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
>
