[humorix] Entrepreneur Trademarks "V1ag7a", Other Frequent Spam Terms

[James Baughn <jbaughn@xxxxxxx>]

Entrepreneur Trademarks "V1ag7a", Other Frequent Spam Terms
August 12, 2004

In a brilliant strategy to make money while fighting
spam, Eric Schnurbusch has successfully trademarked
over 10,000 frequently used words in unsolicited
emails.  From L3v1tra(R) to Sat1sfact10n(R) and
everything in between, Schnurbusch hopes to capitalize
on Spamglish, the gibberish language used by spammers
to hock fraudulent products.

"Just about every spam message now violates my
intellectual property rights," he said.  "It's time
for spammers to pony up."

Ordinarily, tracking down the real identities of
spammers is next to impossible.  But since Congress
has imposed a "guilty-until-proven-guilty" policy
toward intellectual property violations, Schnurbusch
hopes to use the DMCA to ferret out the thieves who
are stealing his valuable trademarks.

Last year, Schnurbusch wrote a program to sort through
his incoming spam and pick out all of the proper nouns
that could be trademarked.  He then weeded down the
list to 10,001 and started filling out the paperwork.

"It was time consuming, and I have since developed
symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome, but it's all been
worth it," he said. "It's time to cook some spammers."

Once the money starts rolling in from the lawsuits,
Schnurbusch hopes to also take advantage of spammers
for another purpose: launching a P2P network that
shares data disguised as spam.

"What might look like a spam containing line noise
could actually be a coded message.  While the idea of
hiding messages in spam is not new, I hope to take
'spamanography' to the next level.  As a basis of a
P2P network, nobody will be able to track the messages
and therefore the network will be unstoppable.
Meanwhile, Congress, which is beholden to spammers,
won't do anything to outlaw spam."

"Hey," he concluded, "We spend so much time and money
putting up with spam... We might as well get something
in return. And if I happen to make a fortune in the
process, what's the problem?"


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