| "NSI Steps Into the eToys vs etoy Debate" | Login/Create an Account | 146 comments | Search Discussion |
| (1 ) | 2 (Slashdot Overload: CommentLimit 50) |
No link (Score:5, Informative)
by EricWright (dont_mail@me.edu) on Thursday December 16, @07:43AM EST (#1)
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| The story is here. Eric
Linux -- the Ultimate Windows Service Pack |
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I registered hetoys.com -- join the guerilla! (Score:1)
by Nicolas MONNET (nico@nospam.monnet.to) on Thursday December 16, @07:43AM EST (#2)
(User Info) http://nicolas.monnet.to
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Everyone can participate. It's cheap. There's plenty of ways to do it: go see at RTMark (prounounce "artmark"), they have a list of all the 'funds' you can 'invest' in (really, it's not about money). I registered hetoys.com, that I shall fill with pics of 'godes'. BTW, do you know what 'gode' means in French? Dildo!
LET'S ALL FIGHT THE EVIL CORP.!
--
Join the most interesting thread |
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this is bullshit!!! (Score:0, Flamebait)
by Mo B. Dick (doggystyle@shakur.net) on Thursday December 16, @07:44AM EST (#3)
(User Info) http://www.hitemup.com/
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www.etoys.com is so stupid for trying to shut etoy.com down, they arent even competitors, now with this e-mail being shut down, it just takes things even farther. I think its time for a distributed DoS attack? any supporters?
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Big brother Or Big Money (Score:1)
by ckaminski on Thursday December 16, @07:45AM EST (#4)
(User Info) http://www.ckaminski.com
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It just goes to show you, in our country, if you've got enough money, you can put the screws to anyone.
This just firmed up my resolve to boycott etoys.com for eternity.
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In case you were wondering... (Score:0, Redundant)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 16, @07:47AM EST (#5)
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The link to the wired story is here.
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Electronic Warfare? (Score:1, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 16, @07:50AM EST (#6)
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Why not electronic warfare against NSI, that bloated cow of a company that wouldn't know the first thing about customer service.
I don't think a few cracks here and there would really do anyting to enamore the public to this outrage. I think anything short of removing etoys.com from the online community would be a beu gest. Not that I am advocating any vandelous acts, just don't see any good coming from boycott's of page defamation, etc.
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Say what??? (Score:2, Interesting)
by EricWright (dont_mail@me.edu) on Thursday December 16, @07:51AM EST (#7)
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| Etoy, which was on the Internet two years before etoys, charges that the toy store's legal team knowingly misled the superior court judge. One of several trademark applications by eToys was questionable, according to Zai -- an important issue since potentially the toy company had claim to the name as early as 1990. So, they are trying to say that they trademarked the name eToys in 1990, 1 year before the first release of http/html!?! They just happened to have the vision to predict e-commerce years down the road during the time that the WWW didn't yet exist, and the internet was a collection of government and educational computers and a smattering of BBSes? Wow! Did they have Nostradamus on staff in 1990? {*Cough cough bullsh!t!} Eric
Linux -- the Ultimate Windows Service Pack |
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Excite has more on this (Score:2, Informative)
by nichachr on Thursday December 16, @07:53AM EST (#8)
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Excite had a story on this as well yesterday with a little more detailed info about the 'movement' against Etoys.
http://news.excite.com/new s/zd/991213/15/protest-group-out
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Blocking etoys.com (Score:1)
by pyric on Thursday December 16, @07:54AM EST (#9)
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I personally like the idea of blocking etoys.com at the firewall and informing etoys.com of your blacklisting and reasoning.
Most of the users may not know why they can't get access to etoys.com but with the number of options for online shopping they are quite likely to just go elsewhere anyway. Perhaps a message to all the network users as to the reasons behind the block would raise awareness.
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So which is more stupid (Score:1)
by Jade on Thursday December 16, @07:55AM EST (#10)
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The first thing I thought of when reading this: which is more stupid? This eToys vs etoy battle, or the Amazon vs Barnes & Noble "1-click" crap? After reading the whole article, I definately think eToys is worse. But lawsuits like this are only going to increase in number.
I too will not shop at eToys (as several others have posted). These corporations don't seem to listen to logic, if enough people vote with their wallets, they might listen. But I'm not going to hold my breath.
