Re: Help destroy eToys.com! (fwd)

[RTMARK Admin <admin@rtmark.com>]

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http://www.zdnet.com/tlkbck/comment/321/0,7091,81713-304090,00.html

A comment from someone whose business is "E-Commerce Enablement"--at least
one person understood what we hoped to convey, and used the Wild West
metaphor too.

---------- Previous message ----------
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 11:02:23 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: Help destroy eToys.com!

> > No one really thinks we're going to destroy eToys. It's a sensationalist
> > press release--we're trying to show that what eToys is doing to etoy is so
> > egregiously awful that the equal and opposite response is a campaign to
> > destroy eToys.
> 
> This is totaly irresponsible! If someone released a serious post calling
> for the destruction of a company, people will take it seriously. Who is
> this "no one" anyways? How is this "no one" going to know this is some
> kind of hoax or a joke? And how is lowering yourself to their level

It is *not* a hoax or a joke--we really do want to damage eToys. But we
don't think we can destroy them, and people realize it's hyperbole (see
for example http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/, top story, quote marks).

We're trying to teach them a lesson, a la Shell Oil / Brent Spar.
Ideally a precedent will be set that will show companies what "going too
far" means.

> helping anything? Come on now...There are no legs to stand on here. The
> net has been referred to as a "wild west" type world, but what happened
> back then? Lawlessness brought in the government; people started taking
> the law into their hands and it became an eye for an eye type environment.

If we rely on quiet due process to take care of things, corporations will
just keep making that due process fit with their values. They've spent the
last hundred+ years getting laws enacted that reinterpret the Constitution
in extremely strange ways. Not only are they persons according to the 14th
Amendment (written to protect the rights of freed slaves), but their money
is equivalent to their speech (perhaps because it's the only way they
express themselves)--that's why they can lobby, one tool they use to
rewrite the law.

The law simply does not work in this case. etoy is having to spend
an ungodly sum on lawyers every day, just to keep the case alive, so they
don't lose the domain by default. This is not the way it should be.

> We can not let the net as a whole turn into this. If we can not police
> ourselves in a responciable manner, with activism, hacktivism, or other
> non-destructive means, who else is going to police us? 
> 
> I think we all know the answer to that question.

Frankly, if the answer is "the government," I'd find that far preferable
to having the whole thing be at the mercy of corporations and their needs.
Governments can of course be satanically awful, but in democracies they
are at least somewhat responsive to popular needs and desires.
Corporations are not, except insofar as they absolutely must be to
preserve their bottom line.

Ideally, what we're doing here would create enough momentum that laws
could be changed. Failing that, at least there will be a precedent, and
corporations will see that they have to be at least slightly in the thrall
of human decency on the net. That's the idea.

ernest lucha

> 
> 
> regards,
>    Bronc Buster
>   bronc@2600.com
> 
> > 
> > On Mon, 13 Dec 1999, Morrison, Catherine E wrote:
> > 
> > > I have to agree, although perhaps less emphatically...I became 
> > > interested in this movement because I saw in it a chance to 
> > > mobilize large amounts of people and educate them about social 
> > > issues they would otherwise be blissfully unaware of. But, to the 
> > > extent of essentially attacking kids for something they are not 
> > > responsible for? That's not cool.
> > > 
> > > I realize that intellectual property rights are going to become a 
> > > powder-keg issue, but now is the time for widespread EDUCATION. 
> > > Currently the american public is simply not primed to respond 
> > > correctly to this issue. The hacktivism community would come out 
> > > looking like the grinch who stole Christmas while etoys, with 
> > > their giant innocent blue eyes filling with the tears of children 
> > > everywhere, would merely be another Who....left out in the cold 
> > > and stripped of their gifts.
> > > 
> > > Is that a real protrayal? Of COURSE not. But the public is not 
> > > going to understand what an abusive corporate giant etoys is yet 
> > > because they are unfamiliar with the issue of intellectual 
> > > property rights. I mean, hell...Monsanto and others are poised to 
> > > create starvation and poverty all over the world with the 
> > > Terminator seed, which owes it's very existence to property 
> > > rights, and NO ONE knows about that...
> > > 
> > > So if you want to protest I suggest that want take the forms of 
> > > letter-writing to newspapers, web sites, notes on mailing lists...
> > > Suggest a BOYCOTT--that's noble and newsworthy while a floodnet 
> > > looks too much like a prank. Cry havoc, don't cause it just yet.
> > > 
> > > cate
> > > http://npthing-to-fear.org
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > Now this is TOTALY MORONIC.
> > > > 
> > > > Help destroy eToys.com? Hello? The topic alone should give you a bad
> > > > feeling. This is not what Hacktivism is about, or activism, or hacking for
> > > > that matter.
> > > > 
> > > > There is a big diffrence in attempting to bring a wrong into the spot
> > > > light by causing attention, and attempting to take the law into your own
> > > > hands. What they are calling for is just wrong.
> > > > 
> > > > This group, by attempting to quote some 10 year old script kiddie, and
> > > > calling him a hacker in order to cause people with some sort of skills to
> > > > fight for them, have shown themselves to be nothing more then another
> > > > group of kiddies attempting to call up a "hacker war" and bring attention
> > > > upon themselves. This really angers me!
> > > > 
> > > > I find it hard to even comment on anything in this because it is so
> > > > immature and unintelligent. Come on people, what are we coming to? Last I
> > > > saw we still had a legal system in this country, and even if it fails, 
> > > > that dosen't give us the right to destroy anything. Thats like saying the
> > > > riots after the first Rodney King trial were justified.
> > > > 
> > > > I'd tell these people to get a clue and find a better, positive, and more
> > > > constructive way to bring their plight to the people. And lastly, don't
> > > > try and quote a "hacker" or anything like this, for most of the times it
> > > > backfires and brings down the heat upon them.
> > > > 
> > > > Grow up...this kind of crap went out with the 4th grade...
> > > > 
> > > > regards,
> > > >    Bronc Buster
> > > >   bronc@2600.com
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > 
> > 
> 




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