Edited by author 02-12-2003 08:48 PM
If you're interested in what eToys was actually like, you might like to read my article about the technology we used there. eToys was a major supporter of open source software, and contributed patches to several projects.

I'm not going to defend the legal actions that the lawyers there took -- that was not the right way to handle it -- but I do think that the image of eToys as a bunch of evil capitalists that this book seems bent on portraying is kind of ridiculous. Most of the reporting on this topic fails to mention that what finally pushed eToys to take action was complaints from parents whose children had typed in etoy.com and found S&M photos. It also doesn't mention that eToys tried to reach a peaceful resolution of the problem first, but gave up when etoy insisted they had to be paid a million dollars.