One year ago today, eToys capitulated to activist pressure--which some say had helped drive down its stock price, recently sighted at $0.03--and officially gave up its attempt to steal an art group's domain name (http://rtmark.com/etoy.html).

Many activists hailed this triumph--lately punctuated by the announcement of eToys' looming bankruptcy--as a lesson to other corporations that might consider taking what is not rightfully theirs. When Autodesk suddenly relented from a similar attack, many felt the lesson had been well learned (http://rtmark.com/autodesk.html).

But unfortunately, corporations do not learn lessons that are not written in law. Many of the entities that were fighting for their lives last December 29 have been forced out of existence by their predators, even before eToys; a few others are still fighting, at ever growing expense (Healthnet.org, Leonardo Magazine, etc.); and dozens of new cases have been brought to RTMark's attention.

In these days of privatized education, it should perhaps come as no surprise that some of the new attacks are against children: Warner Brothers, for example, is going after a fifteen-year-old girl for her Harry Potter fan site, and Ferrero, which makes "Kinder Surprise" chocolate eggs, is attempting to hijack the domain of an Austrian children's charity ("Kinder" means "children" in German).

"Public outrage without legal backup isn't enough," said Rita Mae Rakoczi, lawyer and RTMark spokesperson. "eToys was beaten outside the courtroom, but as a result nothing was written in stone, and companies know they can still get away with this sort of behavior--not to mention much worse. The only solution is to pass laws protecting people from corporate assault, and to rescind laws doing the opposite."

See http://rtmark.com/netabuse.html for more on these cases and others.