Time for a little serious "humor" Spammers again

[David Farber <farber@central.cis.upenn.edu>]

Date: Tue, 20 Sep 1994 16:42:43 -0400
From: eye@IO.ORG(eye WEEKLY)
Subject: File 1--"Green Card Lawyers" Threaten T-Shirt Maker




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                        ALL HAIL THE CHIC GEEK!
           Scum-sucking weasel lawyers as fashion statements


                                  by
                             K.K. CAMPBELL




Coupla weeks ago, eye Net reported how North Carolina university
student Joel Furr (jfurr@acpub.duke.edu) designed a popular
collectible -- T-shirts about net.poltergeist "Serdar Argic." Furr
promised to follow-up with a T-shirt featuring Arizona lawyers
Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel.


On June 18, eye Net reported how this wife-and-hubby law team sent
an ad for the American "Green Card lottery" to thousands of
newsgroups (win a work permit raffle run by the U.S. government;
C&S offered to fill in a few forms for merely hundreds of dollars).
This posting tactic is called "spamming." C&S did it twice.


Spammers are loathed. Commercial spammers are loathed more.
Snotty lawyer commercial spammers attain monumental loathing. So
'twas no surprise C&S were mailbombed into oblivion after each
spam attack against Usenet. Both times, the lawyer's Internet
providers terminated their account after a global deluge of
complaints.


The legal weasels squealed in anger and threatened to sue their
Internet providers. But nothing came of it.


Now they've threatened to sue Furr over his little non-profit T-shirt
featuring the net.vermin. Shirt design features a four-color logo of a
hand clutching a green card bursting forth from a globe. Around it:
"The Green Card Lawyers -- Spamming the Globe."


On Aug. 8, Furr publicly announced C&S had sent him private email, a
standard nasty-lawyer letter. C&S asserted the "use of their names,
likenesses or nickname is prohibited" -- meaning he couldn't even
call them, "The Green Card Lawyers." Furthermore, Furr was
informed "several large companies" had contacted the lawyers about
a line of C&S T-shirts and Furr's plan to sell maybe 10 dozen shirts
"would hurt their marketability."


A clarification: Furr's shirt mocks C&S -- who the hell would wear
it, let alone buy it, otherwise? The claim that "several large
companies" are considering issuing a friendly C&S shirt is a source
of much mirth and merriment about Planet Earth.


Furr knew C&S was fullashit -- indeed, most of Usenet-reading
Planet Earth is sure they're fullashit -- but, being a student, he
knew he'd neither the time nor resources to fight a nuisance suit.
Thus he concluded his Aug. 8 public post: "I think I have lots and lots
of legal legs to stand on, but I can't afford to fight a lawsuit." The
term "Green Card Lawyers" would be removed from the shirt.


But Furr's mailbox soon brimmed with offers of legal assistance,
even monetary help -- anything to thwart the most hated husband-
wife team in Usenet history. (And Canter has said several times he's
going to write a book about how to advertise on the net!)


Electronic Frontier Foundation's chief legal counsel Mike Godwin
(mnemonic@eff.org) advised Furr C&S "threats" were impotent bluster,
Furr told eye in a telephone interview, because 1) C&S are not members
of the Arizona bar; 2) they are under investigation by the Tennessee
bar; 3) they can sue only in the state in which Furr does business; and
4) they have no trademark over the term "Green Card Lawyers."


This last means that just because Usenetters call C&S the "Green
Card Lawyers" doesn't grant them a trademark on the term. For
instance, eye calls them the "Two-Bit, Suck-My-Left-Nut Lawyers"
-- Martha and Larry don't own that name either.


Bottomline: Furr's going ahead with the original design.


"Green Card Lawyers" T-shirts are $11 U.S. -- XXL $1 more, XXXL $2
more. Canadians add $1. Write Furr for more details. To join the
net.collectibles mailing list, send email with the message
"subscribe netstuff" (without the quotes) to
majordomo@acpub.duke.edu . For the latest on the net.vermin, read
alt.flame.canter-and-siegel .


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