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Your Domain Name At Risk (Score:5, Informative)
by Froomkin (froomkin@law.tm) on Thursday December 16, @07:55AM EST (#11)
(User Info) http://www.law.tm
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One thing most people don't realize its that NSI takes the position that you do not own your domain name -- registration is just a service contract. Another thing most people don't realize is that registrars and registries can pull your domain for any reason at any time -- it says so in the contract you sign. (Strangely, no one ever discloses this vulnerability in their IPO. Someday this will cause a nice lawsuit.) No sane registrar would ever remove this term from its contract, because the registrars have to promise ICANN to do basically whatever it tells them to; having made this promise, the only way to avoid the danger of inconsistent obligations is to reserve all rights against the registrant. Of course, when you mention this to ICANN, they say (accurately, but misleadingly) that ICANN never required this term in the registration agreement, and registrars have just spontaneously put that in. ICANN refuses to admit this is an inevitable consequence of its having reserved so many rights in the namespace. ICANN aside, there are some practical commercial constraints that prevent a registrar from committing extortion against wealthy registrants ("Hmmm. I see this domain of yours got two million hits last month. How about we raise the renewal fee to a million a year?"). One is competition; another is that anyone who tried it would never get another client again (I hope); yet another is that if, say, NSI tried to jack up the price to, say, amazon.com, and amazon renamed itself, the domain would be next to worthless to NSI since it's unlikely that anyone else could use it legally for much.> Thus, the real danger of the discretion in the registration contracts (caused by ICANN's policies of refusing to tie its own hands in any way), is precisely cases like this one: people who are not rich or powerful getting what we lawyers call the shaft. Visit ICANNWatch.org!
A. Michael Froomkin,
U. Miami School of Law,POB 248087
Coral Gables, FL 33124,USA
"It's warm here" |
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Etoys Legal Penalties?? (Score:1)
by Tradewars Addict on Thursday December 16, @08:05AM EST (#12)
(User Info) http://bbs.ufies.org/
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What are the possible legal penalties for ETOYS? Could they be made to fork over some of the proceeds of their illegal actions? And on a separate Note: what are the relevant email addresses of the Very Impotent People in charge of ETOYS? sorry for the "typo". Impotent should be Important. ;)
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etoy should have taken the $$$ money... (Score:1)
by Hydrophobe on Thursday December 16, @08:05AM EST (#13)
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One of the earlier stories mentioned that eToys offered stock and cash worth nearly half a million to etoy to try to settle out of court... and etoy turned it down. Principles and integrity are admirable, but fsck... Just take the damn money (or donate it to starving orphans) and use toywar.com instead. Everybody happy.
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Make etoys pay big bucks (Score:1, Interesting)
by meckardt (meckardt@yahoo.spam.com) on Thursday December 16, @08:08AM EST (#15)
(User Info) http://www.geocities.com/meckardt
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Etoys should pay the artists many millions for the privilage of using a domain name that sounds like their's (the artists).
THEN the artists should sue Network Solutions just for the hell of it.
Mike Eckardt meckardt@yahoo.spam.com
Just remove the spam to email me. |
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linux.com? (Score:1)
by eshefer on Thursday December 16, @08:08AM EST (#16)
(User Info) http://www.mp3.com/eshefer
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makes me wonder if Linus theoreticly can sue VAlinux for the linux.com domain name and WIN.
(though it's very unlikly that he do this.. obviously.)
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for my music, and other stuff go here |
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- Re:linux.com? by Eric Green (Score:2) Thursday December 16, @09:21AM EST
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feh to etoys! (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 16, @08:13AM EST (#19)
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I don't understand how the hell etoys won etoy owned it for 2 years@#@!? wtf if anyone is gonna go after etoys electronically they should do it while christmas shopping is going on ruin their rep now... god i hate companies like them
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We need some common sense guidelines/regs here... (Score:2, Interesting)
by wakebrdr (wakebrdr@DIESPAMMERSDIE.ismi.net) on Thursday December 16, @08:13AM EST (#20)
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This is silly. If Etoys can bully etoy, what's to keep McDonalds from bullying anyone with the phone # 1-800BIGMACS or 1-800QPCHEES or 1-800FFGREASE or any of the 1-888 equivalents?
Here's some common sense ideas:
1) You want a dot-com address, you pay a yearly fee. Keep the dot-edus and dot-orgs and dot-nets as is, but make corporations pay for the convenience and familiarity of the dot-com convention. This discourages cyber-squatting as well.
2) Take the revenues and fund internet standards bodies and/or additions to governmental patent offices to fund computer-literate employees.
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Parent Company (Score:1, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 16, @08:15AM EST (#22)
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You should also realize that larger corporate entities have their fingers in etoys.com as well.
Take a look at who owns etoys.com stock.
Fingerhut (and their parent, Federated Direct, who also runs Macy's & Bloomingdale's)
These companies seem to have no problem throwing their money and resources at etoys.com. You should realize the real size of the iceberg you are up against, not just the part poking out of the water.
