How the etoy Campaign Was Won: An Agent’s Report

In November 1999, the Internet toy store eToys.com initiated a trademark lawsuit against “net.art” site etoy.com. etoy and other Internet activists responded by launching TOYWAR, a decentralized on-line mobilization against eToys, waged on fronts from shopping servers to on-line investors’ forums. The author, one of the “agents” participating in TOYWAR, offers this analysis of the successful campaign of resistance, carried out in keeping with etoy’s artistic project: “the exhibition of the bizarre practices of the financial world.” eToys eventually dropped its suit, having suffered $4.5 billion in lost stock value in the interim.