etoy.com @ eToys.com

To prevent potential customers from becoming confused, the online retail company eToys Inc. (www.etoys.com) wanted to prevent the international art collective etoy (formerly at www.etoy.com) from using the etoy dot com domain name on the internet. Apparently eToys Inc. offered money (US$50,000) and shares of stock to the artists but the answer was no, the artists of etoy would not sell their domain name (registered since 1996.)

eToys Inc. took the matter to court and persuaded Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge John P. Shook (eToys Inc.'s headquarters is Santa Monica, CA) to issue a temporary injunction. On November 29, 1999 Judge Shook signed an order that prevented the etoy artists from using their own domain name.

An eToys Inc. spokesman was quoted as saying, ""This is in no way, shape, or form an attempt on our part to say what is and what is not art. We absolutely respect their freedom and their points of view." The spokesman went on to remark that, "There was profanity [at the etoy.com website], there were sadomasochistic images, there were images of terrorist activity. That's upsetting to many people. That's not a comment on whether it has artistic merit. It's about our responsibility to our customers, and our responsibility to address what was beginning to be confusion in the marketplace."

The spokesman's invocation of "sadomasochism" and "terrorist activity" seems sensationalistic. But this is business.

Despite the fact that the etoy artists were online using the domain name etoy.com at least a full year before eToys Inc. doesn't seem to matter to the business people or the local judge.

The director of legal services for the watchguard group called the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) described eToys Inc.'s shenanigans as "a clear-cut case of a business bullying a group of artists, just in time for the Christmas shopping rush." A technology observer wrote in a San Jose Mercury News column that this conflict " is part of an emerging disaster area on the Net. The rich and powerful are taking control of ``their'' names even when other people with equally good claims have already registered the domain names. The law, as so often happens, has been rewritten to favor the rich and powerful."

While David and Goliath metaphors still attach themselves to this conflict, the situation is now perceived as a battle for the very soul of the internet. Will it be dominated by cyber-capitalists symbolized by the online retailer eToys Inc. or will the cyber-artists, symbolized by the bald, orange-uniformed etoy collective, lay claim to the new medium?

The conflict is portrayed as a great cyber-battle between the forces of money and power against the forces of art and imagination: Artist-worker warriors fighting the captains of industry. But do these paradigms work anymore? Like the left and right political metaphors these models belong to the pre-digital age. The internet if nothing else has included a whole new population into our equations of contemporary life. These are neither artists nor captains. The captains want online alchemy to yield consumers; the artists use metaphors and digital aromas to create brave new world thinkers.

Beware of the screaming masses screaming for a world that is safe for hypocrisy.

Cyber-activists are marshalling support for the artists of etoy.com. A virtual protest designed to impact on the operations of eToys Inc. is underway. A real corporeal gathering of activists was held in New York City at the Museum of Modern Art on December 20. An etoy.com advisory board has been formed that includes distinguished netizens like John Perry Barlow, a co-founder of the EFF. For their part eToys Inc. apparently will continue to use the legal system to achieve its goals.

Is the soul of the internet at stake in this conflict? Are the souls of the great unaffiliated the booty in this war? Do the great-unwashed souls get tuned in to the great resources of the human creative spirit or do they get turned on to the seductions of money and materials?

If etoy versus eToys Inc. is a symbolic battle for the millions of souls on the internet, we want to know the long-range outcome of the conflict. Who will prevail: the European digital artists or the Santa Monica capitalists? Art or money. Imagination or capital? The only reliable approach for getting the answers and divining the future was to generate a cosmic baseball game.

The results speak for themselves.

UPDATE: On Wednesday December 29, 1999 eToys Inc. offered to drop its lawsuit against the etoy artists. A spokesman for eToys Inc. said that "the e-mails we got overwhelmingly urged us to find a way to co-exist. The opinions from the art community and from Internet devotees were heartfelt. We have taken those sentiments to heart."