THE TOYWAR-STORY: the TOYWAR.com resistance shelter was installed in november 1999 to protect etoy from aggressive take-over attempts and to recruit TOY.soldiers and journalists for the historic domain name battle between the etoy.CORPORATION (legendary internet art giant, incorporated 1994) and eToys Inc. ( market cap. at this time: more than 8 billion dollars). after the etoy.SHAREHOLDERS (art collectors and fans) rejected a ridiculous offer of $516,000 for the etoy.BRAND (registered TRADEMARK for experimental entertainment and cultural business operations), eToys Inc. filed a naive lawsuit against etoy. the toy retailer accused etoy of unfair competition, trademark delusion, security fraud, illegal stock market operation, pornographic content, offensive behaviour and terrorist activity.

this strategy failed terribly: the etoy.SHAREHOLDERS, specializing in and awarded for surreal incubations, cultural viruses and impact management decided to fight and turned the case into a TOY.harbor of e-commerce: the first TOYWAR.mission was to establish global alliances and to spread the information. long term business associates like rtmark.com, the thing.net or hell.com immediately started to promote the crisis alert. 1798 activists, artists, lawyers, celebrities and journalists were selected and recruited between november 1999 and february 2000 to join the playful TOY.army. TOYWAR worked on the base of self organized, multi-level intelligence - possible only on the net ...like a swarm of bees, hundreds of well-informed people, industry insiders, kids and legal experts contested the aggressor on every level (filing counter court cases, infiltrating customer service, pr departments, the press, investor news groups and also on the level of federal trade commission etc.). more than 300 articles (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, CNN) reported the story and 250 resistance sites and net-shelters were established. result: within 2 months the eToys Inc. stock (NASDAQ: ETYS) dropped from $67 (the day the battle started) to $15 (the day eToys Inc. finally dropped the case). TOYWAR was the most expensive performance in art history: $4.5 billion dollars. a glorious victory for the etoy.CORPORATION which compensated activists with etoy.SHARES (INTERNATIONAL ART MERKET SYMBOLS EYA / EYM - postmasters gallery new york): in march 2000 hundreds of brave TOY.soldiers transformed into etoy.CO-OWNERS with voting rights.