that's all fine and good, but unfortunately, what everyone with your position seems to have forgotten is that we live under a system of Rule of Law by Precedent. What this means in simple terms is that the first judicial example of a case is generally the mindset used when dealing with a case. However, most judges in this country (at all levels) seem to have forgotten that fact, and therefore do not weigh carefully the full gravity of their decision. Now, in the case of etoy.com, this establishes a legal precedent for a corporation that owns a site name for business purposes to shut down an individual's site (with a similar but disparate name) solely on the basis that they "Didn't like what he said." Whether or not you view it as such, some scheming lawyer is going to use _exactly_ that argument to do the same to another site, thus strengthening the precedent. In any event, it means that a small part of your personal freedom has been chipped away. In short, it is now more or less accepted for a large corp to shut you up forcibly if you get in their way, thus pretty much burning the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it!

There already are multiple root nameservers

[ddstreet]

In fact, there are many root nameservers; one for each country out there (.de, .uk, .ie, .au, etc) and the US government and military do their own thing too.

http://nic.gov
http://nic.mil

I'm assuming that either NSI points requests to them, or local nameservers know to ask them (based on the top-level of the request). So this kind of this is already happening, it's just that alternic.org is not in the 'official list' or whatever. Maybe ICANN has something to do with it.

Re:There already are multiple root nameservers

[Anders Andersson]

In fact, there are many root nameservers; one for each country out there (.de, .uk, .ie, .au, etc) and the US government and military do their own thing too.

Well, not exactly right. The top-level domains, including the two-letter ones for individual countries as well as the generic three-letter ones, usually correspond to zones of DNS records, but each zone is normally served by at least two servers, which may or may not reside in the zones they serve (for instance, the zone SE is served by three servers in Sweden, three in the USA, and one in the Netherlands).

On the other hand, root nameservers serve the root (".") zone, and there are currently 13 of them spread out across the Internet (many of them are in the USA).

I'm assuming that either NSI points requests to them, or local nameservers know to ask them (based on the top-level of the request). So this kind of this is already happening, it's just that alternic.org is not in the 'official list' or whatever. Maybe ICANN has something to do with it.

The root zone (i.e. physically the records originating with A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET, the master root server) delegates authority over the top-level domains to their respective servers, and you are correct that AlterNIC isn't among them (unless they have obtained a country of their own or something). While you as a network manager have to manually feed your local name server or resolver with some root server addresses to begin with, they are normally discarded as soon as your client software gets access to the real data. Sometimes people set up their own root servers inside firewalls, but they are merely intended to act as DNS gateways to the external world, plus optionally add some local domain name (the latter not a good idea, in my opinion).

For even _more_ info this 'blunder'.

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the story at this link, which was published before /. got in on the publicity fiasco. http://www.citypages.com/databank/20/991/article82 60.asp Eric Anondson (too lazy to login)

Re:For even _more_ info this 'blunder'.

[Catullus]

For those too lazy to type that URL, that's

http://www.citypages.com/d atabank/20/991/article8260.asp.

--

I know where I'm not shopping

[dothead]

Although it would be nice to give the http://www.etoys.com site the slashdot effect for Christmas.

my response (as an example)

[settonull]

hmm, it seems the legal@ and abuse@ addresses are bouncing, anyways here is what I said:

I am writing in regards to your recent childish behavior towards the Internet
artist group EToy. Such a clear abuse of money and power is very disappointing,
and entirely uncalled for. Neither they nor their site did anything to warrent
your attack. While the name similarity was unfortunate, it was just that,
unfortunate. Nothing entitles you to a totally unambiguous domain name,
and if you were concerned with this, you should have chosen another name.
EToy.com was in existance for over TWO YEARS when you registered the
domain.

I, and numerous friends and relatives who I have spoken with, will not be
patronizing your site this Christmas season, or anytime soon. While I am
confident that the decision against EToy will not stand in any court with
a knowledgeable judge, I ask you to voluntarily stop action against EToy
and win back some small part of the reputation and respect you have lost.

Email I fired off

[Inoshiro]

To: abuse@etoys.com
CC: postmaster@etoys.com
CC: manager@etoys.com
CC: root@etoys.com

How could you go and try and sue a company that had their name before you even existed? They have the legal right, not you. How can you go and squash the rights of other people? I will personally guarantee you that I will never, ever shop at etoys.com, and that I will inform all my friends, relatives, and any other people I speak with, to not shop at your site. If you were afraid some people would misspell your domain name, and not get to the intended site, you should have worked out a linking policy with etoy.com, just like how diamondmm.com and diamond.com have a linking policy.
You disgust me.
---

You're talking disobedience of a sort.

[matman]

You're suggesting that we give up on the offending system. Which is sort of the right idea. But we live inside of this system and its very hard to get out of it. The changes that need to be made, need to be made by govenerments, and the UN, etc... and they've been trying... but they're trying to fix things that arent wrong.

It turns out that the people who make the most noise are generally the people that are disgruntled with the current system... These people have made the polititions think that free speech and free thought are not what we want. Polititians must think by now that we want to be babysat - we dont want to think. We want things organized, we want parents again! And corporations are happy to fill the role. Now, they've gotten the wrong idea. We want freedom to think - we want democracy back! Its of course then our responcibility to make some noise. Changing DNS systems is a nice idea but infeasable to imlement very well. I think what we need is more of an online unity. More of an online union of sorts. of course, without union dues :) Its people who run the internet and run the world. Very few people are actually giving the orders - are actually thinking for themselves, for whats good. We need social disobedience on a large scale to let the people who implement decisions know what we want. Show them what is wrong. It worked for millions of poor indian people against the brittish... and its the same idea... the numerous poor against the few rich. We can do it.

What do we want to do? I think that we need public protest, stuff that gets on the news. People have been talking about the WTO issue online forever, but now people know more about it now that its on the news. Public protests need to be organized. Massive letter writing campaigns. Elect people who arent so dumb! hehe :) Join the Electronic Frontiers Organizations! We need an organized voice of truth, not of anger or frustration :)

Re:You're talking disobedience of a sort.

