In the year of our Lord, 1999, on the horns of the millennium, Bryan Root did an internet and trademark search on Altavista (back when it was the king of search engines). It turned up no results for the name “Spacerex” anywhere on planet Earth. So Bryan registered Spacerex.com. It was an unique and catchy name for his fledgling science fiction work-in-progress. The first spacerex.com webpage was published [by Spatz Curtis –a fictional character invented by Bryan] and was later archived by the Wayback Machine on March 5th, 2001. That page was calling out to the owners of some film clips Spatz had captured with his homemade satellite dish. The clips featured a “spacerex.com” watermark burned into the upper left corner–see below.

The Science Fiction Concept Bryan has been developing at the spacerex.com website and in exhibits elsewhere proposes that the clips and content are transmissions from the future. When fictional Spatz searches the internet in his fictional world, he finds and buys the domain, Spacerex.com, with the intent to sell the domain to the producers at a tremendously inflated price–because they were obviously deeply invested (back then there was only .com, .org, and .net to choose from). But there was no joy for the cyber-squatter because the movies hadn’t been made yet!

_{This website contains all the finer points of this plot so read the links if you are interested.}

22 years later we find all sorts of products and services ripping off our name and burying us in the search results! Beers, fabrics, mobile apps, synchronic web whatzits–they call themselves Spacerex. You would think that ethical creative types could think up names of their own. They are even registering our name as their Trade Marks! Unlike all these recent on-the-nose Toy Story ripoffs, our website and logo have nothing to do with Tyranosaurs. Ours is a mashup of “wrecks” and a guy with the Biblical/Oedipal problem of surviving the Apocalypse with no one but his mom and a clone of himself to start over with. It’s awkward. And you gotta ask “Is the human race worth saving?”–particularly if your mom and your clone are partly responsible for wiping it out.

You would think that ethical creative types could think up names of their own.

–Will Dailyrest

Now, as the OG Spacerex, we are forced to register “Film Production,” Art Exhibition,” and “Online Journals — namely, blogs featuring science fiction and fantasy” Trademark ID categories with US Patent and Trademark Office. At no small expense!

So we guess that it’s time to look around and assess what our competitors are up to and whether these Trademark Raiders and SEO hogs are fitting characters in the unfolding story of Spacerex. Are these the future producers of the clips Spatz downloaded with his satellite dish? Is this life imitating art? Or some grandfather paradox shit? One of these raiders talked to me and copped to considering making an offer on the domain that Spatz has been sitting on since before the Millennium but decided to go with .co instead. He seemed like a nice enough guy and we can only spare so much outrage with so many bigger issues at hand.

Email us if you have any questions.

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