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eToys Drops Lawsuit Against eToy
A lot of people have caught the word that eToys has dropped their lawsuit against eToy. This story has been brewing around here for a while. It's good to see the side of reason prevail in this situation. The solution that eToys is proposing is that both sides drop their respective claims against each other (eToys and eToy both have claims against each other) I've talked with Ken Ross, eToys VP of Communications. Click below for his take on it.
Essentially, eToys has proposed that both parties drop their respective claims against each other. This means that the injunction against against Etoy would be dropped.
The reason they're trying to do this is that they've heard from people, quite a bit over the last few weeks. Quite a number of people from the arts community had contacted them, and they are responding to this, says Ken Ross of eToys.
/ k.d / earth trickle / Monkeys vs. Robots Films /
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
Etoys has nothing to lose by dropping the claim. Christmas season is over, the shopping is done. They have all thier sales. In addition they are risking losing a case to Etoy, who could then sue them for damages. In my view this made sense. I wish Etoy would continue thier lawsuit though, this whole thing was concocted for publicity and christmas sales. They should be punished.
They just said they won't 'press' the suit, whatever it means.
I'm sure that eToy can sue these guys under California's Anti-SLAPP ordinance.
SLAPP == Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, or a shut-you-up-with-big-money lawsuit.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
...but not for the obvious reason.
If it had gone to court, and Etoy WON, it probably would have been a precident-setting decision. Now, of course, we will probably have to go through this AGAIN with the next bone-head that tries to sue over similar names.
Now I want to see how long it takes NSI to get the domain info straightened out. Knowing them etoy.com will be back up sometime next july ;)
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
-dvorsd
This just proves, in my humble opinion, that this is mearly a ruse to exploit the average coder -- by hangin' on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society. We're living in a dictatorship. ..... A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working class of coders and average lowly geeks are exploited to serve the purpose of the upper class slime.
;) (Hehe, Commie alert!)
Just my personal opinion though
-----
"Cogito Eggo Sum: I think, therefore, waffle."
I don't know about the rest of you, but I sent a couple of e-mails indicating that I was not buying from eToys because of this, as I'm sure plenty of other slashdot readers did.
Perhaps they aren't admitting the influence slashdot and other aware folks have? (If they did, perhaps more people would start voting with their pocketbook, so to speak, and big corps wouldn't be able to get away with quite so much.)
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
I hate to be a cynical troll bastard, but the truth of the matter is that they probably would have lost horribly. I agree that it would be a very important precedent setter if they had won, but that knife cuts both ways.
What is the part of the pledge of allegiance that everybody learns but that is never actually *IN* the pledge of allegiance? "With Freedom, and Justice for all those who can afford it". Hate to say it, but whoever has more money generally wins due to better lawyers, and more expendable time/energy/money that gets put into winning it.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
eToys wanting to protect their trademark. (After all if they don't protect it they loose it) But there are much better ways of doing so. I mean if I was eToys the only thing I would ask is to have "etoy" put mabey a one liner "If your looking for toys click here" with a link to eToys. (And vice versa from eToys to etoy)
Does that seem fair?
eToys shut down etoy to increase their margin through the holiday shopping season. The holiday shopping season is now over, and the boycott is more dangerous to them than the tiny percentage of customers they lose to mistyped urls.
Not to mention that the lawsuit hasn't yet been dropped, their just making compromising noises, aka 'spin doctoring.' I feel no compunction to reward someone for trying to pull a snow job, thanks anyway.
eToys will probably actually go into my list with Wal*mart and Starbucks of places I will never shop. Every market force -except- consumer awareness encourages corporations to be ruthless and to care about nothing but profit. Unless the senior management of eToys resigns en masse, I have to assume that that company has no ethical compunctions about being anything but a purely market driven force, and I'd be just as happy to see them go out of business. Maybe if more unethical pure-greed business went under, more people with integrity would feel that business wasn't something too dirty to be involved in, and then everyone (except scumsucking getrichquick at the expense of the suckers types) would win.