[Signal 11]

Geez. That sounds kinda like something I might have said. Are you sure you aren't a Signal 11-speak perl generator? =)

More EToys Contact Info

[|0|4]

I think what we need to do is send a _polite_ letter to etoys explaining why we will no longer purchase their products.

It might be best to email their Public Relations Manager - this is an issue that should be of some concern to him, considering the implications.

I found this contact information on their website (http://www.etoys.com/html/about_information.shtml ):

Company Contact Information


eToys
3100 Ocean Park Blvd.
Suite 300
Santa Monica, CA 90405
(310) 664-8100
service@etoys.com


News Media Contact

Ken Ross
Vice President of Communications
(310) 664-8410
kross@etoys.com

Jonathan Cutler
Public Relations Manager
(310) 664-8550
jcutler@etoys.com


Investor Relations Contact

Suki Shattuck
Director of Investor Relations
(310) 664-8356
ir@etoys.com


Customer Service Contact

If you would like to speak to a customer service representative about your order, please call us at 1-800-GO-ETOYS (1-800-463-8697). We are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
If you are calling from outside the United States, please dial
1-310-664-8530.

1-800-463-8697 option 3

[oldzoot]

Subject number is customer service for Etoys. I am an E-toys customer ( up untill today ). I called them and the person I spoke with was interested and reasonable and said I would get a call back. Perhaps if more people called, they may realize the scope of discontent with their actions. ( at $.10 per minute LD 800 charges )

countersuits, etc.

[Phule77]

The problem here, as pointed out before, (er, okay, problems):
1. etoy fails to be much in the way of money, which is why they yanked their site fast when fined 10k per day...they don't have it. The only 10k they had, they donated...they're just a bunch of guys doing performance art with a web page.
2. Most of the folks being sued by corps will NOT be able to afford the law support to counter Corporate attacks. And you can't insist that, say, ICANN provide lawyers for such a thing (to try to get the legal precedence, etc.) since ICANN itself is non-profit, and thus is also out of it's league in terms of fighting corp lawyer battles...

Re:countersuits, etc.

[miscellaneous]

Yah, but you'd think that if this case is as laughable as it appears, there'd be some (prolly goodish) lawyer out there willing to file a counter suit on a contingency basis.

Re:Didn't anybody read the story?

[Kintanon]

They are not suing over rights to the name, they are suing over losing customers who mistype the name and see profanity. For the first time in one of "these" cases, I think the plaintiff is right. And I don't think it violates anyone's "free speech" rights to insist that they keep the root of their domain "clean", especially when they know full well that there is a potential for lots of young kids to be going there by mistake. Plenty of room on the other pages for breasts, F-words, etc.


etoy.com existed 2 years before etoys.com, whatever etoy wants to put on their front page is their own business. If Etoys wanted to avoid domain confusion they should have picked a name that wasn't so close to one already in use.

Kintanon

Great idea!

[Inoshiro]

Now we need information.

We'd need a chain of 24/7 DNS servers (perhaps the slashdot.org, freshmeat.net, etc, servers). Anyone with a good static IP and Linux should be able to contributed. How will we setup GTLDs? The ".net, .org, .com -- pick one" thing is a bit limited as a global namespace. Once we have our alternate backbone setup, we can use dig and only do business with those who have registered in our database (free if you can prove why you should have the domain, with maybe a 10$ US maintenace fee every few years for server hardware).

I mean, we'd be cheaper than the Internic, and we've certainly got enough hardware between us to do it. Heck, we could even add a gateway feature to let through domains not found in our DNS servers come from an internic area (thus we only get what we don't have, and don't have to worry about the internic people trying to overlap our domains).

Am I the only one who thinks this could work?
---

Re:Great idea!

[Signal 11]

I'm willing to undertake the effort, but I'd like to know how many people could help - I think there are a few generous admins out there that would host a root server out there. I'd like to make it as distributed as possible and keep costs down. It would be very cool.

Re:Great idea!

[Inoshiro]

Siggy, it seems the people at alternic.org have beaten us to it :-)

So I'd like to put forward that we should all support the alternic project by including their root servers in our lists, etc.

Good idea, or not?

(Note WRT the Debian thing: it's funny how you didn't notice he's the project leader. When I last checked, he'd had 25 moderator points used on him -- 13 up, 12 down ;-)
---

Load the site..

[Inoshiro]

It looks like a placeholder for some domain name prospector. Feh.
---

Check this msg for www.ppornq.com

[rodent]

Pretty funny from my perspective:

Although piiq.com aims to make things easier to find on the web, that's something
we won't be able to help you with.

Now, if you're ready to shop...

rodent...

Re:Take a deep breath

[qwerjkl]

etoy.com is not generating any confusion. etoy.com was the original site. etoys.com registered their web site much after etoy.com, so who is creating the confusion, hrm? perhaps etoys.com needs to get a new domain name, not etoy.com. how about 'buyoverpricedtoyshere.com'.

Fill up the shopping cart...

[Noel McK]

... then dump it. I'm having a blast shopping right now. My nieces and nephews WISH this was what they were getting for Christmas, but this cart won't make it to checkout!

Damn right, and criminal charges too.

[freakho]

Boy did they pick the wrong state to file in.
This is a classic example of a Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAAP), meant to force somebody w/ less money and power to shut up.
California has an anti-SLAAP statute. Look here for more details. Any lawyers in the crowd know about success rates in using this sort of statute?

I have only one comment:

[mhm23x3]

Fuckhead.

Re:I have only one comment:

[Mr. Neutron]

> Fuckhead.
Fuckhead.

Re:I have only one comment:

[mhm23x3]

>>>>Fuckhead.
>>>Fuckhead.
>>Fuckhead.
>Fuckhead.
Fuckhead.

T-shirt support. Slogan or design ideas?

[LetterJ]

I'd like to design a T-shirt that supports the little web guy and freedom of Intellectual Property.

I've got a couple of ideas and would like suggestions.

• A generic front graphic with a slogan: Stop the IP bigots or First Come, First Served. I'd like suggestions on the logo.
  
• A back logo of the Domains or projects that have been stomped or kicked by these types of law suits.
  
• A different back logo for a specific site.
  

