Barlow entered the battle officially on Thursday as part of an etoy "Crisis Advisory Board" that also includes Infoseek Japan chairman Joichi Ito, and author and National Public Radio commentator Douglas Rushkoff.

Public figures such as these are only part of a groundswell of support for etoy, widely admired in the Internet art world. Etoy previously told Wired News that it distanced itself from any hostile attacks on the www.eToys.com Web site -- and Barlow expanded on that theme.

"I think hacks are likely to happen and I think that will be counterproductive in the long run," he said. "It plays into their hands. It makes them look responsible. And they are not responsible."

Barlow went on to say that eToys' action against etoy flies in the face of the development of the Internet, as overseen by such major figures as Jon Postel, the key authority on domain names until his death last October.

"If Jon Postel were alive, he'd be in tears," Barlow said.

"He was a very principled, decent man. He knew that the spirit of fairness was best served by a policy of first-come, first-served. It wasn't served by a policy of 'who has the largest and meanest legal firm wins.' He also made a sincere effort to abstract names of companies in the real world from domain names, because domain names are not like trademarks. They are different than trademarks.