It is interesting and and somewhat ironic that the Engineering
dep at eToys is part of the open source community and culture
while their management's behavior was so disastrously misguided
and so misunderstanding of net culture and precedent.
They shot themselves in the foot pretty badly.
Would eToys have paid for the legal expenses of the Etoy group
if they weren't clued in by their Engineering department? Have
they learned a hard lesson?
Perrin is an exemplary figure, and I commiserate with him, but
some basic precedents of net culture need to be respected for the
network to function and the culture to flourish. If we had not
protested the attempted eToys domain grab, and I was one
who protested, they may have never recanted and Etoy might
still be fighting at absurd personal cost.
Cheers,
Ed
Paul Singh wrote:
> Regardless of what eToys' intentions were, the way I see it, this was a case
> in which a billion dollar corporation (well, at least it was back then)
> filed suit against a handful of artists who had the etoy.com domain way
> before eToys came along. eToys had no legitimate stake to the domain... and
> I don't associate legitimacy with the law... they seldom coincide. So if
> this isn't a case of the bigger guy bullying the little guy, what is it?
> Granted, I have a distant association with the eToy crew so my opinions will
> be biased... however, even with staying to the facts and ignoring eToys'
> motivations, their actions alone reek of unfairness (at best).
>
> Of course, this says little of what type of work environment eToys is and
> the people that work there... but it does comment on the corporation and the
> people running it.
>
> But as you said, this is definitely off-topic, and I will cease further
> comment... take care.
>
> - jps
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Perrin Harkins [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > Sent: Friday, June 16, 2000 4:48 PM
> > To: Paul Singh
> > Cc: ModPerl Mailing List
> > Subject: RE: [OT] [JOB] mod_perl and Apache developers wanted
> >
> >
> > On Thu, 15 Jun 2000, Paul Singh wrote:
> > > While that may be true (as with many publications), I hope you're not
> > > denying the facts of this case
> >
> > The basic facts are correct: eToys received complaints from parents about
> > the content their children found on the etoy.com site and, after failing
> > to reach an agreement with the site's operators, filed a lawsuit involving
> > trademarks which led to etoy being ordered to shut down their site by a
> > judge.
> >
> > Slashdot's coverage ignored or underreported some aspects of the situation
> > (the motivation behind the lawsuit, epxloitation of the name confusion on
> > the part of etoy), and reported some conjecture and pure flights of fancy
> > as fact (evil intentions, scheming lawyers). You have no idea how painful
> > it is to read things like that from a source that you trust and consider
> > part of your community. I guess I should have known better though:
> > Slashdot is an op/ed site. If you want the news, you still have to read
> > the New York Times (who had much more accurate coverage of the events).
> >
> > Anyway, I don't claim that eToys was right to take legal action, just that
> > the reports about an evil empire were greatly exaggerated and that eToys
> > is a good place to work, full of good people. Anyone who doesn't believe
> > me at this point probably never will, so I'm going to stop spamming the
> > list about this subject and go back to spamming about mod_perl.
> >
> > - Perrin
> >
