Toywar

As Toywar one is legal dispute over the domain name etoy.com between European art group etoy and the US toy retailer eToys referred from November 1999 to January 2000. The name goes back to the protest platform www.toywar.com , hosted by The Thing .

The trigger for the toywar was a legal battle before a Californian court in which the online toy retailer eToys forced the temporary blocking of the artist group's internet domain etoy.com with allegations of alleged trademark infringement and cybersquatting , even though the artist group registered the domain name and used it for itself even before eToys was founded. The company eToys in turn registered the domain etoys.com .

The campaign by Internet activists (RTMark, Ricardo Dominguez, etc.) in Toywar, which was mainly conducted via the Internet and other mass media , led to numerous declarations of solidarity, art campaigns , happenings , online demonstrations and, as a result, probably also to price losses for the listed toy retailer. These circumstances and the success of the campaign finally forced the company eToys to discontinue the legal proceedings against the artist group and to initiate the activation of the domain etoy.com .

See also

• Culture jamming

Movie

• In 2004 the documentary Info Wars was shot, the subject of which is toywar.

literature

• Florian Rötzer: eToys.com withdraws the lawsuit against Etoy.com . Telepolis , January 26, 2000
• Reinhold Grether: How the Etoy campaign was conducted . Telepolis, February 9, 2000
• Sabine Schally: toyWAR . wink.at, December 19, 1999
• Harald Hillgärtner: Network activism in the field of tension between art and technology (PDF; 1.4 MB). Siegen, January 23, 2001