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Nonviolent Cyber-activism

By Felix Brann

Nonviolence is by no means limited to physical protests. Despite media hysteria about the perceived aggressive tactics used by "hackers" and "crackers," it is very much alive on the web.

One well-documented example of nonviolent electronic civil disobedience is the case of etoy.com and etoys.com. In 1995, a group of European conceptual artists created a website at www.etoy.com. In October 1997, www.etoys.com, an online toy store, opened for business--a full two years after etoy.com had registered their domain name and started posting content to their site. In 1999, etoys.com went public and became one of the most valuable sites on the Internet--valued at US$6 billion. They also noticed etoy.com, and complained that the similarity of the domain names was confusing etoys.com customers and compromising its brand. They further claimed that customers who had stumbled onto the artists' site by mistake had complained about the graphic language and images there. At this point, etoys.com first offered to buy the etoy name, but those at etoy.com refused. So in September 1999, etoys.com filed a lawsuit against etoy.com.

Their case was that etoy.com should be shut down for having a similar domain name to their own, despite the fact they had registered the domain name two years before etoys.com had started. A California state court judge ruled that the operators of etoy.com should be fined $10,000 for every day their website continued to operate under their domain name. 

Online Protest 

Many people within the online community were outraged that money and big business mattered more than rights on the Internet.

The community organized (among other protests) what was in effect a digital sit-in. They released a program that, when run, would cause the user's computer to repeatedly access the etoys.com site. They then encouraged supporters of etoy.com's cause to download and run the program in the week running up to Christmas. This program essentially allowed users to participate in a nonviolent "virtual sit-in." Nonviolent because the attack did not damage the etoys.com site; it simply stopped people from accessing it while the sit-in continued. If too many protesters were requesting the page, customers could not request the page at the same time and could not do their Christmas shopping at etoys.com. 

Within days of the virtual sit-in, the share price of etoys.com began to plummet. Etoys.com filed a restraining order against one of the sites responsible for organizing the protest, but to no avail. Finally, on January 25, 2000, etoys.com ceded full rights to etoy.com after a 70-percent plummet in their share price. 

A group of activists had organized electronically and protested successfully over the Internet without causing permanent damage (to anything but the etoys stock value). It is important to note that while it would have been within their technical ability to have taken a more damaging course of action, they chose not to do so, but to rely instead on a broad sense of justice and widespread willingness to support the virtual "sit-in."

Freedom of Expression

The huge support for this cause was not due to the popularity of etoy.com; rather it was a reaction by the Internet community to the perceived suppression of freedom of expression by etoys.com. It was also a message of outrage at the idea of big business dominating global culture.

A high level of sociopolitical motivation is a common trait in online protests, and it is similar issues that generally attract online activist attention. Such issues include the perceived low level of compensation paid to victims of the Bhopal disaster, the arms trade and the death penalty. 

The etoy.com case wasn't the first example of its kind, and it certainly won't be the last; corporations and political organizations now have to come to terms with the power of grassroots net activism in an increasingly cyber-resident world.

Felix Brann is a computer science student based in London.

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