What I'd like to do is create the images, put them under an Open/Free license and when a project is getting assaulted, they can use the images and get them printed by a place like Iprint.com to raise funds, awareness etc.
LetterJ
Writing Geek/Pixel Pusher
jwynia@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~jwynia

Isn't this the same as phone numbers?

[dbrown]

I remember several years ago some companies going after "offensive" phone services that had 1-800 numbers that were very close to the phone numbers of the "legitimate" companies.

The complaint was that these "offensive" companies were tarnishing the reputation of the "legitimate" companies because their customers were mis-dialing. (I personally think this is a load of crap. A company no matter what their business should not depend on the stupidity of other individuals)

Does anyone remember the outcome of these cases? I would assume that any rulings in these cases could be easily applied to the etoy/etoys case.

Maybe eToys should change their name

[Zemran]

I think that as eToy has a far more global appeal and eToys has an American centric appeal it would be far more sensible if eToys changed there URL to www.etoys.co.us That way there would be less confusion all round.

Another letter to eToys

[Yosemite Sue]

My letter(with obvious influences from Scott's letter):

Please direct this message to the corporate officers and lawyers who work for/at etoys.com.

Much of my Christmas shopping will be done online this year. However, I will NOT be buying from eToys, in protest against the current lawsuit pending against the owners of "etoy.com". I will be sharing information about this petty lawsuit with my friends and family.

The world wide web is not the exclusive property of US businesses. eToys may have the financial clout to intimidate smaller organizations, but this does not mean that such intimidation is morally or legally correct. Given the guidelines at the ICANN site (http://www.icann.org/udrp/udrp-policy-24oct99.htm ),it appears your lawsuit is on very shaky ground.

I hope that the courts rectify this situation in favour of etoy.com. Nonetheless, your actions have ensured that I will never be a customer of your company.

Sincerely,

(My real name)

Boycott etoys.com !!

[SLOfuse]

Boycot etoys.com !!
see: http://www.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/12/01/21 56208
Put it in your .sig til Christmas!

More comments, keep sending them!

[krisitna]

To whom it may concern,

I am writing to you in regards with the recent legal actions that you took against the etoy.com community.

Your attitude and actions in this case are short-sighted and attack the very essence of what the Internet is all about --people, commerce, community and information--. Obviously, the counselor behind this decision does not grasp the nature of the medium that pays his paycheck and makes the very existence of eToys possible.

What you are doing in this case is simply exploiting the American legal system to censure a voice that you do not agree with.

Such news goes a long way on the Internet and many people are judging your actions in this case. This judgement is independent of the American judge that issued the injunction. This judgement comes from the people on the Internet (let's call them netizens). As you very well know, these netizens are also your clientele base AND the source of investors most likely to purchase shares of ETYS.

Of course, this is my personnal point of view, as a netizen, on this situation. It is simply based on news articles from various sources on the Internet. I am a fairly objective and reasonnable person and make my living off electronic commerce myself. The point is, there are many others like me who have the same impressions and make similar judgements.

News of actions like your attack on etoy.com does not often make it to mainstream television and radio media but is readilly available to the netizens. A search for 'etoys' on Yahoo does not only bring up etoys.com but also news articles and links to competitors like Toys-R-Us and amazon.com.

I'm afraid this Xmas season, I'll have to take my money somewhere else. (BTW, I bought 100% of my 1999 Xmas gifts (approx.$1000usd) over the Internet.) You made a good name for yourself and certainly should protect it but etoy.com is not attacking your brand and their name is, also, their own. This sort of action does not protect your name, it tarnishes it. (and made me discover etoy.com which I hadn't even heard about before this incident!)

You have a few months to re-polish your image before I need to buy more toys and I don't think that court judgements and injunctions will affect my opinion.

Regardless of all this, I do wish you a very prosper future and a merry holiday season.

Sincerely yours,

{my real name}
Atlanta, GA.

Re:juridistiction?

[Zemran]

Now that would be interesting. Then Europe would have no choice but to start up its own dns etc. and then Asia would have to follow suit and before you know anything the whole thing would end up as stupid as this court case.

More addresses!

[mx80]

I sent mail to: Toby Lenk, CEO and President tlenk@etoys.com Investor Relations ir@etoys.com Ken Ross, VP Communications kross@etoys.com Jonathan Cutler, PR Manager jcutler@etoys.com Idealab http://www.idealab.com/contact/ Also write to newspapers and news agencies and urge them to run the story. cybertimes@nytimes.com letters@latimes.com tips@wired.com letters@slate.com tips@news.com editor@adbusters.org newsonline@bbc.co.uk pancakej@washpost.com lisa_bowman@zd.com Urge national organizations to take up the issue: nospam@eff.org ncac@ncac.org webmaster@freeexpression.org http://www.aclu.org/feedback.html Direct them all to http://dmoz.org/Society/Activism/Media_Activism/Cu lture_Jamming/etoy/ for information

More addresses!

[mx80]

I sent mail to:

Toby Lenk, CEO and President
tlenk@etoys.com

Investor Relations
ir@etoys.com

Ken Ross, VP Communications
kross@etoys.com

Jonathan Cutler, PR Manager
jcutler@etoys.com

Idealab
http://www.idealab.com/contact/

Also write to newspapers and news agencies and urge them to run the story.

cybertimes@nytimes.com
letters@latimes.com
tips@wired.com
letters@slate.com
tips@news.com
editor@adbusters.org
newsonline@bbc.co.uk
pancakej@washpost.com
lisa_bowman@zd.com

Urge national organizations to take up the issue:

nospam@eff.org
ncac@ncac.org
webmaster@freeexpression.org
http://www.aclu.org/feedback.html

Direct them all to
http://dmoz.org/Society/Activism/Media_Activism/ Culture_Jamming/etoy/
for information

I called the 1-800 number and .. ..

[ChrisLynx]

I had a polite conversation with the operator there. First I confirmed with her that eToys.com is really sueing etoy.com. Then I confirmed with her that etoy.com has been in operation longer than eToys.com. She admitted both.

She claimed that eToys.com is not trying to shut them down, but trying to get them to move. She claimed that the case is not about trademark infringement, but that children might want toys and type-in "www.etoy.com" off of the top of their heads. She mentioned at least three times throughout the conversation how much pornography and cursing were on the etoy.com web page, and how bad it would be for children to see that. Basically eToys.com is claiming to be doing a public service, not defending a trademark.