-AC for a reason
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Why we are even seeing this (Score:3, Interesting)
by Zigg on Thursday December 16, @08:16AM EST (#24)
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This is a sad state of affairs; I think we all can agree on that point. But I think it's an unfortunate consequence of ``wiring the world''. Let's face it, there are a lot of really stupid people out there who don't see the difference between ``etoy.com'' and ``etoys.com''. Or maybe they're not so stupid, but just used to natural communication, wherein the two are extremely similar. Mind you, I'm not saying it's right. And I have sworn to myself I will never, ever, ever step up to the plate and defend NSI (they've screwed me far too many times...) But it is a serious problem that probably can't be corrected just by saying ``OK, you've registered a name, now nobody can ever take it away from you.'' Business on the Internet has brought a whole new set of rules. I don't care much for the rules, but the money sure helps me to be able to stay a hacker and feed my family. The question of how to solve this problem was touched on in a recent Ask Slashdot article. The problem lies in the recognition that's grown up around ``.com''. Maybe there needs to be enforcement on the .com, .net, and .org level, kind of like there is on .int and .net. Of course, that would probably mean I'd have to give up zigg.com (since I'm no longer in business), but I could hopefully trade it for zigg.org. It's a start.
"If you continue running Windows, your system may become unstable." - Windows 95 BSOD |
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I think there's a potential problem here (Score:4, Insightful)
by RayChuang (raychuang00.treet@nospam.yahoo.com) on Thursday December 16, @08:18AM EST (#25)
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Folks,
ZD News Network reported that a group called RTMark was actively encouraging hackers to "destroy" www.eToys.com's e-commerce servers as retaliation for the judge's ruling.
Folks, that is the LAST thing you want to do in protesting that legal decision. Encouraging criminal acts over interstate lines and international borders is a SERIOUS violation of both US and international law, and the folks at RTMark face the very serious prospect of an arrest warrant from law enforcement authorities for encouraging acts of terrorism.
Now, if RTMark had encouraged a boycott of eToys.com, provided legal funds to overturn the legal decision, and encouraged citizens to write their elected officials over this, THEN I don't have a complaint. But RTMark has crossed over that line, and runs the risk of being marginalized like Earth First! and the Animal Liberation Front.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA |
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slashdot etoys.com!! (Score:1)
by orev on Thursday December 16, @08:21AM EST (#26)
(User Info) http://www.directedge.com
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This is bullshit. Let's use our combined resources to tell etoys.com what we think of them. I'm sure slashdotting their web site during the xmas season will get the message across.
http://www.etoys.com
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See for yourself (Score:5, Informative)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 16, @08:22AM EST (#28)
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I went and had a look at the US Patent and Trademark Database. A search for "etoys" returns two matches. As the article says, one applicaton claims that the date of first use was 1999/01/00 (that's no typo). Problem is, this applicaton has been *rejected* as of Nov 15, 1999. The other one, which has been granted, says the date of first use was in 1997. Then, I went and looked at NSI's Domain Dispute Policy. Two relevant sections are 8a and 9b "8. (a) An original, certified copy, not more than six (6) months old, of a trademark registration ("certified registration"), which is in full force and effect and is identical to a second-level domain name (i.e., not including COM, NET, ORG, or EDU) on the principal or equivalent registry of any country (copies certified in accordance with 37 CFR 2.33(a)(1)(viii) or its successor will meet this standard for registrations in jurisdictions other than the United States). " "9. (b) If the registrant's domain name creation date precedes the effective date of the valid and subsisting certified registration owned by the complainant, Network Solutions will take no action on the complainant's request. " eToys complaint to NSI seems to fail on two counts - 1) their trademark applies to etoys, not etoy; 2) the only valid trademark they have is dated *two* years after the "registrant's domain name creation date". So, as far as I can tell, NSI has no valid reason to put etoy.com on hold.
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The simplest DoS attack is... (Score:1)
by Kaa (subdimensiondotcom!kaa) on Thursday December 16, @08:31AM EST (#33)
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just to to go to the etoys site and NOT buy anything. A simple script that makes random HTTP requests to the site, say, every ten seconds will work fine.
Note that according to mainstream press it is already close to impossible to break through to Christmas shopping sites (as in people get up at 5 in the morning to be able to get through to toysrus.com...). Maybe etoys will be a little harder to get to than others.
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots. |
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Some bias by NSI perhaps? (Score:2, Insightful)
by Malc (Malcolm_Ferguson@yahoo.NO_SPAM_PLEASE.com) on Thursday December 16, @08:39AM EST (#42)
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"Network Solutions spokeswoman Sheryl Regan said the domain name registrar routinely shuts down contested domain names when court orders are issued.