--Parity
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
It could be they made the connection between the massive decline in their stock value and the bad press they have been getting since starting this whole mess.
Kudos to everyone who boycoted them, they got what they deserved and lost in the process.
Finkployd
If the lawsuit wasn't both valid and necessary, why did they pursue it in the first place???
-- Slashdot sucks.
I sincerely hope you are joking.
First, they haven't said "dropping" the lawsuite, they've said "not pressing it." There may be a difference, legally speaking. Since I'm obviously not a lawyer, I'll let someone more in the know comment. In the meantime a measure of skepticism is called for.
Second, even if they are actually dropping the lawsuite, that may very well have been been their strategy from the start: get etoy.com taken off the internet during the busy xmas season, then drop a costly lawsuite they can't win anyway after the holiday is over. By next year they would (hopefully) have enough name recognition for it not to be as big an issue, they may have acquired the name, or chosen some other tactic to address the issue.
The other possibility is, of course, that they have wisely caved in to widespread outrage among both the artistic and technical communities and have found their legal tactics to have backfired in a business sense, costing them allot of money. That may or may not indirectly be related to their stock price falling, though of course those of us who boycotted them would like to believe it to be so.
Either way, the only reward they may have earned is an end to a boycott, not active support from those they harmed (and that group includes IMHO the entire internet community). However, until I see them actually make good (a public apology at the very least, more preferably paying etoy.com's legal expenses), I will continue to withhold my money from their pockets.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
This is a skirmish in a wider war, a war that's going to go on for a long, long time.
We live by the rule of law. Man, there are times when it hurts to say that. The Internet wouldn't be what it is today if it weren't for the secret (and sometimes not-so-secret) admiration of many of its builders for the outlaw image. Except for Peter Neumann, of course. However, I live in a neighborhood where I'm glad the police saturate the streets, having had many personal belongings appropriated by other residents of the neighborhood in my absence, over the years.
But in any frontier, society arrives first and the law plays catch-up. These are the Good Old Days of the Internet, folks, and you should enjoy them while you can. Trademark law, copyright law, trade secret protection, contract law, all are having real, and in some cases severe, problems adapting to the new territory.
Eventually, all of this will get fixed. But it's going to get fixed in the light of what we do now, during the period of time when things don't work so good. It's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease, and the Internet violates so many of the assumptions under which the existing legal framework was constructed that sometimes it's hard to hear the packets whiz by for all the squeaking.
So when something like this comes up, I think it's a good idea to think about the situation not in terms of "big ugly bad corporation against innocent little guy", but in terms of: "Suppose I owned etoys.com? Suppose I owned etoy.com? Suppose I were a customer of one? Of the other?"
This might help provide a perspective on the real issues. Remember, ownership doesn't depend on how nasty the owner is. Our legal system is founded on the theory that what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, even if you're a vegetarian.
Once you've gained that perspective...well, then it's time to beat up on the big ugly bad guy. Hopefully, with better weapons in your intellectual arsenal.
I applaud etoys decision to drop the suit, and the people of the Internet community that pushed them in that direction, but there is a more significant issue at stake. How did they ever get the injunction in the first place? The mere fact they won a temporary injunction is frightening to me. Based on the fact that they never owned the domain, it was not even the same name, and last but far from least etoy was around years before etoys, how could any rational person grant an injunction, it boggles the mind. At this point it looks good for the Internet community you know, all is well that ends well and that type of stuff. But what is going to be the out come when this happens again? And what will happen when the site in question is not an internationally acclaimed web site? Will that web site receive the same support as etoy received? The fact that etoys is pulling the suit is a step in the right direction, but there needs to be a clearly defined procedure in place that will not allow this to happen again. And it should be defined by the people/institutions who make the Internet thrive and not by those who thrive off the Internet. Maybe etoy should follow through with their suit and put the screws to etoys. If they win then it would be a major coup for the internet community, something that would make Mr. A. Huge Korporation think twice about hassling little Johnny web site owner. Removing the injunction is wonderful, but that only remedies a symptom, the cause is what needs to be fixed.
root@localbrain root>ps ax |grep thoughtd
when B.J. Clinton asked Paula Jones to drop her suit. (Way off topic!)