You can believe that, or you can disbelieve that. I'm just reporting what the customer service department told me.

Re:etoys.com feedback form :)

[Ranger Nik]

[hit them where it hurts: don't buy their stock.] here is what i sent them via the feedback page :

i am very disappointed and dissatisfied with eToys for being the first large corporation that directly threatens artists (etoy.com) with a laughable but nevertheless expensive lawsuit.
your lawyers are very good - TOO BAD YOU CAN'T SUE CUSTOMERS TO SHOP AT YOUR SITE. customers can simply choose to go elsewhere.
so here is what i will do:
1) i will never shop at eToys
2) i will send email to all my friends to do the same.
3) i will not buy your stock.

we all know the facts:
etoy.com has been around long before eToys ever started.
etoy.com has refused your offer for big money.
eToys has no right whatsoever to shut down etoy.com.

the fight has just begun. and we all know that controversy is bad for business. so... give it up. call back the dobermanns. be nice.

Email to Toby Lenk (tlenk@etoys.com)

[mx80]

Dear Mr. Lenk:

With deep consternation I have followed the coverage of your recent and ongoing attempt to reverse hijack the domain name of internationally acclaimed art group etoy. According to a report in the Village Voice of 1-7 December 1999, you have sued etoy, claiming that the artists' domain etoy.com infringes on your trademark rights and constitutes unfair competition. I have followed the activities of etoy since their inception in 1994, when the world-wide web was nascent, and e-commerce and certainly eToys was not even around yet. etoy has received much international recognition, among other things the prestigious Golden Nica in the .net category in 1996.

As silly as the fight and profiteering over domains in the .com top level domain seem to someone not involved in e-commerce, and as objectionable the practice of domain name squatting may be, I find your disregard for the freedom of artistic expression on the world wide web downright despicable. It is plain to anyone that etoy does not engage in domain squatting, and to the best of my knowledge, eToys has not even been the "victim" of any other etoy art project. etoy's use of the .com top level domain is an integral part of their overall artistic conception. To prevent them from using the etoy.com domain would be to deprive them of a fundamental component of their artistic program. To my mind, eToys' lawsuit smacks of corporate bullying and borders on censorship.

Needless to say, I will not shop with eToys, will sell any mutual funds I own which invest in eToys, and will urge my family and friends to do likewise, until you drop your lawsuit.

Sincerely yours,

Richard Zach

Boycott letter

[Driph]

My letter. After the note from myself, I included several pages of clippings from user comments here, each one of them expressing their desire to shop elsewhere.

___________



Dir Sir,
The following are clippings from user comments on Slashdot pertaining to the court case between yourselves and etoy.com. This should save you some time and allow you to gather a basic idea as to the general feelings towards your company in light of the recent events.
I myself, having planned to do most of my Christmas shopping online, will NOT be shopping with eToys.com.
Also, as a brief reminder:
"Domain Name: ETOY.COM
Record created on 13-Oct-1995.

Domain Name: ETOYS.COM
Record created on 03-Nov-1997. "
Chris Ainsworth
EDR Technologies
____________________________________ _________________________

Changes to the legal system..

[Greg@RageNet]

The whole lawsuit system in this country appears more broken day after day. It has clearly turned into first a system to make lawers rich by filing frivous 'class action' or personal injury lawsuits against large corporations and secondly into a means for corporations to take the freedoms away from individuals who can never afford a defence against billion dollar companies!

For the first issue perhaps there should be a compensation cap for lawers to keep them from these huge lawsuits; also redirect 'punative' damages somewhere where they will be more effective; the government or perhaps nonprofit organizations in the related field.

For the second... Our court system provides for the defendant in crimial cases a public defender in the event that the defendant cannot afford a defense themselves. Perhaps this should be extended to civil suits if defending the suit would place the defendant into financial hardship.

I am begining to fear we are losing the internet to big business. They've basically come in and started doing what they want and use the legal system as a tool to take what they want.

-- Greg

Re:Nice website you have here...

[CSG_SurferDude]

Interestingly enough, they have their ping port open, and my ping to them is averaging 167 ms.

pings to the other few sites that still have their ping port open range between 67 and 111 ms.

I wonder why their server is so slow...

Please, oh, PLEASE, no organizations!!!

[m.o]

You're saying all the right things, but, please, no organizations! Try to think of a way to do that without rigid organizations of any sort (of course, our beloved Linux is a great example).

We do NOT need an organized voice of truth, because if this voice wins (against whom, by the way?), and becomes the dominant force, it will be the same again, just with different people on top. Once you organize something, it will become crap IMMEDIATELY

Re:Please, oh, PLEASE, no organizations!!!

[matman]

thats a good point.

i think what i mean more, is that we need to express our opinions in places which will be recognised. Organizations make this easy. And an organization doesnt necessarily have to come out on top... if its purpose is just to make some idea heard and nothing else, then whats wrong with that? Oh well :) I just think that some organizations tend to voice a similar oppinion to mine. Usually :)

Turn the Injunction into a Two Edged Sword ???

[redelm]

Clearly Etoys has bamboozled the judge. They have deliberately misinformed him over the rules governing Domain Names while scaring him with porno. Judges do not like to be lied to! They can and will charge liars with contempt of court including fines and jailtime.

The judge issued a preliminary injection in good faith to prevent harm. When it is explained that he was deceived and caused harm instead, some judicial outrage/coverup will occur. IMHO, it is important the the etoy defense team take a friendly stance toward the judge, explain how he was deceived in this admittedly arcane issue, and suggest contempt punishment. They could also countersue. If they don't approach this correctly, the judge will stonewall behind "porno".

Clearly etoys benefits immeasurably from this unjust preliminary injunction, and ought not be walk away with the loot.

-- Robert

WRITE TO eTOYS CEO TOBY LENK (tlenk@etoys.com)

[mx80]

Write to eToys "Uncle of the Board" Toby Lenk. For more information, go to the etoy ODP catgeory.

Shareholder suit?