"We put a domain name on hold so no one has access to it," Regan said. "
They've shut down one of the contested domain names (etoy.com), why not the other too (etoys.com)? Sounds like a bunch of hypocritical and greedy ********s;
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Send mail to eToys.com (Score:5, Informative)
by BLiP2 on Thursday December 16, @08:44AM EST (#44)
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You can send them email using this form located here.
(http://www.etoys.com/cgi-bin/email_etoys.cgi?state=email)
Get the /. effect to let them know what you think. Maybe with enough comments they'll finally realize the temendous PR mistake they're making.
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- what I sent by Tekmage (Score:1) Thursday December 16, @11:13AM EST
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My letter to eToys (Score:4, Insightful)
by Spazmoid (spazm(NOSPAM)@cfw.com.ISAIDNOSPAM) on Thursday December 16, @08:44AM EST (#46)
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In light of all the ruckus I have drafted this letter to eToys. I urg all that agree to do the same. Remember, do not threaten and try to state you case with maturity and it will make much more of an impact than threats and rants. How much of an impact that is remains to be seen but we can always hope for the best. As it stands the internet is becoming more and more commercialized. We have known that for a while, and as a result the more big money that gets thrown in, the more power commercial entities will try to exert to control things to their will. While I don't advocate maliciuosly trying to steal business/revenue from another, simple domain differences for sites that are in no way similar, or competing are harmless and should be treated as such. Without further ado, here is my letter to eToys.
To whom it my concern:
As you and many other people are aware, your corporation sucessfully recieved an injunction against the holders of the domain Etoy.com as it conflicted with your domain eToys.com, potentially causing a loss of customers and revenue. While I am not a lawyer or at all versed in any type of law, I as well as many other people see this as an infringement upon our rights. As I don't know the exact details of the whole case, I will only paraphrase what I do know.
Etoy was founded in 1994 by a group of European artists. The name was chosen literally at random by a simple name generator and all members agreed upon that name. eToys went online in 1997.
Etoy was an award winning website that poked fun at large corporations. eToys is an online to retailer.
I am sure you have recieved letters from many people stating that they will no longer purchase from you, that they will block access to your site from machines and networks they control, and even threats at launching electronic attacks aimed at your site or corporation. While I do not advocate hacking in any way, boycotting is a completely different matter. I myself will not purchase anything from your company and many other people that I know have pledged the same.
It has come to my attention however that you do not view this as a threat. I quote from the WIRED article at http://www.wired.com/news/p olitics/0,1283,33111,00.html
Ken Ross, eToys' vice president of communications, shrugged off threats of digital terrorism and individual efforts to block access to the toy site.
"We have the capacity to welcome millions and millions and millions of people to our site," Ross said. "Traffic this holiday season has been robust. The site has performed in a very efficient manner.
My question is this, if you can "shrug off" digital terrorism threats and say they don't worry you, how does a site that was around before you and in no way competing with you qualify as so much of a threat that you have to shut them down before your trademark is even approved?
It would have been much more prudent and acceptable to ask the administrators of etoy.com to place a quick line on the front page of their site that stated that they were in no way affialiated with eToys.com and if that was your intended destination then to "click here" and provide a link to your site. You could have offered to buy the domain from them. Instead, like many businesses you opt to smack the squeaky wheel with the largest hammer you can afford instead of just using a little grease.
I can attest that I was planing on buying merchandise from you before this issue arose, and while my person Christmas budget is only a drop in the ocean in relation to your revenue, the thousands of others that feel the same way will make a slightly bigger dent.
As I said before, many friends and relatives are following my lead in this boycott and many people online feel the same way.
While little or none of this will reach the ears of the 'average' internet consumer who does not care how thinRead the rest of this comment... |
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Some bias by NSI perhaps? (Score:2, Interesting)
by Malc (Malcolm_Ferguson@yahoo.NO_SPAM_PLEASE.com) on Thursday December 16, @08:45AM EST (#47)
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I recently received some spam on this. Dunno where they got my address from. I just ignored it as it was unsolicited. But it reads as follows (sorry, it's quite long):
"Subject: Help destroy eToys.com! (yes, you, malcolm_ferguson@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 1999 16:01:26 -0500
From: Game Players
To: Game Player
This is not a commercial message. Remove by writing
mailto:remove@rtmark.com?subject=malcolm_ferguson@yahoo.com
December 12, 1999
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NEW INTERNET "GAME" DESIGNED TO DESTROY ETOYS.COM
Stock plunge must be accelerated, groups say
Contacts: mailto:etoyfund@rtmark.com, mailto:toby@etoys.com
More information: http://rtmark.com/etoy/
http://rtmark.com/etoypress.html
http://rtmark.com/sitin.html
RTMark has joined the growing torrent of outrage, sometimes violent in tone,
against Internet toy giant eToys (http://rtmark.com/etoypress.html) by helping
create and distribute what RTMark calls "a new toy": a multi-user Internet
game whose goal is to damage (or possibly even destroy) the company.
