Internet Issues: California Court Blocks Artists Www.Etoy.Com Domain; ACLU To File Suit Against The FBI For Shutting Down Artist Mike Z.'S Web Site

Source: Arts Wire CURRENT at Arts Wire

California Court Blocks Artists Www.Etoy.Com Domain

LOS ANGELES, CA -- A preliminary injunction blocking the artist's group etoy's domain name -- www.etoy.com -- was accepted by the Californian State Court on November 29.

According to etoy, Judge John P. Shook, Los Angeles County Superior Court, signed a statement enjoining etoy and any and all persons acting on behalf or in concern with etoy, from operating a website with the domain name of www.etoy.com, pending final adjudication of the action.

According to the VILLAGE VOICE, in September, after a grandfather who thought he was on the toy company's site, complained about the language on the artist's site, the toy business brought suit against the artists for trademark infringement, dilution, and unfair competition. At that time, the first page on etoy's site offered visitors the option to "travel the old fashioned way (html only)." The next page said: "We do not support the old fashioned way . . . get the fucking flash plugin!"

"ONE SINGLE ("F*CKING FLASH PLUGIN") displayed for a few weeks on the etoy site was judged sufficient to shoot down the etoy.DOMAIN because - according to eToys Inc. - it disturbs the eToys business and confuses customers about the eToys trademark," etoy states. "with this decision we are literally knocked out and had to shut down our apache web server a few hours later. one of the hardest moments in our successful history."

The etoy, a group of European net/performance artists, has been online since October 1995. The commercial electronic toy store eToys has only been online since 1997. etoy notes that eToys must have known of etoy before they built their business but decided to use the name anyway despite the potential for confusion. "Now they seek to hold etoy responsible for that very confusion, even though there is no business overlap," the artists emphasize.

The etoy "agents" are a group of men living in Vienna, Manchester, Zurich, and Prague. etoy, aka etoy corporation, has staged "actions" at techno events throughout Europe -- making their appearance wearing orange jackets and black pants, carrying handheld computers -- "in the same look, and the same tools are always used: this principle emphasizes how they etoy.MEMBERS are interchangeable. everyone is is everyone. everywhere. everything. leaving reality behind," they have written.

etoy actions have included THE DIGITAL HIJACK (1996) --- http://www.hijack.org/ -- which intercepted the results of Internet searches -- replacing them with a screen which said "Don't fucking move. This is a digital hijack." The work told the "captive" users that they had been hijacked just as the Internet itself has already been hijacked, and it threw about 600,000 "art hostages" into etoy's own site.

In 1996, etoy was awarded the Goldene Nica, the top prize in the Internet category at ARS ELECTRONICA. According to their statement in the catalog for that show, the name etoy was chosen by a random output generator using "certain criteria. attractive symbols / letters / words provided the basic material for creating name suggestions. In a 15 hour IRC conference, the Crew made a selection based on aesthetic features. electronic-toy, endo-toy, energy-toy: automatically resulting solutions."

etoy agent zai told the Voice that not only did eToys know of etoy's existence, but also the company offered to buy the url. The last offer was 7000 shares and $50,000 in cash. But etoy refused. "Our emotions, our artistic integrity, our whole thing is the domain name," the Voice quotes agent zai as saying. "Probably the logical response is to get some money rather than lose. But our project was always radical, so for us it is better to risk everything and fight."

In an email statement last week, the group wrote: "etoy now prepares for the battle against one of the biggest and most unscrupulous e-commerce companies in the world, a company which seeks to maximize profit with the take over of the domain etoy.com ostensibly in the name of family values. using their deep pockets and lobbying power to curb choice, dissent and free speech and make the internet a more colorless and less exciting place."

"Trademark holders are trying to muscle people out of using names that are arguably confusing and arguably belong to them," THE VILLAGE VOICE quotes David Post, a law professor at Temple University as saying. "A lot of people cave because of the cost of litigating. But the pendulum is swinging. Recent decisions suggest that it may be harder [for trademarked companies to win]."