[Brian Knotts]

As the eToys people must have known this would generate negative publicity, and the stock value has plummeted recently, couldn't eToys shareholders sue the eToys officers for failure to prudently carry out their fiduciary responsibilities?


Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page.

Slashdot Lynch Mob Mentality...

[DraKKon]

Jesus.. I never thought so many smart people would be so stupid. What the hell.. EToys.Com == Coperate America which then must equal EVIL. The mentality on here at times is so 3rd grade.


This post states that Look at the etoy content. It's pretty easy to see that they were screwing with eToys, and having fun with the inevitable confusion their domain name generates. among other points. This post states that etoys.com doesn't want kids to veiw porn. Understandable.


Then there are the low end of the mental food chain saying do a coordinated DoS attack,
someone advocating a hack of the site.. Nice website you have here... it would be a SHAME if something HAPPENED to it! 1, 2


I used to LOVE slashdot, but seeing the mentality of the readers AND artical posters, I'm sickened. News travels faster than light here. Its eassy not to read the whole story.

Re:Nice website you have here...

[Marcio Silva]

Not that I'm advocating any kind of coordinated DOS attack ;) but...

If you were to write a script or program that would just reload their pages, I wouldn't go for their static pages.

I think it'd be much more fun to submit all kinds of bogus search requests and put some serious load on their app and database servers.

For example:

http://www.etoys.com/exec/detail-search/toy?toy_ag e=6&toy_catid=19&toy_price=3&keyword=PRO TEST&go.x=5&go.y=3

if you were to replace the word "PROTEST" with a randomly selected word from a dictionary, I think you could generate a significantly greater ammount of load. If you changed the search terms and pulled them from a big list of possible words, they wouldn't be able to benefit from caching. And it wouldn't even use more bandwith on your end.

Can EToy return the favor?

[Fencepost]

(rambles a bit)

It seems to me that EToy, if they so desire, might be able to return the favor to Etoys - a suit, filed in the EU where they're based, because Etoys is diluting the recognizability of EToy.

After all, EToy is recognized as a source of cutting-edge art and social commentary, and it provably existed long before Etoys came along and picked up a similar name. Anyone who goes to the Etoys site seeking art is going to be just as confused as someone going to the EToy site looking for toys.

If the argument that the site is hosted in Switzerland and should be in the .ch top-level domain is allowed to stand, then a counter-argument that Etoys being hosted in California should be in the .ca.us domain is just as valid. In addition, the precedent that the case would set should bring massive support to EToy from other non-US companies with .com domains.

The movement from court to court seems remarkably like a case of shopping for a favorable judge, and for an international matter a California state court seems like a particularly inappropriate venue. The requirement that EToy be physically present in order to participate also seems onerous, particularly for a preliminary hearing - it would make sense for the trial itself, but not for the early stages.

As an interesting thought, can EToy go through discovery and depositions to investigate all records and email from the early days of Etoys in an attempt to determine whether the company was aware of the potential conflict? The depositions in particular would be better handled in a case in the EU - if the creators of EToy must travel to the the site of a US trial, it makes sense that the founders of Etoys be required to travel to the site of a Swiss one.

Even better, on thought: if in discovery it is found that Etoys was aware that they had no real legal standing, would that open them up to a barratry (abuse of lawsuits for intimidation purposes) suit?

If nothing else, they should be appealing for emergency permission to put up a page that describes the situation - "This site is down due to a lawsuit between Etoys, Inc. and the EToy artist group. To reach Etoys, the online toy seller, click {here}. To reach EToy, the artist group, click {here}."

Fencepost
just a little off

Re:Can EToy return the favor?

[mx80]

Little detail: Switzerland is not part of the EU.

Re:Can etoy return the favor?

[Fencepost]

Switzerland not being part of the EU is perhaps not a huge issue; it seems that while the server is hosted there the primary members of the group are scattered around several countries.

In fact, this is an improvement in some ways - if there's a basis for a countersuit in either Switzerland or one of the EU countries, it might make sense to check the laws in both. One item that might make waves (at least PR, if not legal) would be an EU-based suit that presented eToys as attempting to force a European artistic group out of existence using US laws. Depending on the local feeling about US domination of the Internet, that could turn into a serious impediment for eToys. The delay by the US trademark office probably wouldn't hurt this either, given the relative startup times of the two groups.

Note that I'm assuming here that eToys will manage to at the least stretch this out for a substantial period by virtue of having a carefully selected judge in a court local to them - if they can exert enough influence they may win the case despite the lack of legal merits, simply because it's difficult for etoy to reach the location to provide an active defense.

A countersuit of the sort I'm talking about would certainly have legal merit at least as strong as eToys' case, but the larger issue might be the PR question - if they manage to build a reputation in Europe as a bullying US megacorporation that beats up local artists it could seriously impact any plans they might have to expand their business beyond the US. If the etoy folks can appear to be charmingly eccentric in court this would be even better - "They may be kooky artists, but they're our kooky artists!" Charm from eToys' suited lawyers is unlikely to be an issue.

The PR issues might be just what was needed to get eToys to discuss settling, assuming that etoy is interested in doing so rather than in fighting it out to the bitter end. A settlement would probably end with etoy agreeing to have a relatively inoffensive front page that indicates that it is not associated with eToys (and probably with a link to the eToys site). If that sort of thing does happen, I personally think that etoy should push for it to be reciprocal - a note at the bottom of the eToys front page that says "This site is not affiliated with the etoy.CORPORATION art group." Such a note would, of course, have to include a link to www.etoy.com.

fencepost
just a little off

Re:Good vs. Evil? I think you're confused

[Michael O-P]

The above is probably a troll (hence AC), but there are a lot of ignorant people out there regarding free speech (Tipper Gore comes to mind) so here are my points:

1. The porn and OK bombing references were bits of art on their site. Art often makes points that are more controversial than your average TV commercial.
2. Crushing speech with which one does not agree is evil.
3. Using the argument that they're "protecting the public" when in fact they just want to steal the etoy.com name is even more evil

I know their programmers are Linux nuts and are also good guys, which is why it bothers me that I have to tell friends and family not to shop at eToys. It's obviously their lawyers who are idiots.

I'm rambling now, but perhaps in tech companies, lawyers should be required to run lawsuits past the engineers first, to see how the online community will react.

