php - How to put 'is not null' parameter in Laravel 4 validator for uniqueness

For an extended use case for a user signup process, I need to allow emails to be taken which are not confirmed yet. That means the emails that are not yet confirmed are considered open.

Inusers table I useconfirmed_at field to denote if an email is confirmed or not. If the field isnull then it's not confirmed. Otherwise there'll be a date.

I am trying out with this:

    $v = Validator::make(Input::all(), array(
        'email'         => 'required|email|unique:users,email,NULL,confirmed_at',
        'password'      => 'required|confirmed|min:6|max:32',
    )); 
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This results in the following query:

select count(*) as aggregate from `users` where `email` = '[email protected]'
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Surprisingly it's not even taking theconfirmed_at field in.

Although the doc doesn't say about a predefined id field as second parameter, I tried my luck with the following:

$v = Validator::make(Input::all(), array(
            'email' => 'required|email|unique:users,email,0,id,confirmed_at,NULL',
            'password' => 'required|confirmed|min:6|max:32',
        ));
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Now it includes the other parameters in the query and results into:

select count(*) as aggregate from `users` where `email` = '[email protected]' and `id` <> '0' and `confirmed_at` is null 
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But it employs not equal for the first id field but equal for the confirmed_at field.

So, my first question is, how can I getconfirmed_at is not null in to the query?

And secondly, how possibly I could get rid ofid <> 0 which I had to add although I don't need it?