So here we have another victory for flame, one of seemingly dozens that I've seen since I began trawling Slashdot. CmdrTaco posts an "outrage" story, thousands of screaming techno monkeys are released from their cages, and the "evildoer" is inundated with everything that the more sanctimonious Slashdotters hate: brainless insults, threats, aimless fury, severance of business relations, and (presumably) a little rational argument thrown in for seasoning.
And the result? WE WIN!
Let me spell that out again for you sourpusses who can't abide being represented by puerile mudslingers.
W E W I N E V E R Y T I M E
Now I'm sure some of the aforementioned are already warming up their typing fingers to explain how we don't really win, that this sort of victory is phyrric, that we can only reduce our influence and tarnish our credibility by proceeding in this way, and that eventually we will be ignored.
I disagree. Oh, how much I disagree! I say, it's time we stop shunning natural righteous anger. How long will we claim that human emotion is a bastard of which we should be ashamed? Forget it, no, if the actions of another anger me, then I won't suppress that anger in pursuit of the ideal Spock-like discourse that the Slashdot ethics police endorse.
Rational argument is fundamental, I disagree. But not all atrocities or moral infractions have their roots in reason. Some are emotional, or even legitimately evil. Those cannot be address by reason; emotion must be an allowable tool in our arsenal.
My two cents.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
I mean, if you think about the timing of the law suit, Etoys.com main goal was to prevent people from going to Etoy.com when they meant to go to Etoys.com. The best way to fix this type of confusion beyond hijacking the domain and redirecting it is to bring it down all together.
... if Etoys.com hadn't brought etoy.com down, that user may have been marveled by the content of etoy.com and forgotten that they wanted to go to etoys.com in the first place, only later to go to toysrus.com. If Etoy.com fails to resolve for the customer, there is more of a chance that they'll try "etoys.com" and get to the toy site.
... and they did just that.
Scenario:
Customer remembers something about the "etoy" toystore on the web from a TV commercial so they punch up Etoy.com into their browser
Etoys.com main goal here was to prevent the loss of even a SINGLE possible customer due to the distraction that is etoy.com
Now they want to come off as the Good Guys(TM) for not pushing the suit while all along, their plan worked 100% as expected.
From the article:
"People are telling us they want the art of
etoy and the e-commerce of eToys to
co-exist," said eToys spokesman
Jonathan Cutler. "We've agreed. We're
not pressing the lawsuit."
Like there was any confusion in what people wanted. "Oh, Etoys decided to try and run them off of the Net because that's what we wanted".
Baloney.
Cutler:
"Our intent was never to silence free
artistic expression," he said.
No, it was just corporate greed, which happened to shut down an artistic Website. They're obviously only "doing the right thing" due to the negative reaction they got, and not because they've "figured it out".
Personally, I'll never buy from them because of the way they acted, they proved they're not concerned with treating their "neighbors" fairly on the 'net.
But this is so much bullshit on the part of etoys.com If you remember correctly the initial injunction was set so that etoy.com would not have a hearing date until the 27th of Christmas - barring etoy.com from Christmas shoppers (etoys big season). The only reason etoys is "dropping" the suit, is because they've already won. Christmas buying season is over and etoys successfully stymied etoy from recieving hits from users who mistyped the etoys website.
Now is not the time for a pathetic sigh of relief. Now is the time to fight back against etoys.
I have never in my life seen so clearly the damages one large company can do to good ole fashion people despite "Social Stability" created through government and law.
Etoys needs to pay. Etoy should not relent. I think RtMark would agree with me when I say that Etoy crossed the line of law on this one.
Joseph Elwell.
They SHOULD HAVE just contacted eToy and asked them to put a link on their site for mistakes. I've seen that a few times. That would make to much sense though I guess...