Why the different views

[arty3]

I don't get this. When news like this comes out everybody is all of a sudden angry at those "evil" corporations that try to make their own laws and do whatever they want to, yet when the story about the WTO protests came out people where asking where all the anger was coming from.
Why the change of opinion. Is it because people are just to short-sighted and forget things like this , which have been happening on a regular basis.

Re:Why the different views

[arty3]

It's not about financial success. financial success of these companies benefits all of us. I't about the fact that they are not responsible in how they use their power. I have nothing against anybody making as much money as they possibly can but you can't do it by any means necessary. In this case the end does not justify the means.

Dear God, that's an idea.

[Spirilis]

Rifting the Internet. I ask myself the same question, why hasn't anyone done it yet? I considered the idea of my own personal DNS'ing when I first learned how to work BIND, but dropped the idea out of boredom. Making an alternate DNS network might be harmful, though. Especially if businesses get the bright idea. People will be complaining about being part of "IBM's Internet" or "Microsoft's Internet" and such. This might be a good thing in the long run, for it will prove that the DNS system needs order, but on the other hand, it might as well destabilize the Internet and make it exactly what has been speculated by some: a "fad".

calling eToys' customer service...

[poxaV]

i called etoys' customer service (1-800-463-8697) to see if i could register a complaint with them regarding the etoy/etoys litigation. the customer service rep said that they were not allowed to comment, and wouldn't even take my name and number. he did, however, say that i could send mail to service@etoys.com.

so, i will.

-cgw-

Wow

[jfunk]

From reading some previous comments, I've thought about starting such a database.

I was thinking of starting as a simple website, then defining a protocol and writing client and server software, maybe a browser plugin, option in Konqueror and Mozilla, etc.

I like the idea.

Hey, etoyS, hope you read this

[Trailer Trash]

Let's see, you've sued etoy.com because one of your customers went to their site accidently and you think you lost a sale.

Well, get ready to sue yourselves.

I was going to buy a couple hundred dollars worth of stuff from your site next week for the numerous children in my family, as well as friends' children here in town. You've lost far more sales by losing me as a customer, both present and future, than etoy.com could have ever cost you.

Oh well, KayBee toys (a clueful toy store with an internet presence at www.kbkids.com) will be getting an extra order this Christmas.

Hey, good luck getting blood out of that turnip.

Michael

etoy and relatives

[the_tsi]

Is etoy anything like ytok? That would certainly make it time-relevant.

-Chris

Re:cut & paste to a xterm near you:

[hangel]

I support etoy.com rights, but the least thing we need now is /. to be associated with some forms of negative use of the knowledge. It won't made any good for etoy.com, instead let etoys.com know what kind and level of people is backing etoy.com
and that they are no alone.

etoys marketing people are totally wrong when attacking etoy.com.
Commercial sites were banned from the net until NSF finally approved and open system, and now a newcomer commercial site tries to destroy the very root of the value of Internet, openness and cooperation.

etoys is misunderstanding e-maket and e-ethic. Having money is not synonym of having reason (drugs cartel, Redmond cartel and so). The e-market are we the people that are on line and work hard for making the net a growing and universal place where justice, fairness and knowledge flow for all.

Please do not use alternate and aggressive methods instead let's make etoys feel our position.

Re:Nice website you have here...

[Sangui5]

Actually, I think it'd be neat if somebody wrote a program to recursively fetch the whole site (except for the catalog part) every hour or so and search the results for "etoy.com". I mean, it is illegal to ping a site every second to take it down. But it isn't illegal to ping it to see if it's up, or even to ping it every hour or so to get an uptime history. And seeing if they post anything about the etoy business on their site is a lot more useful than just pinging them.

Re:deny etoys.com service ?

[hangel]

I support etoy.com cause.

But /. shouldn't be associated with instigation to harm any web site.
etoys have more money and used it incorrectly.
/. affiliates definitely have far more knowledge than etoys, but it doesn't allow to overuse it.

Let the wrong behavior in their side.
This is not war time, its Christmas!

etoy.com will prevail. You, me and many more are with them.

It was a joke

[fusiongyro]

1. IIRC, there were about three arrests, and minimal injuries. This doesn't constitute "Gestapo thugs" beating people up.

2. In a mob situation, you have to believe in this sort of reaction; otherwise, you are an anti-authoritarian, and therefore a libertarian of some kind (hopefully, a libertarian socialist, AKA anarchist)

3. Anarchism is the belief that capitalism and authority lead to humans being taken advantage of. The direct result is that no government should exist, but human interrelationships should be the foundation of order in society. Anarchists don't pillage and loot. Morons pillage and loot. Anarchists are interested in a form of equality that is simply not possible with the restraints of government and capitalism. Get your terms right.

Daniel

Maybe etoy.com could sue eToys.com in the UK?

[DragonHawk]

See subject line, and then notice the following link posted at the bottom of every page on eToys.com:

http://www.etoys.co.uk

SAVE THE CHILDREN!

[CrAlt]

Why would anyone leave their kids alone on the internet anyways?

Re:SAVE THE CHILDREN!

[Felinoid]

Some parents have this habbit of letting some gadget rase there kid. A nanny is ok, the TV is pushing it the Internet is totally inapropreate.
When they find the Internet is full of child inapprorpreate matereal do they yank there kids off? No they go screaming fuzzy blue mud.
My mother did let me go on BBSes when I was a kid but far short of rasing me on the computer she'd be right there to talk with me about what I'd find reguardless of what I found. If your not prepaired to do something similer you shouldn't place your kids infront of the net or control your childs net access.

