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From: RTMark <announce0090@rtmark.com> Save Address Block Sender
To: Los Angeles / etoy <hans_extrem@hotmail.com> Save Address
Subject: L.A. etoy/eToys press conference and hearing, Monday (for hans_extrem@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat, 25 Dec 1999 04:03:26 -0500 (EST)
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    This message is intended only for Los Angeles area residents, or those with a
    special interest in etoy or RTMark. Please accept our apologies if you have
    received this message in error. Remove yourself from all future RTMark mailings
    by writing mailto:remove@rtmark.com?subject=hans_extrem@hotmail.com

    December 25, 1999
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

    THE BRENT SPAR OF E-COMMERCE: ETOYS VS ETOY POST-HEARING PRESS CONFERENCE
    December 27 following 8:30 a.m. hearing, 111 North Hill Street, Los Angeles
       Contact: mailto:etoyhearing@rtmark.com, (323)644-1762
       More information: http://rtmark.com/etoy/,
               http://rtmark.com/etoypr.html,
               http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/co/2469/1.html
       Press reports: http://rtmark.com/etoypress.html,
               http://rtmark.com/etoysreport.html
       Directions: http://lacountycourts.co.la.ca.us/Locations/CNCCH.htm

    In a press conference to be held Monday, December 27th, RTMark and partners will
    announce two bold, unprecedented initiatives aimed against e-commerce giant
    eToys. The initiatives are designed to inflict further damage on the ailing
    company, and thus provide a lasting warning to e-commerce corporations against
    behaving unethically on the Web. (Protests so far have contributed to eToys'
    four-week stock fall of over 50%, according to Yahoo! Finance reports, and have
    prompted FBI action against protest websites; see "press reports" url above.)

    The press conference will be held in front of the Los Angeles Central District
    County Courthouse immediately following the 8:30 a.m. hearing in room 513, about
    whether etoy, an internationally acclaimed Internet art group two years older
    than e-commerce giant eToys, will be allowed to use its domain name, etoy.com,
    which is also older than eToys.com. (eToys successfully blocked etoy from using
    etoy.com in a November 29 preliminary injunction; Network Solutions has blocked
    e-mail access as well, although this was not required by the injunction.)

    The outcome of this case has enormous implications for free speech on the
    Internet and could set a precedent determining whether the Internet will be
    governed by the brute force of multinational corporations or by individuals and
    democratic processes.

    Confirmed speakers in Monday's press conference include Pete Franklin, a
    spokesperson for former eToys employees; Amy Alexander, internationally renowned
    Internet artist and faculty member of the California Institute of the Arts who
    will be speaking about artists censored by corporations on the Internet; Peter
    Lunenfeld, writer, critic and member of the Faculty at Pasadena Art Center and
    founder of The Southern California New Media Working Group; Santas and Mothers
    Against eToys (SMAT); and RTMark spokesperson Rita Margolis. A question and
    answer period will follow each speaker.

    BACKGROUND

    eToys stock has plummeted over 50% since Nov 29, 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 (in Salon
    Magazine). 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 90,000 new customers this season, any such figures are questionable
    because of false information entered by activists.

    The "sit-in" is one of about 15 campaigns coordinated by RTMark, aimed at
    disrupting the internal and external communications of eToys.com, and targeting
    telephone and fax lines as well as behavior and morale of employees, management,
    and major investors. Although orders stopped on Dec 18, continuing activist
    actions--the two biggest of which are to be announced at the Los Angeles press
    conference--are aimed at making eToys.com an example the online world will never
    forget.

    (eToys is having other problems as well. Since the November injunction, some
    eToys employees have threatened to quit, and eToys stockholders are calling on
    CEO Edward "Toby" Lenk to step down, due to his ineptitude in handling the
    crisis.)

    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 message is intended only for Los Angeles area residents, or those with a
    special interest in etoy or RTMark. Please accept our apologies if you have
    received this message in error. 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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