eToys, the online toy store, sued eToy, a site maintained by a bunch of Europe-based artists. The fact that eToy had been around on the Web much longer than eToys didn’t bother a U.S. judge, who issued an injunction to shut down the eToy domain. eToys should be ashamed of itself, but shamelessness is a hallmark of many companies, online and off.
News coverage:
Industry Standard article
Interactive Week article
Some online activists, while properly incensed at the company’s arrogance, are taking their objections a bit far. RTMark, for example, is calling for Netizens to essentially destroy eToys by various means, including an open-ended invitation to hackers. This is a vigilante response, and it won’t win any friends for the good guys.
The best response, which RTMark also endorses (as do many other activist sites), is to shop elsewhere and make your feelings known to eToys.
This entire case, incidentally, 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.
I’m working on a column on this topic. I’d like to hear your ideas on what we can do about it.
How Late is Windows 2000?
It’s official: Microsoft said today that Windows 2000 is “done” (AP story) — that is, close enough to finished to release the product to manufacturing and sell it. Of course, as with any new operating system, anyone with any sense will wait at least six months before installing this behemoth, with its tens of millions of lines of code. I’ll probably put it on one machine, just to see how it works, but not a computer I need for everyday work.
The W2K charade — saying it’s finished means Microsoft will now claim it did this before the turn of the century, despite being years late already — has been pretty amusing. But the tardiness of this product has had absolutely no real impact on Microsoft. This is the benefit of a monopoly — you can deliver a product when you feel like it.
Behind the Photo Curve
Professional photographers say I’m behind the curve for only recently discovering digital photography. Fine. I’m not a professional photographer.
But I suspect I’m in the same boat as millions of other folks who have learned what a nifty new tool this is. And when you add the Internet to the equation, it gets a lot more interesting.