One thing appears clear: Uzi Nissan is no cybersquatter. One of the more compelling pieces of evidence on his Web site is a photocopy of a 1982 invoice for a car antenna from a Datsun dealership, made out to Uzi Nissan's auto-repair business, Nissan Foreign Car. Today, Datsun is known as Nissan, but that wasn't the case at the time. The only mention of the word "Nissan" on the invoice is in the reference to Uzi Nissan's company.

As for the second point, as to whether Uzi Nissan is infringing on Nissan Motor business via nissan.com, Uzi Nissan says flatly, with a hint of long-simmering anger, "They are lying."

"In 1999 we had 23 advertisers on our site," he continues. "Three of them were auto-related companies. [Nissan Motors] is claiming they were automotive companies. But none of them were selling or were in the business of selling cars or car accessories."

As for Nissan Motors, the company has released a statement presenting its point of view.

"We filed a lawsuit to protect our name, our image, our reputation with the global Internet community and auto consumers," it reads. "Every day thousands of people are logging onto nissan.com and nissan.net sites in the mistaken belief that they are reaching Nissan (the automaker). We think that NCC -- Uzi's company -- is improperly exploiting this confusion for its own benefit and is creating ill will among our actual and potential customers."

Should Nissan Motors have a better right to nissan.com than an individual who was born with the same name? Judging by the hundreds of e-mails I've received over the past few weeks, such corporate brand-name bullying is extremely unpopular. Perhaps it would be different if there was evidence that Uzi Nissan had set up his site to take advantage of the Nissan brand name -- cybersquatting is just as unpopular -- but such evidence is in short supply.

But what about Nissan as spammer? Although it doesn't seem appropriate to me, as a reporter, to threaten legal action against someone who is attempting to publicize his plight, I can also see why, in these days of ever-increasing spam, some media representatives might lose their cool over the mail being generated by nissan.com supporters. Uzi Nissan says that more than 800 messages have been sent to a list of at least 45 news organizations. That's a lot of mail. And the fact that a large percentage has been, shall we say, less than clueful, no doubt adds to the aggravation. Internet campaigns are all too easy. By overloading their targets with an extra dump of sophomoric comments on top of the Viagra ads, shemale dating services and printer-cartridge deals, they stand just as much a chance of backfiring as doing any good.

Nissan shrugs. "It's not spam," he says. The messages, he says, are being sent to "publicly listed addresses" for media professionals.

And as far as he's concerned, the campaign has been a success. In the last few weeks, he's appeared on numerous TV and radio shows and his story has been picked up by several medium-sized newspapers. If people want to be removed from the list, all they have to do is contact him and the mail will stop, he says. As he talks, you sense an element of impatience. He's fighting for his business against a corporation with vast financial resources -- and some journalists are getting uptight about spam?

We can always delete the spam. But corporate attempts to assert their brands over all opposition, and to use their legal resources to browbeat every challenger, are not so easily dismissed. Ultimately, despite the spam, the false accusations and the attacks on my own integrity, I'm glad Uzi Nissan used the power of the Internet to get my attention. If cyberspace is good for anything, it should be for helping the little guy get the word out when the big guys are threatening to stomp them.

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