Etoy

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For other uses, see Etoy, Switzerland.

The correct title of this article is etoy. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.

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Etoy is a European digital art group. Etoy won several international awards including the Prix Ars Electronica in 1996. Their main slogan is: "leaving reality behind."

Etoy routinely experiments with the boundaries of art, such as selling shares of "stock" in the etoy.corporation, a registered company in Switzerland (etoy.shares) and travelling the world as well as living in etoy.tanks (cargo containers).

[edit] History

Etoy was founded 1994 and the authors behind etoy's brand were an art collective that started to sell virtual shares and is owned now by hundreds of etoy.shareholders: international art collectors, the etoy.agents and toywar.soldiers (who protected the etoy.brand during the toywar). The etoy.inventors own, control and protect the corporate sculpture. The way etoy is organized is unique for the art world and it is surprising that the group is still around and producing high quality work after such a long time while many early net.art pioneers vanished.^{[citation needed]}

Currently, the German film director Andrea Reiter is working on a documentary film about Mission Eternity. She and her team followed the etoy.crew since 2005 to Berlin, Zurich, San Jose and Nevada. The Hugo film production will be released in 2007.

[edit] Toywar

The toywar was a legal battle between the Internet toy retailer eToys.com and etoy for the domain name etoy.com. eToys sued etoy for having a similar domain name to their own. They accused etoy of unfair competition, trademark dilution and terrorist activity^{[citation needed]} among other things, eventually getting an injunction temporarily shutting down the etoy website. After several weeks eToys dropped the lawsuit and the etoy website returned to operation [1].

It has been called "the most expensive performance in art history" [2], citing eToys' market capitalization loss of $4.5 billion dollars during the conflict. However most analysts denied^{[citation needed]} that this had been caused by the efforts of etoy and its supporters alone. The story is one of the subjects of the documentary film, info wars.

An email campaign was led by Internet activists including etoy.agents developing the toywar website, a battlefield for 2000 toysoldiers.

A book about the story of the etoy corporation, Leaving reality behind, by Regula Bochsler and Adam Wishart was released in 2002. It covers the battle of etoy vs. eToys Inc. and whether the Internet was for the profit of the few or the pleasure of many. The Financial Times described it as, "an important story and as absorbing as a well-crafted thriller."[3] UK (ISBN 1841155934) and US (ISBN 0066210763) editions are available.