Slashdot Mirror
Spamhaus Responds To Spammers' Lawsuit
ShaiHulud-23 writes "A suit was recently filed by EMarketersAmerica.org, a fledgling secret organization of spammers, against the Spamhaus Project, (and other anti-spam sites) seeking to prevent the publication of the anonymous plaintiffs' IP addresses in the Spamhaus Block List (SBL). The suit requested a response from the named defendants, and Spamhaus director Steve Linford has provided one, dismantling the spammers' case point by point."
Should be "defendants"
Also, here's some amusing dirt on the lawyer who filed the suit (and registered the EMarketersAmerica domain.)
General Geekery
After reading through that, I cannot believe how easily that lawsuit by the spam assholes of america - a subdivision of satan, inc, - will be thrown out of court.
How do you get an American court to have jurisdiction over a company that does not sell products to US consumers - since it does not sell anything - and does not have any divisions in the US?
A UK only company being sued in an American court? Why bother? Isn't it obvious?
They're used to fighting spam...not a slashdot...so here's the cache. Google Cache
GC
The Spamhaus Project, London, UK
Answer to Case Number 03-80295
Filed in United States District Court, Southern District of Florida by EMarketersAmerica.org (aka Mark E. Felstein) on behalf of anonymous senders of Unsolicited Bulk Email ("Spam").
The Spamhaus Project receives a great many threats of legal action from senders of Unsolicited Bulk Email (aka "spammers"). The cases attempted to-date have either never been accepted by a lawyer for filing or have been thrown out by the courts as being without merit.
Lawsuit 03-80295, filed by an anonymous group calling itself EMarketersAmerica.org (registered only 4 weeks ago to one Mark Felstein, the same lawyer who filed this case... i.e: the Plaintiff is the lawyer), is a SLAPP suit intended to harass those named. With regards to Spamhaus, the suit seeks an injunction to stop Spamhaus from publishing the IP addresses of the anonymous entity the Plaintiff represents on the Spamhaus Block List ("SBL"), an IP Preference List used freely and voluntarily by 140 Million Internet users to reject incoming spam emails from confirmed spam senders. The Plaintiff clearly believes he has a right to force SBL users to receive his spam. Spamhaus categorically rejects the argument that any Sender has a right to force the users of our SBL system to receive unsolicited bulk email messages.
The lawsuit requests an answer. The following is the answer of Spamhaus director Steve Linford on behalf of The Spamhaus Project:
GENERAL ALLEGATIONS, JURISDICTION, AND VENUE
I . Plaintiff, EMARKETERSAMERICA.ORG, INC., (hereinafter sometimes referred to as "EMARKETERS"), is a Florida Non Profit Corporation with its principal place of business in PALM BEACH County, Florida. EMARKETERS' membership base consists of email marketers, internet services providers domiciled in and throughout Florida, and other related businesses, which operate their businesses throughout the United States and the World.
2. Defendant, SPEWS.ORG d/b/a THE HERMES GROUP (hereinafter referred to as "SPEWS"), is a United States of America based entity, which operates
a blacklist of other's Internet Protocol addresses. Additionally, SPEWS and its principals sell products which block the electronic transmission and Internet communications of American citizens and businesses. SPEWS
posts on the Internet and intentionally delivers information in its express efforts to interrupt and block the internet traffic of lawful
businesses and individuals. SPAMHAUS maintains a list of other's Internet Protocol addresses and servers. SPEWS operates and conducts its
activities through the Internet at www.SPEWS.org. Plaintiff is informed and believes that SPEWS has two offices located in California and one in Illinois.
3. Defendant, SPAMHAUS.ORG d/b/a THE SPAMHAUS PROJECT (hereinafter referred to as "SPAMHAUS"), is a United Kingdom based entity, which operates a blacklist of other's Internet Protocol addresses.
Specifically, Spamhaus operates the Spamhaus Block List ("SBL"), a DNS-published advisory list of IP addresses of confirmed junk email senders, known as the SBL Advisory, which allows SBL users to reject incoming spam emails.
Additionally, SPAMHAUS and its principals sell products which block the electronic transmission and communications of American citizens and
businesses.