The game, which aims to punish eToys for shutting down prominent Internet art
group etoy's domain (see http://rtmark.com/etoypress.html for more
information), takes the form of an RTMark "mutual fund," or list of sabotage
projects (http://rtmark.com/etoy/). All projects in the "etoy Fund," some of
which have already been financed, aim to lower the company's stock market
value as much as possible. The site also includes pages that will help
visitors to cripple the eToys servers during the ten days leading to Christmas
(http://rtmark.com/sitin.html), pages providing detailed financial information
about the company, and a page of links to the dozen or so other groups calling
for eToys' downfall.
Since November 29, when eToys lawyers shut down the art group's domain and
news of the massive and violent-toned reaction began to spread, huge sellouts
(including a 2.5-million-share sale by Moore Capital Management, Inc.) have
caused eToys stock to fall from $67/share to $45/share, or nearly 33%;
before November 29 eToys stock had been rising. RTMark's new projects group
aims to systematically capitalize on and accelerate the eToys share fall.
"The etoy Fund projects are a game the whole world can play," said RTMark
spokesperson Ernest Lucha. "Many of the projects--boycotts, pickets, e-mail
campaigns--can be played by anyone, while other projects--countersuing eToys,
disturbing the eToys servers, etc.--require specialized work. There's
something for everyone, and we know we can easily count on 10,000 players
to start with."
There's also something for hackers, who are normally apolitical but have by
and large taken eToys' attack on etoy as an attack on themselves. "eToys is
trying to take advantage of a legal situation in which there's basically no
protection against corporations, whether you're an artist, an activist, or
just someone in the wrong place at the wrong time," said a hacker who
identifies himself as "Code Blue." "But they're relying a bit too much on the
legal. They're saying f*ck you to everything that etoy stands for, and that's
like spraying tear gas all over the entire hacking community."
"This game is much more exciting than any other computer game, because you
have a real-world bad guy to fight," said RTMark spokesperson Lucha.
"We think it's especially exciting that the court date [December 27, at which
the final fate of etoy.com will be decided] falls so close to Christmas," said
Richard Zach, a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley
who has closely followed the dispute since the beginning. "The holiday season
is a time of giving, but since eToys decided to take, we're making an example Read the rest of this comment... |
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Please: Cracking isn't the answer (Score:5, Insightful)
by lar3ry on Thursday December 16, @08:45AM EST (#48)
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As I posted in my message a week or so ago, vote with your feet. If you don't like what etoys.com is doing, don't patronize them. Let other people know.
But breaking into etoys.com, for any reason, is stupid, stupid, STUPID!
It can get you thrown off your ISP. etoys.com may even decide to use this activity in their next court appearance to show how "etoy.com" isn't such a nice place and they deserve to lose their domain permanently.
Publicity is fine -- let the whole world know what etoys.com is doing -- but once again: cracking is stupid.
--
"I suggest a new strategy, R2. Let the Wookiee win!" -- C3PO |
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logic over kneejerk reactions (Score:1)
by dirk on Thursday December 16, @08:47AM EST (#49)
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I completely agree Etoys is in the wrong here. There is no way they can justify (and hopefully no way they can win) this lawsuit. That being said, I can't support most of the groups opposing Etoys, since they are just as bad, if not worse, than Etoys. RTMark sounded like a great idea, emailing people, registering domains close to Etoys, etc is a great way to get your point across. Then they started advocating taking down Etoys site through any means necessary. This is just assinine. The way to stop someone from trampling the rights of others isn't by trampling their rights. This would be the equivalent of PETA (or some other animal rights group) bombing a McDonalds because McDonalds sells meat, and they don't like it. Sure, it stops them from selling meat, but you become a bigger aggressor than McDonalds ever was. By this logic, if you do something to someone (almost anything, step on their foot, stiff them on a tip, forget to pay them back $5) they have moral justification to enter your house and destroy it. I am all for trying to stop Etoys from pulling this crap, but destruction is not the way to do it. It just makes the people opposed look as bad or worse than Etoys.
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Has anybody heard back from eToys.com? (Score:1)
by Malc (Malcolm_Ferguson@yahoo.NO_SPAM_PLEASE.com) on Thursday December 16, @08:50AM EST (#52)
(User Info) |
After the last piece on /. about this dispute, I went to eToys.com's web site and contacted them. I wrote a polite and formal letter expressing my opinions (without being rude). I received an automatic email from them on the 3rd Dec, saying that they would be in touch. Have they? Of course not!
