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Toywar was an online campaign platform launched by etoy,
the international net.art group when the (now defunct) US toy retailer 'etoys.com'
tried to steal their domain name. In response to court injunctions and huge
legal costs, etoy gathered the resources of their toy.soldiers (participating
volunteers from around the world) to campaign on their behalf. The platform
was a highly stylised 'trust' system; only existing toy.soldiers could 'apply'
to be accepted as volunteers. After being accepted there were various roles
(media.toy, legal.toy etc.) that agents could take on in order to pursue
the campaign. Successful projects (such as the authoring of a CD of resistance
anthems) would earn the soldier 'points' which could be remunerated through
the insanely complex, but very interesting etoy share system. Toywar was
an early, and very successful example of online intervention and campaign,
and although there are many caveats to using this as an example, it was
a very interesting one. In fact, Adam Wishart and Regula Bochsler wrote
a book that covered this event in full: "Leaving Reality Behind: The
Battle for the Soul of the Internet" which is probably quite good.
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