Until now, etoy's digital hijack has been regarded with the utmost respect. The group was recognized by some of the most highly regarded electronic arts festivals and centers, such as Ars Electronica, which in 1996 awarded etoy the Golden Nica in the Internet art category, the most prestigious prize offered. (The winner this year was Linux.) The group was also invited to complete a residency at the nonprofit arts foundation c3 (the Center for Communication and Culture). In fact, c3's assistant director Andrea Szekeres says that when she heard etoy was being sued, she figured it was just another of the group's art projects. "All of their work is about corporate identity. It would be in their scope of activity to be involved in a lawsuit and to see how it would evolve."

etoy took its corporate shtick to another level when it began offering "shares" for sale. zai insists that the etoy shares compel people to think about the elusive and amorphous nature of Internet art. One of the many controversies about Net art is that there is no original copy; an artist can't exactly "sell" a home page to a collector. The "shares" play with the idea of ownership and the Net and spoof absurdly overvalued Net stock. Each "share certificate" is unique, a two-foot-by-two-foot, slickly designed poster. Mounted on aluminum, each contains a chip bearing the shareholder's information and symbolizing electronic transaction. (The chancellor of Austria, Viktor Klima, was the first to buy a share.)

Clearly, the share certificates are not stock. eToys, however, missed the irony, and now accuses etoy of securities fraud. The allegation infuriates zai. In an e-mail, he writes that this "shows how dangerous it is to take today's perverted financial markets as a topic for an art project...as an artist you have to deal with 'personal/private' problems...and not to jump on things like the stock market etc....you are tolerated as long as you don't disturb!"

William Linn, director of the blasthaus gallery in San Francisco, which represents etoy on the West Coast, maintains that the shares are "playing around with people's perceived values and associations." He views the suit as "one of the tragedies of American consumerism B.S."

Megan Gray, a lawyer with the Los Angeles office of Baker & Hostetler who specializes in Internet law and intellectual property and is watching the case, says this suit would not pass a "giggle test,"--i.e., an unofficial gauge of the likelihood the plaintiff will appear totally ridiculous in court. Money, rather than fear for the corruption of innocent children, seems to be the driving factor behind the suit. Gray suggests that eToys just wants to hurt etoy. "A violation of securities law is very serious," she points out. "If they lose on trademark infringement, they'll try to win on something else." Gray adds that the suit is basically a dispute over a similar name and continues, "This is an attempt to outspend them." In fact, etoy has already spent roughly $20,000 on American lawyers. This would be mere pennies to eToys, which boasts a market capitalization of $841 billion.

Peter Wild of Metz and Partners, the trademark law firm representing etoy in Switzerland, says the etoy.SHARE project does not cross the border of legality. Agent gramazio, who is located in Italy, adds that the "etoy.SHARE is carefully developed with attorneys" and compares the virtual value of stocks traded on NASDAQ with products traded in the art market.

The main question seems to be whether it is fair for U.S. commercial law to govern the Internet. According to Joichi Ito, an executive in Japan who was named one of the "cyber elite" by Time magazine in 1997, has feet in both the artistic and the corporate communities online, and is also an etoy "shareholder," it should not. "Internet domains go beyond national borders," Ito maintains. "It's pompous to think [corporations] can push them out of their name." He also believes that governance on the Internet cannot follow traditional policies. And artists realized that before the judicial system. Ito likes etoy because the group questions boundaries and stands up to corporations, using the Internet as the medium. "Basically, the Internet is not about capitalism and money," he says. "It's about people doing what they want to do."

In that respect, etoy truly represents the spirit of the Internet--or maybe the old Internet. "When etoy set up their domain name, there were no specific rules," says Ito. Not that that necessarily matters, he adds. "They are the kind of media artists who push back on stuff like this."