"Thank you for contacting eToys.
We have received your e-mail. It is our goal to
respond to all order-related e-mail within
24 hours. If your e-mail is not order-related,
we will do our best to take care of your questions,
concerns and suggestions as soon as possible.
Very truly yours,
eToys Customer Service
http://www.etoys.com
We Bring the Toy Store to You"
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whois lookups (Score:1)
by andyr (andyr@wizzy.com) on Thursday December 16, @08:57AM EST (#57)
(User Info) http://www.wizzy.com/andyr/
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| Folks, NS cannot "remove their email". What they can do is remove etoy.com from their .com nameservers. They may have done it earlier, but it is b ack now.
% whois etoy.com
Domain Name: ETOY.COM
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL: www.networksolutions.com
Name Server: NS.C3.NET
Name Server: NS.DESK.NL
Those nameservers NS.DESK.NL NS.C3.NET are not under NS control, and will properly list etoy's mail exchangers, and the IP address of the downed web site Maybe they removed it, (my local nameserver will not look up etoy) and then put it back.
A good place to look these things up is www.geektools.com Cheers, Andy!
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Join the protest! (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 16, @09:02AM EST (#59)
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Don't just sit on your butt and talk about it -- join the protest! Go to http://www.rtmark.com/sitin.html and help us shut etoys.com during the shopping rush!
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No wonder businesses are going patent crazy (Score:1)
by TheShrike on Thursday December 16, @09:02AM EST (#60)
(User Info) http://www.rockchucker.com
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| What I found most telling in the article, was that "Etoy, which was on the Internet two years before etoys ...". Two years! And yet a federal judge sided with the newcomer. As with patents, isn't there something in trademark law having to do with prior use of a term? If there is, it apparently matters as much as "prior art" in the Amazon case. It strikes me that it is this sort of thing that is making some companies go patent-crazy. It's CYA all the way. Anything you want to be able to continue to use, better get a trademark or a patent, no matter how absurd. Because if you don't, someone else might, and then turn around and sue you.
The significant problems we face today can not be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. - Albert Einstein |
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Crazed money hungry paranoid little grubs. (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 16, @09:03AM EST (#61)
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Doesn't this violate certain freedoms of choice as well? I mean, this is a site that does not threaten etoys.com in any way, and has no negative impact on it as well. I could see if etoy.com was a site devoted to anarchy or a competing online toy store, but this is ridiculous. What's next? Etoys.com will start looking at a friggin' thesaurus and go after any site that has a name remotely related to them? What if someone registered etoyz.com, eletronictoys.com, e-toys.com, etoiz.com, eetoys.com, e-toy.com, atoys.com, btoys.com, ctoys.com, etc etc etc? I mean, I'll bet most of these are already registered. I think there needs to be set limits, rules, laws, etc, firmly put forth. I'm getting tired of all of these different Internet related cases being ruled differently from each other. I don't think it should matter WHERE a person is, if they commit a crime that is Net related, it should be ruled by a Net judicial system. It's a global community afterall.
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Shut etoys down legally (Score:5, Insightful)
by maroberts (maroberts@dial.pipex.com) on Thursday December 16, @09:05AM EST (#62)
(User Info) http://www.maroberts.dial.pipex.com/
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If I understand the Network Solutions policy correctly as applied to etoy, then etoy can apply to have etoys.com name shut down, since it fulfils the criteria set by NS for such an action. i.e that its domain name registration precedes both etoys tradmark application and the etoys.com registration
Why does its lawyer not do so ?
Mark Roberts |
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Customer comments (Score:1)
by cluke (slash@cluke.demon.co.uk) on Thursday December 16, @09:05AM EST (#63)
(User Info) |
I see they have Amazon style customer reviews. A devious person could put a few home truths next inside these comments.
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give them your opinion! (Score:1, Informative)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 16, @09:09AM EST (#66)
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Moderate this up!
use etoys.com's comment form to give them a piece of your mind:
http://www.e toys.com/cgi-bin/cs_print_page.cgi?menupage=1&pagename=t10
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A LEGAL AND POSITIVE WAY OF PROTESTING (Score:1)
by Nicolas MONNET (nico@nospam.monnet.to) on Thursday December 16, @09:10AM EST (#67)
(User Info) http://nicolas.monnet.to
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Why not add to all your nameservers etoy.com's domain? And contact your admins so that they do so. This is legal, methinks. Oh and BTW block etoys.com at the firewall. Just like a consultant friend of mine blocks *.doubleclick.com at every firewall he installs ... just for the sake of it!