If you lika me like I lika you...
Of course. When the Legislative and Executive branches are coopted, the sole remaining (legal) remedy is petitioning the Judiciary for redress of grievances. These days, that's all that stands between this country and a "capitalist paradise" like Singapore.
This is why I mistrust tort-reform measures. Who's interests are represented by Congress? Who's job is it to pass legislation? Worried yet?
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
I guess some of us learned more from the Cold War than did others.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
I think without question Etoy should continue their lawsuit agains Etoys. Etoys was clearly out of line and went so far as to even shut down their website. How can we have a government and judicial system that is this stupid about technology and the world in general. I think Etoy should definately continue with their lawsuit and if they agree to continue persuing the suit I would gladly donate to their cause. I think that Etoys deserves to be punished severely for this crap. I think the the only good part about this is that it did get Etoy a lot of publicity, and I think if they tried they could turn that publicity and attention that they have drawn for this case and get enough donations to continue with their lawsuit. Etoys clearly did this for a lot of publicity, so why can't Etoy turn it around on them? I'm hung over and tired, so if you want me to work here you better serve good coffee, and a lot of it.
You can legally sue eachother and ask for no damages. Two companies can sue each other in a friendly fashion so as to get a legal ruling on something. Sometimes companies do this to get an official ruling on certain business practices, mergers, etc. It can also be used to test the legality of a contract.
eToys has owned the domain toys.com all along... why not rename themselves?
Alternatively, they might eventually want to expand beyond toys into other goods, and rebrand themselves more with a more generic name.
etoys.com didn't have a legit suit against etoy.com because not only was etoy.com there first, they have nothing to do with one another. That's not always the case.
For instance. microsfot.com redirects to linux.org. The only reason to have that domain is because it's based on a user making a typo to microsoft.com. Would microsoft have a legit suit against the owner of linux.org because it's using the Microsoft name to get hits, and users?
And what's worse, is a website like gamefaq.com. gamefaqs.com is a well known website where users(mostly under 18) get game information. gamefaq.com is a porn site. Would IGN(of which gamefaqs.com is affiliated) have a legit lawsuit against the owner of gamefaq.com becuase it's trying to lure it's mostly under 18 userbase to a porn site?
The two above examples are, what I think, legit reasons to sue a webiste based on a domainname. Both are shameless attempts to get hits from users typing in the wrong url. I could go on forever with examples, whitehouse.com being anohter one.
Should there be a law, or a line in the NSI contract saying that it would be illegal to have a name based on a typo, or a misleading name? I think it wouldn't be that bad of an idea. Sites like etoy.com would still be legal, even if registered after etoys.com because they aren't selling toys and trying to milk of the etoys.com name. Registering misleading names like gamefaq.com would be illegal, which I think it should be illegal to do so.
The suit cannot be dropped until both parties agree, since etoy has filed a countersuit against eToys. In addition, etoy should not permit the suit to be dropped without a proper settlement, including a legal recognition by eToys that etoy has complete rights to the etoy.com name. Etoy should ensure that eToys can never sue them again. Cash for reasonable legal fees should also be part of the settlement.
"...emotion must be an allowable tool in our arsenal."
I agree with this TO AN EXTENT. However, allowing flames to degenerate into badly spelled, poorly written, insulting, aimless flamemail is not effective. Most of these mails just get deleted by those who read them. True, the volume does make a difference, seeing so many people so angry over something you are doing does tend to make one pause and rethink one's actions. However, logic and emotion are NOT opposites, and they need not each be used to the exclusion of the other.
I repeat: logic and emotion are not opposites. Logic is analasys of cause-and-effect, the reasoning intelligence which allows us to process the world around us. Emotion is our base reaction to that process. Using both is the best way to write anything, be it poetry, prose, or even hate mail to someone who is doing something wrong.
Yes, you do have a point, that the outrage and volume have a direct effect. However, if all that was generated was idiot-mail, it would more likely be ignored than responded to, and it would be far less effective than intelligent responses. The fact that there WAS some intelligent email generated, and that even those who could write properly were talking about boycott, probably had just as much of an effect, if not more.
