After years of faux-e-battles between corporations and the net.art world, we are mostly left with the Toywar or r™ark's parasitic 'victories' and limp subversion as creative practice. Thus it is interesting to read the text on NBC10's report about www.gunsforkids.com.
FEDERAL OFFICIALS are hot on the trail of the person or people responsible for starting web page targeting kids and your wallet. It’s a name you might not want your kids to know, but you’ll want to be aware of what’s out there and how they may be trying to get your money …We traced the domain to someone in Montana and tried to call but never got an answer. We had to cancel our credit card after this test, but there’s no telling how many kids have responded and dolled out their parent’s account information.
'Climb up on top of a cafeteria table read the ad for a 'Wehrmacht Flamethrower' ($12899.99), 'with a tank full of thick, stinking diesel fuel strapped to your back and watch the reactions of classmates and teachers. Outside, sweep right and left to take out SWAT team members and armored police vehicles. Make it all the way to your local shopping mall and be immortalized in the Guns For Kids Hall of Fame.'
The site www.gunsforkids.com has a catalogue of weapons including Uzi's, Glocks, Beretta's, Machine Guns, Demolition Kits, under the heading 'A Lifetime of Fun Guaranteed.' The 'banners' at the head of the page, Exxon/Mobil, Proflowers.com. Women.com, etc., load randomly. One of them, for Verizon (a huge long distance provider) elicited a long legal response from Verizon's lawyers that read, in part:
'Your use of the VERIZON mark and logo is not sanctioned by Verizon. You have evidently scraped from the welcome page of the verizon.com site a brand new advertisement for certain of Verizon's long distance services, which Verizon has not authorized any third party to post. By displaying Verizon's advertisement on the gunsforkids.com site, hosted by the servers 'NS1.missoulaweb.com' and 'NS2.missoulaweb.com' that are plainly associated with your operations, you have violated Verizon's intellectual property rights. Specifically, your display of Verizon's advertisement falsely suggests an affiliation between the gunsforkids.com site and Verizon, and thus constitutes trademark and service mark infringement, unfair competition and dilution in violation of federal and state law, as well as copyright infringement. …
'Verizon must thus demand that you immediately and permanently remove the advertisement that contains the VERIZON mark and logo from the gunsforkids.com site, as well as from any other site that you may operate. We are separately contacting the organization 'Media Filter' which, we believe, is also involved in misappropriating Verizon's advertisement and posting it on your site. We insist that you identify all persons at Media Filter involved in this conduct, and any other persons who have participated in your violation of Verizon's rights. If you do not comply fully with Verizon's demands by no later than close of business on Monday, April 30, 2001, Verizon will have no choice but to take all appropriate action to protect its valuable intellectual property.'
The response from gunsforkids read (again in part):
'You can fire your incompetent paralegal. Media Filter has nothing to do with any of this. I'm simply running one of their banners on my site too. However, now that you've prompted me to look into that organization more closely, I think I will contact them to see if there is any way we can work together against Verizon and other powerhungry goliaths like it. As to whether anyone else is acting with me, there is none. It's just me against you and your juggernaut corporation. You should give up. …
'Had some regular Verizon employee written to me and asked, 'Hey could you stop running that banner ad?' I would have gladly done so and that would be the end of that. Instead, this billion dollar corporation sends its lawyers to intimidate me and 'demand' my silence. And if I do not obey, then Verizon threatens to dispatch against me all the disposable zombie corporate lawyers it can afford. Haven't you heard of http://verizonshouldspendmoretimefixingitsnetworkandlessmoneyonlawyers.com? You should have registered 'gunsforkids.com' in addition to the other 706 domain names Verizon registered (at $70 each) to try to prevent the existence of websites that it doesn't like.
Unless April 30, 2001 is the day that it actually becomes illegal to publish anything that Verizon doesn't like, I'll still be criticizing them at gunsforkids.com. Come and see.
The Management - Guns For Kids'
A similar letter from Toys 'R' US read : It has come to our attention that your GUNSFORKIDS.COM web site contains a link (identified by 'Toys R Us') to our company's TOYSRUS.CO.UK web site. This link was created without our authorization or approval and constitutes a deliberate and willful infringement and dilution of our company's name and marks.
bastard@gunsforkids.com replied (full text is on the site): I have a right to link to whatever other sites I want to and I will continue to make prominent links to Toys R Us at www.toysrus.co.uk on my website www.gunsforkids.com. … here is some legal education for you about linking. www.gigalaw.com/articles/kubiszyn-2000-05b-p4.html.
On March 27, 2000, U.S. Judge District Judge Harry Hupp issued a ruling dismissing four counts of Ticketmaster's complaint, including some counts involving deep linking. In dismissing the first claim, which alleged copyright infringement, Judge Hupp stated: '[H]yperlinking does not itself involve a violation of the Copyright Act (whatever it may do for other claims) since no copying is involved. The customer is automatically transferred to the particular genuine web page of the original author. There is no deception in what is happening. This is analogous to using a library's card index to get reference to particular items, albeit faster and more efficiently.'
Rashmagazine posted a short exchange between gunsforkids and a 'client' saying:
'GunsForKids.Com
A Correspondence by Operator
October 26, 2000
From: bastard@gunsforkids.com
To: tsmiith@aol.com
Subject: Guns For Kids Order
'Tom, Thanks for ordering this shit from us, your real friends at Guns For Kids. Below is your order. That is a pretty lame order. You haven't even asked for any weapons. Maybe you should just go to http://www.seventeen.com and order a >>subscription instead. A good reliable weapon is a passport in life—more so than a college degree. I've seen lots of kids with college degrees packing ice cream at Baskin Robbins for $4.50 an hour. I think you would have gone a lot farther packing an Armalite AR-10 semiautomatic gas powered carbine, so you could go from office to office pumping round after round into colleagues and coworkers. Whatever you do, you are the first customer that Guns For Kids is not proud of. You are a perfect example of successful government mind control molded by genetically engineered food substitutes, mindbending drugs, and liberal propaganda.
'If you don't get it yet, Guns For Kids is not real. Guns For Kids is a joke. We all had a good laugh that you actually submitted a real credit card number. We used it to order 600 pizzas and had them delivered to the local high school. Thanks a lot,
The Management http://www.gunsforkids.com'
In den letzten Jahren haben E-Kämpfe zwischen Unternehmen und der Net.art-Welt zu nicht viel mehr als parasitären 'Siegen' und matter Subversion à la Toywar oder RTMark geführt. Umso interessanter ist der Report von NBC10 über www.gunsforkids.com zu lesen.
