On Wed, 17 Jan 2001, David Gee wrote:
quoted 9 lines If you really buy any of that shit, you're truly deluded. eToys stock> If you really buy any of that shit, you're truly deluded. eToys stock
> dropped because it was ridiculously overpriced, at around the same time most
> other bloated tech stocks started dropping. Toywar/rtMark utilized this
> coincidence to make themselves look good, which in my eyes is just as bad as
> what eToys - actually, no, not eToys - one misguided dickhead at eToys -
> did. I used to work there, and the majority of people I interacted with,
> including most of upper management, were highly pissed off about the whole
> affair, but only got wind of it once it had already escalated to an
> uncontrollable point.
Suppose you had the domain www.davidgee.com reserved, and some big corp
under the name Irving David/Merv Gee Inc. decided to threaten you with a
lawsuit saying that www.davidgee.com was infringing on their trademark,
etc. Ignoring the hindsight you now have, I doubt the first thought you
would have would be "Garsh. I think this is just the work of some
renegade dolt at David/Gee Inc. that's misguided. I think I'll just ride
this out until the upper management discovers what's going on eons later
-- possibly well after the fallout of the lawsuit -- and out the weasel."
With all due respect to the others at eToys, Inc. -- they're still
responsible for the fallout of the dolt. When an employee is given power
enough to perform actions on behalf of the company, that company has
officially "spoken" if that employee "speaks". TOYWAR/rtmark had every
right to feel threatened.
If they had only known you personally, then maybe none of this would have
happened. But people generally don't give huge legal hammers from the
sky the benefit of the doubt as a first instinct. There's something
called "fight or flight".
While I don't defend every grass roots media blitz as earnest, I think
accusing TOYWAR of cheap publicity, in this case, isn't entirely fair.
=======================================================================
Brian MacDonald <brianm@kuci.org>
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