I liked this even better

[CrAlt]

http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~atman/spam/adblock.h tml

damn firewalls

[CrAlt]

PING www.etoys.com (204.71.184.166): 56 data bytes

--- www.etoys.com ping statistics ---
7 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100% packet loss

The ICANN sham

[blkadder]

Another shining example of the trademark-owner dominated world we live in. I feel the need to correct some very signficant errors the original poster made and the erroneous conclusions he arrived at as a result: > 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 [12]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: Good rules have in fact *not* been written. Horrible rules have been written, as I will explain. If you think the etoy.com folks would have fared better under them, you are very, very mistaken. The resolution policy you cite was developed largely by representatives of trademark and/or big business interest with the intent of taking any domain in which they have the same string of characters trademarked quickly and inexpensively. It is important to know that trademarks are granted to organizations for use within a specific category of business. As such, a company may only claim rights to use that mark in that category of business. The resolution policy you cite attempts to offer trademark owners superior rights over non-trademark owners, rights which they do not have under the law, detailed below. Under the policies you are automatically forced into mandatory arbitration by the mere complaint of a trademark holder. The trademark owner need not show any basis whatsoever for their claim, or any evidence as to how you are violating their rights. Their are no penalties for abusing thability whatsoever. If you wish to avoid forced arbitration, you have a mere *10* days in which to file suit. The dispute policies require *you* to prove that you have a "legitimate interest" in the domain in are using it in " good faith." The dispute policies allow for the confiscation of a domain if you register it to prevent a trademark owner from using it. Doing so in no way constitues any sort of infringement. The dispute policies allow for the confiscation of a domain name if it is found that you are intentionally tarnishing the trademark(section 4(c)iii). Ever heard of the free-speech protection of *parody* guaranteed by the First Amendment? Why don't we take a look at the claim that ETOYS.COM made? "the antisocial, obscene, and offensive images associated with is defendants' use of the mark 'etoy,' both on the Internet and elsewhere, have tarnished the ETOYS mark and the eToys brand name..." There's that pesky "tarnish" word explicitly mentioned in the dispute policy. eTOY would have LOST their domain name without the benefit of a decison of a court of competent jurisdiction. I understand that you are well-intentioned, but the next time you consider offering *ANYTHING* produced by ICANN as a shining example of fairness and protection of domain name holders, please make damn sure to read all the documents in their entirety, and carefully consider their source. As a long-time observer and participant in that arena, it has become exceedingly clear that ICANN is a complete and utter sham, and the offering misinterpretations of its documents and actions only result in furthering the lie.

you should read the story 1st

[CrAlt]

Dear Mr Coward,
If you had read the story you would have learned that ETOY.COM had the domain a few years befor ETOYS.COM did. Etoy should sue etoys, they are the ones who ripped the name off.

I just canceled my DC order from them :)

[CrAlt]

I was sending my brother one for Xmas from etoys.com, after reading this I canceled the order, and i told the rep why. He didnt seem to know what the hell i was talking about :-/. oh well. I did look around a bit, and its the same price everyware.

Re:Jam the WTO... Jam etoys.com (and /. censorship

[Possum Man]

The command "ping www.etoys.com" does not return anything. Perhaps they were getting so many pings that they took their ping off-line?

Even if they don't respond to our pings, thousands of pings per second should still tie up their network, should it not?

Also, if they did recently take their ping command off-line, it shows they are noticing that they are being opposed.

Here's a graphic to use

[Phrogman]

I suggested we should consider a graphic to display on one's website that links to this story, and one appeared in my email. Matt sent me this image located here.

He told me I could "do with it what you will" - well I suggest anyone who feels inclined should post this on their website, and link it back to this story here on /.

If you have a website and you choose to add this graphic to it, let me know your site URL - you can email me at atho@pagans.org

If I get a chance and enough folks to this then I will create a site that lists all the ones that display this banner.

Guess you didnt read it also...

[CrAlt]

If you did you would have found that etoy.com had their domain a few years befor etoys.com had theirs. etoy should be suing etoys.com.


"...inevitable confusion their domain name generates." It was EtoyS that started the confusion, not etoy

"...among other points. This post states that etoys.com doesn't want kids to veiw porn. Understandable." SAVE THE CHILDREN!...NOT! The internet is not rated G, and it shouldnt be. If you leave your little kids alone on the internet then you have bigger problems then etoy.

"I used to LOVE slashdot, but seeing the mentality of the readers AND artical posters, I'm sickened." Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!

Re:Guess you didnt read it also...

[DraKKon]

No actually I did read the whole thing. I know that etoy.com was registered 2 years prior.

"...among other points. This post states that etoys.com doesn't want kids to veiw porn. Understandable." SAVE THE CHILDREN!...NOT! The internet is not rated G, and it shouldnt be. If you leave your little kids alone on the internet then you have bigger problems then etoy.

Yes.. leaving your kids alone with a computer with an internet connection is bad, but If I remember correctly, the kids grandfather was there at the time. Doesn't that mean the kid wasn't alone at the time? Hmm..

etoy's official toywar graphics

[mx80]

etoy sent out an "official" toywar graphic with their last press release. It's alittle big, but kinda nice: Lego guy with a machine gun or something. Copy available here.

Re:What if it were Yahooligans?

[mx80]

It would betray even worse judgment on the part of yahoo than it does for eToys to choose a domain name so close to one which had already been in operation for years, and whose content some may find unsuitable. And yes, I would fault Yahoo. Why would I not? But the eToy/etoys case is even worse: there are no s&m pictures on etoy's site. The only foul language is one use of the word "fucking", and it is not used on the front page. You have to click at least one link to get to any "objectionable" content. Furthermore, in the case of eToys it is clear that profits, not protectiveness of children, is the determining factor behind their actions. The "offensive content" allegations are a red herring.

Re:Take a deep breath

[BluSkreen]

etoy content is protected in the US as free speech.

etoys does not own the domain name, that's owned by NSI. As such, etoys can't trademark the domain name, so the requirement to defend the mark is moot. Besides, the etoy use predates the toy seller by two years.

I'd be more inclinded to judge a company or a person by their actions, rather than the type of server software they use. The "sharp fanged lawyers" are controlled by the CEO and/or Board of the company. Generally, they do not operate autonomously, particularly in matters of this scope.

Dave

Last Post!

[Last Post!]

uhm yu you jshoall
all use LYNX and text mofed GOPHer shitg fuq the bweb it is lame . this is relaly on topic uyou just dont know it.

LET GO, IF JUST FOR ONE DAYYYYYY,M I CAN FLY SO HIGH. YOU ARE OWNED. LAST POST!


_.......................__
||.....__...._._||_..||-\\..._...._._||_
||......_\\.(/_'..||....||-//.//.\\.(/_'..||
||__((_||_,_/).||_..||....\\_//.,_/).\\_
The final word; anything following is redundant.

