Late last month, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge responded to eToys' lawsuit by issuing a temporary injunction, preventing the award-winning Internet artists from using their www.etoy.com Web site. This was done even though they were on the Internet two years before www.eToys.com, a billion-dollar toy business. The two sides have another court date in Los Angeles later this month.
Last Friday, Network Solutions stepped in and shut down the domain name etoy.com for the time being, cutting off etoy's email and stirring up more outrage among its supporters, Barlow included.
"That did surprise me," he said. "I don't think that's NSI's responsibility. I think they overreached their authority and I think they're highly vulnerable to suit."
Network Solutions spokeswoman Cheryl Regan declined to comment on Barlow's remarks, and said that Network Solutions' business affairs department was in the process of trying to contact etoy in Zurich. Results so far have been unsuccessful.
"I received an inquiry on Tuesday from etoy corporation," Regan said. "We're trying to reach them to respond. We are a neutral third party. We try to leave it up to the two disputing parties to work it out. Does etoy give up the domain name to eToys? We don't know what will happen."
No one else does either. But experts on the appropriate law argue that www.eToys.com's case against etoy is weak.
"Shame on eToys for misusing the law in this way," EFF's director of legal services Shari Steele wrote in an email.
"There's no confusion here; people wouldn't think they were on the eToys site when they accessed etoy. This is a clear-cut case of a business bullying a group of artists, just in time for the Christmas shopping rush."
Barlow said the EFF would probably take some sort of action, but wasn't precisely sure what that would be.
"This is where the front lines really come down between traditional business practices and the practices that are born in cyberspace," he said. "It's really where we decide if we're going to make cyberspace a better place. I don't think it's idealistic to think we have the opportunity to start fresh -- if we don't blow it.
"Human nature will assert itself, and I'd very much like to see certain behavior curtailed. EToys is engaging in that sort of behavior here. What they are doing is extremely predatory and wrong."
