A Protest Group Fights Back

This just in: A hacker group's website, RTMark, urged hackers this week to sabotage eToys.com and "destroy" the company. RTMark said it hoped to mess with eToys' site operations and traffic counts in order to disrupt the toyseller's Christmas business and thus deplete its stock value.

The likely outcome is that eToys will sic its legal team on RTMark and smack the group down like a redheaded stepchild. But if that happens, RTMark says it's ready to go down with as much needless belligerence as humanly possible.

Perhaps the bad PR will achieve the protest group's goal as well, albeit to a much more limited extent than the hackers would like. Maybe eToys' stock will only fall two cents a share. That could still mean some eToys executive would lose out on $500,000 or have to settle for a smaller yacht.

Again, this is all rather sad, since eToys is a cool site and all. Did I mention they gave me a free eToys baseball cap with my purchase? That just warmed my heart.