[The following statements, by Etoy Advisory Board members Suzanne
Meszoly and Douglas Rushkoff, were read at the MoMA press
conference in December. They were posted to Rhizome by etoy.AGENT027
(agent027@toybomb.com).-ag]

SUZANNE MESZOLY AT ETOY PRESS CONFERENCE
NYC, Museum of Modern Art, December 20, 1999

FREEDOM ON THE INTERNET
AN AMERICAN HORROR STORY

THE FACTS:
etoy an international art group has been sued by EToys, an American
multi billion dollar internet toy company for trademark infringement
claiming that the art group's name is too close to its own. Etoys the
toy company has defamed the international art group etoy by calling them
criminal, hackers, pornographers and terrorists.

On November 29, 1999 a Los Angeles Superior Court judge responded to
eToys' lawsuit by issuing a preliminary injunction, preventing the
award-winning Internet artists, etoy, from using their www.etoy.com Web
site. and preventing them from offering and selling etoy.SHARES in the
United States of America. Both etoys and etoy do business on line. As
far as I understand and as mentioned in the Morning Edition on
National Public Radio on December 13 by Megan Gray an expert in internet
and intellectual property law, trademark infringement requires
companies to have substantially similar names and for those companies to
have substantially similar goods and services. I fail to see that etoy
sells toys online. Regarding the question of first come first served
and domain names, etoy.com have been on the net since 1995 and were
founded in 1994. Etoys, the world's leading online toy retailer, was
founded in 1996 and registered the name etoys.com in 1997 and owns the
trademark.

Etoys the toy company decided that the similar web address of the
international art group was confusing their customers and took legal
action leading to the preliminary decision made in the California court,
which in turn has lead to the loss of the artists domain name,
restrictions placed on their etoy.share art project and subsequently
the loss of their email addresses as well. (Network Solutions, the
company that maintains the master list of internet addresses (domains)
has blocked email service to etoy.com, though this was not mandated by
the injunction.) Apparently Network Solutions does this when domain
names are under investigation. Etoy has been isolated by this action
from the supportive internet community: restricting the etoy.email
addreses was not a part of the official court decision and compromises
the fundamental rights of speech, expression, organization and self
defense. We fail to see the legality of this Network Solutions action.
Network Solutions has said they are "unable" to reach etoy in Zurich.

The preliminary injunction of the California court represents a legal
precedence: an ebusinesss giant is restricting the very existence of an
art company. There is no business overlap here as I have already stated.

This case merely demonstrates who has the right to conduct business,
operate, express themselves and exist in cyberspace. The legalities of
this court case are obviously under discussion as well, not only because
it is yet another case of "cash driven justice".

The artists currently run operations from Europe and remain there today.

The next decision will be made December 27, 1999, again in the
California court, where the etoy art group has been requested to provide
an exhaustive amount of documentation, as well as appearing in person.

This court case has obviously received a great deal of attention both in
America and around the world for it deals with freedom on the internet
and through this case we can see an American State court regulating the
wide-open international landscape of the internet, of art.

Etoy has created a crisis advisory board of international experts, of
which I am the director, to assist with the development of this court
case and to help etoy retain its intellectual and internet property.
Etoy does not and will not be involved in any action which is illegal or
harmful to any person or institution. Etoy simply wants to exist as
before as a meaningful and creative art project. Etoy has never
intended to interfere with the business of internet toy retailers.

Etoy will not engage with traditional means, etoy will not hack or
aggress the etoys or other opponents that attempt to destroy our
territory and intellectual and cultural property, however through this
current process etoy has continued to infect the world with the etoy
message: the message has broken through the glass doors of the museum,
through the computer monitors and hit the streets, the newspapers, CNN,
the business news, the television. The stocks, the court judges, the
activitists, the riots, the MOMA, the advisors, the netizens, the world
has transformed the etoy idealogy into a reality. The surreal has become
real.

Hacking reality????
This is the etoy value

+ + +

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF AT ETOY PRESS CONFERENCE
NYC, Museum of Modern Art, December 20, 1999

Back in 1994, the Internet was limited to non-commercial purposes. Users
had to agree not to conduct commerce online in order to get an account.
When a pair of immigration lawyers sent out the first "spam" email
offering their services, they were booted off the Internet, altogether.

How times have changed. When commercial interests moved online, many of
us were concerned they would change the essential character of this
space – that a communications infrastructure would be turned into an
electronic strip mall.

But Wired, cyber-libertarians, and e-commerce enthusiasts reminded us
all of the simple fact that the Internet has infinite real estate.
There's room for everyone. Not so.

A group of International artists understood the threat that consumerism,
marketing, and stock market speculation posed to Internet society and
culture at large. In 1994, they created ETOY – an art project designed
to take place in the public sphere. It was meant both as a satire of the
corporate value system, and a barometer of the information space. By
selling symbolic "stock certificates," for example, ETOY was able to
expose the ludicrous speculations and valuations of the pyramid scheme
otherwise known as the NASDAQ exchange, where billions of dollars are
made by people with the best story or dot-com brand name. The ETOY brand
was created so that art might compete with commerce.

Etoys, the e-commerce company, arrived online two years after ETOY. But
because they do "real" business