Angry mail can be a very important tool - indeed, it IS a very important tool - in any attempt to make other people change their behaviors. But it is a tool, nothing more, nothing less. It can be abused, and it can be inappropriate to use in many cases. Winning happens because we choose appropriate targets, because there IS something going on for which people are willing to boycott. In most cases, the wrongdoers know this, they just hope noone will notice.
Don't give the trolls the credit they crave, you'll only encourage stupidity. Using one's emotions, accepting their existence, does not have to make morons out of us. I've seen some very effective flames come out of people who could accept both intelligence and emotion at the same time. Anger can put the flame behind the words, but reason MUST choose the words, or you wind up being incoherant and looking stupid.
-Elthia
I wonder whether Etoyss bullying tactics and
the following bad press had contributed to the dive of Etoys stock.
Check out here. A friend of mine bought at 57 because he was sure
that ETYS had potential.
Then came the dive. Oooops. That hurts.
This ETOY-ETOYS battle shows that even
small guys have a chance against big guys if they
march united.
Another reason to think about supporting the
Electronic Frontier Foundation.
I today subscribed for a membership. Costs me 35
bucks per year. I think that these people do
a good job supporting my interests. Nobody should
feel pressed to subcribe, but consider that
you still can do some good before y2k hits us and
our boxes and well have to shine up before our Lord and blah blah....
Give them a hand, they IMHO deserve it.
Of course they dropped it, they got their Xmas injuction which is all they wanted. Maybe they'll do something similiar next season. So far the lesson learned is 'Its ok to piss on the little guy and get away with it if you just back off in time.'
Hopefully, etoy.com will continue its suit and if they're really lucky they *might* get some sort of justice in an AmeriKan court.
Etoy.com existed when Etoys.com was just a glimmer in the eye of some enterprising lad. It's an extremely clear-cut case which Etoy.com had a really good chance of winning. It's ashame to see Etoys.com whore Etoy.com around for the entire Christmas season (just long enough to ensure their profits and prevent Etoy.com from selling anything) and then, what do you know, drop the lawsuit four days later. I hope Etoy.com doesn't cave; they stand a great chance of winning. Personally I'd love to see the big fat corporation recieve a nice kick in the domain name ass, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.
--
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
... by the Bar Soc. That's the only way the message will be learned by those that need to learn it.
The lack of accountability for being dumb is just appalling in the legal profession. All that seems to matter is that you adhere to the standard legal procedures, a triumph of form over content, and as long as you do that then any bollocks you say or do in the application domain is just fine.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
There is very little difference between your gamefaqs.com/gamefaq.com example and the etoys.com/etoy.com example. Apart from the similarities in the domain names, when the lawsuit was initiated etoys.com sued etoy.com for misleading consumers even though they were involved in seperate businesses. gamefaqs.com is a video game site while gamefaq.com is a porn site, there is no relation. But I can see a judge closing gamefaq.com for some crap sentimental reasons like not wanting kids to view porn by accident (kinda like not wanting kids or parents to view the "profanity" on the etoy site)... and voila the etoys.com vs. etoy fiasco becomes a legitimate argument on etoys.com side.
Secondly how long will it take before a law like that will be misused especially where the lines blur... I still don't see how the gamefaq.com domain being a porn site and gamefaqs.com being a porn site have anything to do with each other... before long any website with an s after it will be sued by or sue the domain of the same name without the s. Then it'll be a battle of who has better lawyers?
Also do you realize that following your reasoning if etoy.com was created after etoys.com they would have no legal leg to stand on even though their business has nothing to do with selling toys? Bad idea...
A better idea is to follow the existing ICANN Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy which sadly had not been implemented by NSI when this fiasco started.
Under the policy the following must be true for a domain to be disputed:
- the domain name is being used in bad faith
.Those seem like better rules to me than what you suggest and there is less room for misuse or misinterpretation.