--
Join the most interesting thread |
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What to block? (Score:1)
by cccdoug on Thursday December 16, @09:12AM EST (#68)
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Since Frontier/GlobalCenter/ISI.NET didn't bother to swip etoys addresses, and there are no reverse-lookups (that is, they don't answer inverse queries for their IP addresses), what would you block in your firewall or router?
It's really tough to tell just how much IP address space etoys has. Their www machine (www.etoys.com) is at 204.71.184.166, and their domain (etoys.com) resolves to 204.71.184.182. But they've blocked "ls etoys.com" in nslookup, and their IPs haven't been swipped.
So without knowing how much IP space they have, it looks like just blocking those two IP addresses would have to be enough for a quick short term solution. But there's nothing stopping etoys from changing addresses tomorrow.
BTW, if your router is a Cisco, you could add this to your internet interfaces' "in" access lists to implement this short term solution:
deny ip 204.71.184.166 0.0.0.0 any
deny ip 204.71.184.182 0.0.0.0 any
Since they don't answer inverse queries, I cannot think of a way to block the site in a firewall without blocking at least those two IP addresses.
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How to protest in the digital age (Score:4, Insightful)
by Squirrel Killer on Thursday December 16, @09:13AM EST (#69)
(User Info) http://www.geocities.com:80/ResearchTriangle/System/9342/index.html
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| It goes without saying (especially here) that eToys is immorally attacking a group of artists for having a similar name and having the audacity to use the power of free speech that the Internet inherently gives to all netizens. The question then is, how do we respond? Do we respond by flooding their inboxes with spam and hate mail? No, the devices that they would use to ignore our protest are the same that we ourselves would use in a similar situation. They may be offensive, but they're probably not idiots Do we respond by sending in the script kiddies and the crackers, letting them pretend eToys is a "Hack This Box" contest? No, that would reduce our position below that of eToys. This escalates the war, and is a technological attack on eToys. Further, it could weaken the position of etoy in court (IANAL.) Do we inform our friends and family to not use eToys? Absolutely. Word of mouth dissuation is as effective as word of mouth advertising. "Hmm, someone told me not to use eToys, and these prices do seem awfully high..." Do we block eToys with our firewalls? Certainly. Those of us who are admins have the ability and the justification to block our networks from getting to eToys. Block eToys for the same reasons that you block porn (if you block porn, that is.) This is the non-aggression method of fighting injustice on the net. Do we register our anger with eToys' parters? Yes. Just as parents vented their anger of "Married With Children" to the show's sponsers, we can and should let eToys' partners know that we don't approve of their partner's actions. While they may not have direct control, they may be able to augment our current efforts. The Better Business Bureau Online might be a good place to start. Do we remove links to eToys and replace them with links to well argued anti-eToys sites? Of course. That's what this whole "internet" thing is all about. I was disappointed to see "Zai" say, "They are about to start electronic riots. They are thinking about starting illegal actions." It makes them appear to sanction such activity (despite "but what can we do?"), it makes people not feel for their situation, and may weaken their legal standing (if not open them up for other legal action.) Have we learned nothing from Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi?
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My 2c on the issue (Score:1)
by sinbad on Thursday December 16, @09:14AM EST (#72)
(User Info) |
"The court decision says etoy should stop doing services under this name, www.etoy.com, because it confuses the customers of www.etoys.com."
How patronising to etoys's customers!! To assume that they can't spell....
temporary injunction, issued late November by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge, against the Zurich artists using the etoy.com domain name.
I fail to see how a US court has jurisdiction against a Swiss company/organisation? Surely this matter should be decided by some sort of international tribunal (assuming there was wrongdoing, which I believe there is not)? Who would enforce the fines if they were imposed by the US court?
I think eToys is being rediculous about this, and the courts even worse. etoy could mean anything - a contraction of "e-commerce to you" for example.
I guess, however, this kind of thing is inevitable when greedy upper-management types learn just enough about the internet to get dangerous.
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Etoys are criminals and theives. (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 16, @09:23AM EST (#76)
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Plain and simple. etoy had the domain years in advance, if anyone should be suing anybody it would be THEM suing etoys! They are attempting to use the stupidity of the courts to illegally remove property from etoy. I hope they look bad, and lose bad, and while the system is a joke, I hope etoy turns around and countersues for 100% court costs, punitive and libel, slander etc etc. I know theres always you fucked up devil's advocates who always post against the grain on slashdot, but anyone who supports eToys on this one needs their head examined.
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A helpful tip (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 16, @09:41AM EST (#81)
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If you are going to DoS by refreshing the eToys site, make sure you do so on an encrypted page. (make a big order and go to checkout, or something like that) Encryption sucks up CPU time much faster than your refresh button can suck up network bandwidth.