Spamhaus does not sell any product whatsoever and never has sold any product. The SBL is published free of charge and does not block the transmission of email, it specifically blocks the receipt of junk email by computers belonging to SBL users.
SPAMHAUS posts on the Internet and intentionally delivers information in its express efforts to interrupt and block the Internet traffic of lawful businesses and individuals.
The "Internet traffic" (i.e: email) of 'lawful businesses and individuals' (i.e: senders of spam, the sending of which is illegal in 27 US States), is not blocked at the sending mail servers (the servers owned/operated by the spammers EMarketersAmerica allegedly represents), but is blocked by the recipients' own private mail servers, i.e: the blocking occurs at the point of ingress into the private mail servers of SBL users.
The SBL is used by SBL users (and SBL users alone) freely and voluntarily to reject unwanted spam email messages at the SBL users' own private mail servers. It does not prevent, interrupt or block the IPs listed from sending email, it merely prevents the known-to-be-unwanted messages they send from trespassing on the private computer equipment and networks of SBL users.
SPAMHAUS maintains a list of other's Internet Protocol addresses and servers. SPAMHAUS operates
and conducts its activities through the Internet at www.SPAMHAUS.org SPAMHAUS is believed to have an office in the United States, but the whereabouts are unknown.
Spamhaus does not have any office in the United States. The sole office is in the UK.
SPAMHAUS has at least six (6) name-servers, all
of which are pointed, directed, and which transmit through Defendant, CSL GMBH JOKER.COM.
Spamhaus has a total of 22 Name Servers in 10 countries. Had the Plaintiff bothered to query the DNS for the SBL zone (sbl.spamhaus.org) he would have seen that none of the SBL servers are pointed, directed or transmit though" the German Domain Registrar Joker.com
4. Defendant, CSL GMBH JOKER.COM (hereinafter referred to as "JOKER"), is an authorized registrant of domains on the world wide web within the internet. JOKER is a corporation organized under the laws of Germany. JOKER registered SPAMHAUS and SPEWS, but has failed to provide a proper and correct addresses to the public for same.
The address Joker.com provides for Spamhaus.org is the true and correct address of Spamhaus.
5. Defendant, STEVE LINFORD (hereinafter referred to as "S. LINFORD") is an individual and is believed to be a resident and domiciliary of the
United Kingdom, but has concealed his whereabouts.
Steve Linford has never concealed his whereabouts. Steve Linford is a British Subject and resides in the United Kingdom exactly where he has always said he does and his address and phone number is available to anyone who bothers to ask.
S. LINFORD is otherwise sui juris before this court. Plaintiff is informed and believes that S. LINFORD is an officer, director and principal of SPAMHAUS and SPEWS.
Steve Linford is the director of Spamhaus. Steve Linford has absolutely nothing to do with SPEWS, nor would it be feasible for him to run two separate anti-spam organizations. Aside from the madness of doing so, Steve Linford does not agree with the methods and policies of SPEWS. He does however support SPEWS' right to exist.
6. Defendant, JULIAN LINFORD (hereinafter referred to as "J. LINFORD") is an individual and is believed to be a resident and domiciliary of the
United Kingdom, but has concealed his whereabouts. J. LINFORD is otherwise sui juris before this court. Plaintiff is informed and believes that J. LINFORD is an officer, director and principal of
SPAMHAUS and SPEWS.
Julian Linford is Steve Linford's brother who has resided permanently in Italy since 1997 and has absolutely no knowledge of Spamhaus (except what he possibly reads in the press) nor the faintest idea what SPEWS is, nor whom any of the other persons named in this SLAPP suit are. He is categorically not an officer, director or principal of any anti-spam group or organization, Spamhaus or otherwise.
7. Defendant, ALAN MURPHY (hereinafter referred to as "MURPHY") is an individual and is believed to be a resident and domiciliary of the State
of Washington. MURPHY is sui juris before this court. Plaintiff is informed and believes that MURPY is an officer, director and principal
of SPAMHAUS and
Well, having delt with one spammer in particular (yes, listed by Spamhaus), I'll just say they are very open liars. This individual said -- and I wished I'd been recording the call "for quality assurance purposes" :-) -- Spamhaus was a company run by one of his competitors. We had to mute the phone for a few minutes. They insist they are not sending "spam" -- even tho' I have spam reports from every batch of crap they sent.