Ecelerent? [DOS attack responce to legal attack]?

[Felinoid]

Would it help or hinder to DOS attack etoys?
What good could be gainned? Etoys is dos attacked great so that means what to etoys? Nothing...
Or maybe it means they get to spin it for simpathy... supporters of etoy attecked us... Thats not going to help...
No leave it as is... right now etoy is the victom and this leaves room for political discution to keep this sort of thing from happening again.

eviltoy.com: The eToys boycott site.

[mx80]

Check out eviltoy.com, the anti-eToys site.

Re:/.'ers never read the ruling do they....

[mx80]

Yes. The original front page was pretty innocuous. Click on the "old fashioned way" link to see the "offensive" material. I don't know where the alleged porn went, but the article claims it was just a link to another site.

Re:Etoy Ressources

[mx80]

Boycott eToys! on deja.com

OpenMerchant

[Bob Galloway]

Or just don't use openmerchant cause it is pretty lame software. Have you looked at the code? ick! I could hardly believe it was coming from such a hyped-up company, with backers like IdeaLab. The distibution is ugly, with tmp files left in by the developers, and the high-level design of the software doesn't look like it had much thought put into it. And they don't use CVS! =P Actually, while you were posting that, we were busy with our second release of OpenMerchant. (It went out Friday evening.) The first released version had all the faults of quick proprietary development -- the hacks and re-writes imposed later by clients with time pressures. The version released Friday is (some bugs aside) complete and fairly easily installable; I urge you to take a second look. On CVS: *sigh* We're distributing nightly builds. We're incorporating patches and bugfixes submitted to our development mailing list. One of our programmers is working on a new source control system -- until then (and until I can convince folk here to use CVS :) we're going with the Tarball Versioning System.

Re:OpenMerchant

[Bob Galloway]

Hmm. Word to all you w3m users out there: you lose your HTML formatting when you preview. *sigh*

I'm disgusted....

[Phobrek]

Dear Editor,

I'd like to complain about a disgusting website I've just visited called "etoys.com". It turns out that I had typed in the wrong URL, as I was really seeking out "etoy.com" in the hopes of viewing some enlightening and motivating artistic matter. Imagine my shock, then, when I discovered that another company, in an attempt to steal the audience away from the popular artists at etoy.com, has set up a disturbing, crass, aesthetically putrid concoction at "etoyS.com", an URL designed to look like that of my favorite cultural site!

What I found there disgusted me - molded pieces of plastic and other garbage - all in an attempt to get this law-abiding, tax-paying citizen's cash!

I am morally offended by this commercial smut and wish that congress would finally pass some legislation to protect the public from such vapid capitalistic ventures.

Yrs sincerely,

Charles U. Farley
Channel Versus

Re:True colors

[UncleRoger]

Just a quick explanation of what I meant when I said that "I actually thought they "got it"." -- The eToys site appears to offer in-house written descriptions which, while still designed to sell the product, offer a little better information than the stock package descriptions that ToySmart uses. They also provide their own opinions of the age range a toy is suitable for (toy companies are often clueless on this.) I like their site, it's easy to use, and it's got a lot of information. It's too bad I have to go elsewhere.

my letter to etoys

[gsarff]

Hello, I was most dismayed today when I read an email I received from a friend concerning etoys legal actions against the owners of the etoy.com domain. Whichever parties at your organization instigated this action have besmirched your good reputation, and I fear it will be much effort to repair it. Your fame is spreading rapidly. As a computer professional since 1977 I have watched the Internet community grow from tolerant friendly community into what it is today, and am saddened by your actions regarding a fellow member of this community. As an employee of the world's largest computer company who is single and very well paid I was hoping to buy some very nice toys from you for my 5 nieces and nephews for this Christmas. However, I am afraid that I cannot now in good conscience do so. I feel I must "vote with my wallet" and purchase such items elsewhere. If I purchased anything from you, it could well be my own money that would be used in future legal actions your lawyers take. I am placing word of the information I received on our company's global internal employee bulletin board where it hopefully can be viewed by several hundred thousand of our employees worldwide before the Christmas season. I am also sending it to MSNBC, CNN.COM and ZDTV to let them also know what is going on. May the growing riptide of public opinion pull you under.

eToys Affiliate Partnerships, Canceling

[realdpk]

One of the web sites I run is an eToys Affiliate Partner, meaning I can sell eToys products off of the site. I am now going to cancel my Affiliate Partnership and I'll be including this as my reason for cancellation.

I hope other sites will do the same, 'cause, this is totally rediculous.
- dpk

Re:Word of the Day -- "promogulate"

[Keeper]

Hrm, juding the fact that it was moderated down to "offtopic", I'm gonna guess that someone wasn't amused...

Re:E-mail them here

[vincey]

also we should also contact Rosie Odonnell. On her web site she has the ETOYS BANNER. HERE IS HER CONTACT URL http://rosieo.warnerbros.com/cmp/contact.htm I left her an email telling her about ETOYS. Maybe she has some pull with them! Vince

etoy vs etoys

[nathany]

Wow, imagine if you accidently typed etoys.com when you were looking for art. =) Granted, if etoy.com is going to display things not suitable for children (assuming such things aren't just rumors), maybe they should have a warning page. But that's a separate issue altogether... It seems to me that eToys didn't do their research very well. We're talking about an "e-business" here, a .com company. Did they not notice the radical etoy.com 2 years ago and see that it might be harmful to form a company under etoys.com? If Typo-Protection(TM) wasn't an issue then, why is it now? Now that eToys has been labelled scrooge, it seems the best solution for eToys to start over next year. They have the cash. Get a new name and register all variations of the domain. - n8 Maybe in 10 years we won't use domain names anymore, and everything will be good.

Re:Ecelerent? [DOS attack responce to legal attack

[BoberFett]

Actually, this being Christmas and all, a DoS would hurt them greatly.

1) Imagine how much they make per day in sales.
2) Multiply that by 10 to get Christmas-time sales figures
3) Multiply that by 0 to get the amount of sales they make if their site is unreachable

They'd get the message in a hurry.