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From: Lucky Name-Owner <announce0016@rtmark.com> Save Address Block Sender
To: Lucky Name-Owner <hans_extrem@hotmail.com> Save Address
Subject: Toy giant wins battle (for hans_extrem@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 1999 22:04:25 -0500 (EST)
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    This is not a commercial message. Remove yourself from all future RTMark
    mailings by writing mailto:remove@rtmark.com?subject=hans_extrem@hotmail.com

    December 29, 1999
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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

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

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

    "It's good that eToys is now being shamed into lying to the press
    that its 'intent was never to silence free artistic expression,'"
    said RTMark spokesperson Ernest Lucha. "But 'moving away' from the
    suit, without anything even resembling an apology, let alone
    compensation, and now that their shopping season is over, is just
    pathetic." Full RTMark comments can be found at
    http://rtmark.com/etoyswin.html; press reports about the eToys
    move can be found at http://rtmark.com/etoypress.html.

    Anti-eToys efforts will continue at least until there is substance
    to eToys' withdrawal, according to Lucha. On Monday RTMark
    announced two new elements to its etoy Fund, an "online game" whose
    aim is to lower the eToys stock price to $0.00. (Many observers
    credit some of the "game's" earlier components--the Virtual Sit-in,
    for example--as having helped to drive the dramatic eToys stock
    fall.)

    The newest elements of the "game" are two letter-writing campaigns,
    one calling on eToys employees to quit the company
    (http://rtmark.com/etoysquit.html), and another aimed at the
    principal eToys shareholders, urging them to call for eToys C.E.O.
    Toby Lenk's dismissal (http://rtmark.com/etoystoby.html). The
    success of either or both campaigns would help to establish this
    case as a precedent the online world will never forget.

    BACKGROUND

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                                 # 30 #

    This is not a commercial message. Remove yourself from all future RTMark
    mailings by writing mailto:remove@rtmark.com?subject=hans_extrem@hotmail.com

    If you have received multiple copies of this notice and wish to receive only
    one, please remove as above all address versions but one.

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