Make sure you make your feelings known about spam to the originator of this lawsuit, lawyer Mark Felstein.
:~ :~,_
FELSTEIN & ASSOCIATES, P.A.
Attorneys for EMarketersAmerica.org, Inc.
555 South Federal Highway, Suite 450
Boca Raton, Florida 33432
(561) 367-7990 Phone
(561) 367-7980 Facsimile
mark~ EMarketersAmerica.org
BY
Mark E. Felstein, Esq.
FBN: 192139
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
How can spammers sue anti-spam list maintainers?
In the US, you can file a suit for anything. You risk countersuit and charges for frivolous lawsuits for filing blatantly false and harrassing lawsuits, which is what happened in this case.
EMarketersAmerica.org claims in their suit, among other things, that:
- Spamhaus and SPEWS are run by the same people.
- Steve Linford's brother, who lives in Italy and knows nothing about Spamhaus, is one of those people running both sites.
- Spamhaus has an office in the US.
- Spamhaus sells products.
- Spamhaus' products "destroy" and "intercept" legitimate email transmissions.
- Spamhaus has *appropriated* IPs belonging to EMarketersAmerica member organizations for their own use and profit. (Tell me, how on Earth do you do that? I want to steal MS's block...)
They make many other false statements, but those are the doozies.
These are people who make their living by digitally date-raping whoever they can find. (And, yes, I use that word... please, I get emails about enlarging my member on a daily basis, and I'm a WOMAN, for crying out loud. At least send me breast enlargement ads instead.) They have no compunction about breaking more laws by filing a frivolous and false lawsuit in hopes that it will scare someone off.
The good news is, Steve Linford, if he has the time and money to do so, now has an excellent countersuit, which could make a lot of those spammer's documents public record. Big ifs, but stranger things have happened.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
The SpamCon Foundation has set up a legal fund to aid spamfighters that need legal assistance.
The defendants of this particular EMarketersAmerica suit also benefit from and endorse this fund.
because for civil lawsuits, you can bring a suit against anyone in the world, they dont have to pay though, as long as they dont come to america. its like that lawsuit that awarded a judgement of $150,000,000 or what ever for 9/11 victims families against the taliban, saddam hussein, and bin laden
Winter 2010: With Glowing Hearts
mod parent way up please :) that link of his contains interesting information on what lengths spammers went thru to manage people who were VAGUELY related to someone who ran spamhaus WITHOUT actually being involved in it.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
Thats a rather illogical argument. If Spamhaus was blindly blocking every IP address in the 100.x.x.x range, then even though they have never heard of the people in that range, they could still be harming them. It's quite easy to harm people you have never heard of.
Spamhaus does not block IP addresses. They publish a list of known spammers. It is then up to the subscriber to block those IP addresses, at the ingress point into their networks.
If I lock my door because I don't want your filthy magazine, Kirby Vacuum, Security System, Candy, Pest Conrol selling ass in my house, who are you to sue me?
If this article confuses you, don't worry. It was posted yesterday in a much clearer fashion.
Not to secret organization.... the South Florida Business Journal has been doing some digging on EMarketersAmerica and have a good story on them at: http://southflorida.bizjournals.com/southflorida/s tories/2003/05/12/story1.html
According to the information the FL. Bar Ass. has on Mark Edward Felstein, he was only admitted to the bar in 3 yrs. ago. If you are currious, click the Find a Lawyer" and see for yourself.
Too bad he's going down such a low path so soon in his carear.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
The other key point in the document is that the Spamhaus Black List (SBL) blocks spam at the destination, not the source. This is a nice implementation of the "you're free to say whatever you like, but I'm free not to listen" aspect of free speech, which is often used by spammers to justify their annoying practices.
Go straight to the source! Eddy Marin 621 NW 53rd Street Suite 135 Boca Raton, Florida 33487 T: 561-999-9850 F: 561-995-8791 Toll Free: 877-317-1568 E-mail eddy@oneroute.net
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
I did this last year. I modified my Sendmail to analyze incoming messages in real-time. If the source IP was known spam it took about 60 seconds between SMTP replies. Problem is, once you get to the DATA phase which is where the bulk of their transmission is, it's a single-shot with no flow control. I would have loved to have accepted their payload at 1 character every 10 seconds, but unfortunatelly once they issue the "DATA" command it all comes through in a single hit.