According to etoy, whose "art products" include "etoy.SHARE", since the court decision and resultant publicity, the toy company's stock has gone down appreciably. "Corporate greed and a massive lack of knowhow and sensibility for the internet community has led to this disaster!" etoy writes. "imagine: they have no shops, just their website under the domain name www.etoys.com! eToys Inc. totally relays on a proper child loving image... and of course on a good relationship with the users - who are the net."

Sources/resources:

The etoy.BOARD decided not to move to a temporary domain name. The etoy corporation can currently be found under the IP address http://146.228.204.72:8080 Email: wunderkind@etoy.com

Claire Barliant
"The Village Voice: Machine Age: e-Toy Story"
THE VILLAGE VOICE --
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/9948/barliant.shtml
December 1 - 7, 1999

Hannes Leopoldseder and Christine Schopf, PRIX ARS ELECTRONICA 96 (Vienna, NY: Springer Verlag, 1996)

A support action by rtmark.com, the thing new york, ninfomaina, detritus.net, illegal art, plagiarist.org, namespace, negativeland, evolution control committee styro2000, boombox.net, personal records, and others is located at http://www.toywar.com The site also includes information about the etoy.SHARE "art product" _______________________________________________________ ACLU To File Suit Against The FBI For Shutting Down Artist Mike Z.'S Web Site

NEW YORK -- The American Civil Liberties Union has announced plans to sue the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for what staff lawyers describe as the agency's disjointed and unconstitutional practice of monitoring the Internet, according to FREE!

Artist Mike Z.'s (Mike Zieper) web site -- http://www.crowdedtheater.com -- which, according to the VILLAGE VOICE, showed a video clip purporting to be a military briefing for a secret army plan to incite a race riot on New Year's Eve, was shut down by the FBI last month.

"I don't know too much about this tape you are about to see. I got it from my cousin Steve who's in the army. He said that copies of this tape are floating around the base, and nobody knows who made it. If it's fake, then there's nothing to worry about. If it's real, then we're in really big trouble," the site states.

"I like to get people into a space that's not framed by narrative," Mike Z. said, according to the Voice. "My work always looks like something that was not made for public consumption, and here it tries to address issues of race."

According to the Voice, after the FBI "requested" that the artist take down his site but he declined, the FBI working in tandem with the U.S. Attorney's office, persuaded his Web host and its server to pull the site without having a subpoena or court order of any kind.

"We're filing a complaint about the investigative policy or practice the FBI has in place for dealing with Web content," ACLU Staff Attorney Ann Beeson told free! "It's very unclear and very odd that [the FBI] would be taking this approach to this kind of content when we all know there is much more offensive content out there."

The lawsuit will seek damages for violations of the artist's First Amendment free-speech rights.

According to Free! the FBI and Mark Wieger, president of BECamation, the Michigan-based Internet service provider that hosted the site have conflicting accounts about whether Wieger was asked or ordered to remove the video from the Internet. But Free! points out that intimidation could be more effective against an Internet provider than a newspaper because of the ease of shutting down a server.

The FBI has now dropped its investigation of the site, and Wieger has reinstalled it. A click on the http://www.crowdedtheater.com now leads to the following information:

"This website is a place where serious issues can be explored: - the upcoming date change and the fear over the Y2K computer problem, - the distrust that many Americans feel about their Government,

- the use of racial hatred to manipulate the American people

The video that you see on this site was created by Mike Z. It is presented to the viewer without the usual disclaimers of conventional fiction so that the viewer can experience the information directly. It is comforting to be told that something is 'only a movie.' The problems that this video addresses can not be wished away with the promise of a hero and a happy ending....."

Sources/resources:

Phillip Taylor "ACLU to file suit against FBI on Web video artist's behalf" THE FREEDOM FORUM -- http://www.freedomforum.org December 13, 1999

Mark Boal "Subversive Filmmaker Attracts the Wrong Kind of Agent" THE VILLAGE VOICE -- http://www.villagevoice.com November 24 - 30, 1999

THE AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION WEBSITE -- http://www.aclu.org

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