Anyone been following the eToys.com stock ticker (ETYS)? When this story broke on slashdot eToys.com had 6 billion dollars in market capitalization (at just under $60 a share), today the market value of etoys.com has dropped to 3 billion dollars and it's share price is around $26.
:)
Now who said boycotts and sending out emails don't work? Now only if we had an anti-Amazon patent page like the anti-eToys lawsuit page I'd have a happy new year. I'd probably make it if I had webspace.
"Our Intent Was Never to Silence Free Artistic Expression" said Etoys spokesperson Jonathan Cutler.
Wrong!
In their legal papers, Etoys frequently refers to pornographic images on etoy. In particular, they refer to a picture of a woman's naked breasts pierced by dozens of needles. What they fail to mention in their legal documents is that the picture is depicted beneath the caption "es ist der selde wind. Der die blumen bestaeubt und die haeuser zerstoert". This translates to: "it is the same wind that inseminates the flowers and destroys houses". Only a lawyer (in the worse sense of the term) would miss the point that this is obviously cultural commentary. One simple interpretation being that the same wind (sexual desire), can be both a positive force (loving union between two human beings) and a destructive force (degradation, etc.). This is art! To call it pornography is to claim that there is no artistic expression.
Moreover, eToys claimed unfair competion by etoy because of the sale of etoy.shares. Etoy.shares are obviously a parody of both the art market and the real market. It was blatantly tongue-in-cheek, and numerous disclosures of the artistic nature of the stock were made. However, eToys tried to silence this form of artistic expression by claiming that this constituted securities fraud. Only lawyers with no sense of honor or decency could fail to see the art. If this is not attempted suppression of free artistic expression, I don't know what is.
Finally, eToys referred to more art as "terrorism". Both the famous "digital hijacks" (where etoy manipulated search engines) and a photo of the Oklahoma bombing under the caption "such work needs a lot of training", were implicated as supporting terrorism. Totalitarian states are famous for branding artists as terrorists. Now corporations are getting into the act.
Etoys LIES!
etoy.com had nothing to do with etoys.com. They didn't want to mislead. They didn't go "hey, let's get etoy.com so we can get some idiot etoys.com customers to view our site" they didn't know anything about etoys.com because when they registered the name, etoys.com wasn't even a glimmer in someone's eye.
That's not the same with gamefaq.com. They thought "hey, alot of teenagers go to this site. I bet if we make a name that's just a typo of that site, we will get some of those teenagers. And since teenagers like porn, maybe they will click on the banners we have"
Etoy.com would have went though because they aren't trying to mislead users. It's just a name they chose. While a site like gamefaq.com would have be denied because it's only purpose is to mislead.
Yes. if that policy would have been in effect and ENFORCED, etoy.com would have no problems at all, and these porn scammers like gamefaq.com would go back under the rocks from which they came.
I wasn't aware of the policy until it was mentioned in your post. Too bad it wasn't in place. I fully support that policy, and wish that it was STRONGLY enforced. I mean, it's embarassing when you show people what the vast amount of information the internet has to offer. Then they type a typo in a URL, and things that violate current obcenity laws in all 50 states come up.
Interesting note: under that policy, Microsoft would also have a claim on microsfot.com because it's trying to mislead customers away from one comercial website to another website featuring a competting product.
etoy.com was creative. This was before "eFoo" was a buzzword. I believe they picked "etoy" just because it had a unique sound.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Read more at nofuncharlie.com and RTMark.
How does the /. community feel about a suit against NSI? Would such a thing even be worth discussing? Is there even a foot to stand on?
I'm sorry. What I meant to say was 'please excuse me.'
what came out of my mouth was 'Move or I'll kill you!'
> Pinker gives an example (IIRC) that if you go to someones door with a gun and say you will kill yourself if the person doesn't give you $10, you will do better if your eyes are bloodshot.
I'd really love to see how he tested this theory. I'd give the guy the money because I'd be afraid of him turning the gun on *me*.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.