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
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