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The BEST method to help the cause... (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 16, @09:42AM EST (#84)
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Fire up your shell accounts on your "big iron" boxes and setup a nice shell script to run through endless Apache bench test. ./ab -c 10000 -n 200 http://www.etoys.com/ Let her rip. :)
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ah, money (Score:1)
by Kenshiro on Thursday December 16, @09:50AM EST (#85)
(User Info) http://www.cs.wm.edu/~hallyn
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>We have the capacity to welcome millions and millions and millions of people
>to our site," Ross [eToys' vp of comm] said. "Traffic this holiday season has
>been robust. The site has performed in a very efficient manner.
[wired]
In other words, we're still making money, which we all know is what matters
in corporate america. If we were losing money we might start to worry but since
we're not, screw the little guy. God bless the Dollar, and the rest of you bite me.
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War for the Web is over (Score:3, Insightful)
by dgonz on Thursday December 16, @09:52AM EST (#87)
(User Info) |
To me this whole ordeal just underscores the fact that the web is not, and never again will be, what it once was. The powers that be have spoken - the web is a mall. Accept that and there will be no further unpleasantness. Resistance is futile.
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Tell them what you think (Score:1)
by Octos (octos@austin.rr.com) on Thursday December 16, @09:54AM EST (#89)
(User Info) http://home.austin.rr.com/octos
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I found their email form. I suggest writing them firmly and politely about how you feel. Also, it might be worth mentioning that you will tell other people as well. If you tell enough people, those people will tell other people, etc.
"I am not a number! I am a free man!" --The Prisoner |
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These are real world attitudes brought online. (Score:1)
by LetterJ (jwynia@earthlink.net) on Thursday December 16, @09:59AM EST (#92)
(User Info) http://home.earthlink.net/~jwynia
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These IP arguments, trademark disputes etc. are all attitudes from non-geeks in the real world. Yet, everytime one of these things happen, the geeks respond in the way that they prefer communication: email and other electronic means. Many people have found out that etoys.com puts all email into a queue. Do you honestly think that that email gets to the VP's? They have some intern sorting through it and routing it: either to the appropriate person or /dev/null.
How to actually complain/protest in a way that can get a specific person's attention? Things like certified mail. If you have the name of a specific person and the postal address, you can send them a complaint letter that must be signed for by the addressee. If you can find their personal postal address, all the better. Think of it this way. I'm the CEO of Widgets, Inc. We have a web presence, but I don't know much about how it works. I got my job because of my MBA from Harvard and my connections. There are 10,000 employees below me who only tell me what I need to know to make decisions. There are layers upon layers of red tape to deal with customers, so I don't have to hear from them. Now, imagine, everyday when I get home, there are 10-15 notes from my friendly postal worker saying that since I wasn't home today, I need to go to the post office to recieve and sign for a certified letter. Since I work during post office hours, I need to get up on Saturday, get in my Jaguar and drive down to the post office on my personal time. When I get there and I have to sign for 70 individual letters. I take them home and begin opening them only to find complaints about my company. That has much more impact than an email. The same principal holds true for politicians.
LetterJ
Writing Geek/Pixel Pusher
jwynia@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~jwynia
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use APACHE BENCH tool (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 16, @10:00AM EST (#93)
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use/hit with their search cgi, modify it so the search keyword changes each batch of requests so the database can't cache it proper...
http://www.etoys.com/exec/search.cgi?store=e&emp=et&keyword=integer
or try this... it will add stuff to other peoples carts:
http://www.etoys.com/cgi-bin/cart.cgi?ACTION=ADD&SKU=4000102&Submit.x=50&Submit.y=17
Be creative and post your URLs. :)
LET THE HAMMERING BEGIN! :D :D
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Say what you want... (Score:2, Interesting)
by /ASCII on Thursday December 16, @10:06AM EST (#97)
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| ...about eToys methods of buisness, but their technology seems good. Holiday shopping + Slashdot-effect + flooding, and their server is REALLY fast. I used their searchengine to search for random letter combinations (so as to assure that I am getting dynamic content) and every query returns in about 1 or 2 seconds.
I've been doing some work on a 4 CPU Sun server w 2 GB of ram that delivers about 1 Gb of content per hour, mostly dynamically (Standard MySQL+php3 stuff and some dynamic GIFs), and that takes 100% CPU time... Wonder what they're running?
Oh well, I guess they could be brought to their knees if 10.000 ppl started calling
http://www.etoys.com/exec/search.cgi?store=e&emp=et&keyword=
every 10 seconds, or so...
But that would be unsporting.
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| 1 reply beneath your current threshold. |
| (1 ) | 2 (Slashdot Overload: CommentLimit 50) |
Posted by Roblimo on Thursday December 16, @07:15AM
NSI Steps Into the eToys vs etoy Debate