Also, if you take too long to SMTP reply to their commands, they hang up and do it again. So instead of dealing with the SMTP conversation and spam once, you deal with the SMTP conversation until they get sick of trying (which sometimes is never, literally).
Thinking back to the Alan Ralsky incident...
i ca.org
;)
Emarketersamerica.org
555 South Federal Highway
Suite 450
Boca Raton, FL 33432
T: 561.367.7990
F: 561.367.7980
www.emarketersamerica.org
admin@emarketersamer
Not suggesting anything at all, really.
Although I appreciate your argument, the guy doesn't have much choice. A quick look at the curvedspaces.com website shows that it's a free hosting company, that has an automatic popup. Admittedly, I didn't get one at all (I use Phoenix/Firebird/whatever), but I'd guess that that's where it's from.
If that's the case, then at the end of the day, a) he doesn't have a choice and b) he's still done better than either you or I...
Florida Department of State, Division of Corporations
Ya, lets file a lawsuit in Florida, that'll work... now spamhaus just needs to make a request for production of their list of membmers and we got all the bastards.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
If you were some crazy Yank lawyer who:
A) Didn't know how the UK's postal addressing system worked and
B) Didn't believe that Steve Linford lived on a private island
then you might think that the whois lookup from joker.com was eronious or intentionally misleading:
DOMAIN spamhaus.org
Registrar: JOKER.COM (CSL-GmbH as ICANN registrar)
Status: production
Handle: 587318
Owner Name: Steve Linford
Organization: The Spamhaus Project
Address: The Spamhaus Project
The Phoenix
Postalcode/City: TW12 2HA Taggs Island
State: Private Island
Country: GB
(PS: Holy lameness filter Batman!)
Yup, you're exactly the admin that we get complaints about every day.. And when you continue to treat your customers like that, either you'll white list us, or they'll change to another provider.
We use MailScanner, with damned well over a 95% success rate for catching spam.. It does use blackhole lists minimally, and even if it is marked as spam, it's *MARKED*. The subject line is changed, so we can filter automagically. That way, I don't have a single complaint from any users that I blocked a message so they couldn't receive it.. After we went with MailScanner, most of my users started filtering all their spam marked mail to trash. But some (like me) filter them off to a spam box to be checked later. A few real messages show up in there occasionally (maybe 10 of 10k, but those were still important).
But hey, like you said, it's your network. Of course since you're blocking Email without really knowing who you're blocking, it may be important.. The next message may be from a lawyer about illegal content on your network (and the last communication before a lawsuit), or a note from someone like me saying "Hey, we spotted this odd traffic coming from your network.", which may have been the first indicator to you that someone broke into one of your servers.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
alleging incorrect statements in a motion is not perjury; if so, all lawyers would be in prison. the burden in a civil case is different than that which you are used to watching on The Practice. besides isn't that the very definition of allegation? to assert without proof or before proving. anyway the point of a motion like this is to bury the other side by getting them to answer each and every point in an effort to quash the motion.
and YES it is an abuse of the legal system and there are Anti-SLAPP laws on the books in many states although for some reason I sort of believe Florida, being one of the most backward states in the union, probably doesn't have them. i may be wrong about that, and i really hope i am because a prevailing defendent in an anti-SLAPP action gets costs plus bonuses and possible punitives.
the thing for spamhaus to be careful of is somewhere in one of those allegations is probably a snooker tactic to get them go on record taking a position that will later prove indefensible. is there a legal fund getting established? dude better not try to fight this on his own, he'll get diced and sliced and cut into hundreds of julienne fries.
anyway IANAL, what i write is based on swapping war stories with my best friend who IAL. he has successfully won some anti-SLAPP actions in California.
cat
A reverse lookup at Google states:
Yvonne K Kemeny, (561) 997-9008, 4601 NW Boca Raton Blvd, Boca Raton, FL 33431
Either you've mistyped the number or you're playing some sort of game. Moderators -- stuff like this should be checked out first.