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Analyzing AT&T's Anti-Anti-Spam Patent
An anonymous reader writes "Dan Gillmor is reporting in his eJournal taken, in turn, from Gregory Aharonian: AT&T has apparently been awarded a patent for circumventing certain spam filters, thereby providing slimeball spammers with yet a bigger hammer!" The patent covers "A system and method for circumventing schemes that use duplication detection to detect and block unsolicited e-mail (spam.)", although it's unclear exactly what AT&T want it for.
Now all I need is an anti-patent patent and we can end all the stupid patent nightmares once and for all!
A patent on bank robbery!
Browse at -1, because trolls are often the most creative part of
Which would make it an anti-anti-anti-spam technique
Okay. I can work with that. Now I shall patent a method to circumvent systems that use visual inspections to detect and block illegal quantities of cocaine from entering national and/or state jurisdictions.
Forget trying to wrest money out of some crummy /spammers/.
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
Can Slashdot patent anti-anti-anti-spam?
And recursively more anti- as well?
How will I achieve the longer, thicker penis that drive women wild while I'm talking on my newly range-enhanced cellphone to my stock broker that just found a great new company in Nigeria that is a sure bet?
I wonder if hackers are now able to patent stack-smashing code, too. Maybe they could sue viruses and bugs out of existence!
2005...
ATT sells their spam circumvention patents to SCO, who, dying from their fight with IBM, seeks to build a new business providing software tools for the spam community.
Now all I need to do is patent the Anti-Anti-Anti-Spam technology...
But there's more... I'll also be patenting the Anti-Anti-Anti-Anti-Spam technology.
Next, I'll apply for the Anti-Anti-Anti-Anti-Anti-Spam technique...
how long until
My boss approached me once with some literature he received from one of these software companies. After my initial "WTF??? You aren't serious???" reaction I sat down with him and explained some of the history behind spamming, why it's a bad idea, would piss off our existing customers/alienate new ones, etc etc etc.
I'm astounded at your self-control. I'd have slapped him sillty.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
As mentioned in a few other posts, this could mean AT&T can go after spammers for patent infringment. Now this seems unlikely, but if I got only one spam a day and it was from AT&T and I knew that they had hordes of lawyers tracking down "infringers" I would not only switch to AT&T, I would print out the daily message and admire it during the time I've previously allotted to hitting "D" a few hundred times...
This is not the greatest sig in the world, this is just a tribute.
1) Slashdot links to article
2) Article links to Slashdot discussion
3) Slashdot links back to article
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repeat...