The bar code-hacking Web site Re-Code.com shuts down, though not without firing some last-second salvos at evil chain store hegemonic domination.
The art graduate students behind Re-Code.com said it was satire. Wal-Mart said the site promoted fraud.
But now the debate over the Web site is one for the culture-jamming alternative history books, since the pranksters behind the site yanked it off the Web on Wednesday night, saying that they feared legal action.
"Corporations win again!" announced a headline on what remains of the site -- an article explaining the reasons for the shut down. .
"We got a little scared yesterday," said "Nathan Hactivist," the co-creator of the site, who is a 26-year-old art graduate student in upstate New York. "If we wanted to fight a legal battle with a corporation like that, right or wrong doesn"t matter, legal or illegal doesn"t matter -- the cost of fighting that battle does."