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."

Comments

Crap, my first story has a typo

[ShaiHulud-23]

Should be "defendants"

Also, here's some amusing dirt on the lawyer who filed the suit (and registered the EMarketersAmerica domain.)

Re:Crap, my first story has a typo

[Overly Critical Guy]

CmdrTaco, could you hire this guy? He actually recognizes and corrects typos. Thanks in advance.

They're not very good yet

[Red Warrior]

EMarketersAmerica.org, a fledgling secret organization of spammers

NOTE: secret organizations should NOT file public lawsuits.

Re:They're not very good yet

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:They're not very good yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Thinking back to the Alan Ralsky incident...

Emarketersamerica.org
555 South Federal Highway
Suite 450
Boca Raton, FL 33432

T: 561.367.7990
F: 561.367.7980

www.emarketersamerica.org
admin@emarketersameri ca.org

Not suggesting anything at all, really. ;)

IANAL...

[Bendy Chief]

Someone please, please tell me there are perjury-charge meriting falsehoods in the documents filed by the spammers. The claims that Spamhaus is a commercial organization and is maliciously blocking traffic are particularly suspicious.

After all, they got Capone for income tax.

Re:IANAL...

[Cramer]

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.

ironic..

[v_1_r_u_5]

we're in effect giving an anti-spam company a DDOS with the /. effect. way to go, guys.

Re:ironic..

[taernim]

Looking to stop getting DDOS'd?
Tired of the /. effect ruining your business?

WE CAN HELP!

For 6 easy payments of $49.95....

^_^

i'm getting some bonus points ...

[Triumph The Insult C]

... if I go to Florida and take this guy out. not only does he defend our favorite utility meat, but he's a lawyer. that has to be, like, an 11th commandment in some religion.

Re:i'm getting some bonus points ...

[Dopefish128]

Thou shalt not suffer a spammer to live?

These guys have no shame

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

From the main page at emarketersamerica.org :

Everyone hates spam... and that includes e-mail marketers.

Gee, I'd say, I wouldn't want to eat my own crap ...

Re:These guys have no shame

[Cramer]

These people piss me off...

Billion dollar industry... blah, blah, freakin' blah. Prove the damned numbers. Unlike RIAA and MPAA, no one is going to let spammers make up their own balance sheets. There are numerous reports world wide giving hard proof of the costs brought about by all the stupid spammers. The only people who stand to be finacially injured and unemployed (and unemployable after a background check) are the asses sending all the spam.

I'll see their billions and raise by trillions -- the costs of software development and administrator headaches addressing the problem of spam, software development and administrative overhead to block loopholes in internet protocols, ever increasing server and bandwidth needs to move, process, and store all this crap... SPAM is a very expensive problem with the burden everywhere but the spammer.

Laws are useless unless swiftly and strictly enforced. Speeding is illegal, but that hasn't made much of a dent.

Re:These guys have no shame

[Oscar_Wilde]

The line I like the most is:the Anti-Spammers, many of which hide in Europe

Hide in Europe? What evidence to they have that the anti-spammers are hiding? What would it matter if they hide in the EU and not the US?

Last time I checked it wasn't the anti-spammers that needed to hide....

Obligatory Google Cache

[Anonymous Coward]

They're used to fighting spam...not a slashdot...so here's the cache. Google Cache

No ground

[The Bungi]

I think the key point here is that use of an IP blacklist is entirely voluntary. So this sleazeball can hardly claim that Spamhaus is actively trying to "block his business".

Talk about clueless and groundless.

Re:No ground

[shut_up_man]

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.

Re:That's nice...

[ShaiHulud-23]

The original lawsuit was newsworthy because it was a cartel of spammers attempting direct legal action against a system which blocks their messages, claiming that Spamhaus restricts their free speech and free trade.

The Spamhaus response is just a followup to the earlier story, and is an interesting insight into the fraudulent dishonest mindset of spammers by pointing out the falsehoods in the suit.

This whole issue is newsworthy because it calls attention to the overall deceptive sleaze of spam in general, it is NOT a legitimate business. While the racketeering story posted earlier isn't quite the right solution, I do think that if the courts are made more aware of the shady (and sometimes outright illegal) business practices of spammers, more anti-spam suits will be won and more anti-spam laws will be passed. Spam is a crime that just hasn't been made illegal yet.

Re:UK in American courts?

[snoochyboochy]

Obvious??? This is supposed to be obvious to the guys who think I need a merchant account to access my home mortgage to enlarge my goods for that date with the girl from the e-card whom I can buy prescription drugs for, should she get a migraine from trying to sorth through all her "legitimate" emails in a day?

Can anyone answer me this?

[Sandman1971]

I've always wondered about this. Excuse my possible ignorance, but I'm from Canada where the legal system is different than the States.

How can spammers sue anti-spam list maintainers? RBLs are purely voluntary. Companies/ISPs aren't forced by law to use RBLs. They implement RBLs out of their own volition (hopefully after doing a bit of research of the RBL in question).

I can see a point of a non-spammer is accidentaly added to the list and the RBL company refuses to remove the 'offending' company. But in this case, these are known spammers. They don't deny that they send out spam. It just doesn't make any sense. The spammers should be charged with wasting the court's time.

Re:Can anyone answer me this?

[Ironica]

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.

Re:Can anyone answer me this?

[amuro98]

The lists maintained by SPEWS, SBL, etc. are little more than opinions saying I think the following ISPs are irresponsible and/or are harboring spammers..."

The fact that admins of domains can then use that information to allow their mailserver(s) to allow/reject mail from those domains is a separate matter.

There are then services, like Brightmail, which provide filtered email services to end users or ISPs. Brightmail's website will provide you with details on what they use for filtering, be it SPEWS, SBL, something else, or (most likely) a combination of all of the above.)

At any rate, organizations like SPEWS and SBL only provide the data. They do not implement it. As an ISP, your only legal recourse for being blocked due to a listing would be to go after each individual ISP that is blocking you. Even then, unless you had a contract with that ISP saying they MUST accept all mail from your domain, there's not a whole lot you can do. Laws vary from place to place, but the concept of "private property" seems pretty universal - and that's what every domain, and ISP network is - PRIVATE PROPERTY. No domain anywhere is *required* to accept mail from all of the internet.

Most lists provide documentation on their listing and delisting policies. This is both for admins wishing to use the list (do they agree with the criteria), as well as for admins wondering what happend to get them listed in the first place.

As for your employer's situation, getting onto a list usually occurs for the following reasons:

* Signing up of a spammer who's so infamous, that he and the poor sucker of an ISP that signed him up are immediatly blocked as a preventative measure. (ie. it's not a matter of IF he'll spam...)

* Preceived slack/slowness/cluelessness of your employer's abuse desk. This doesn't mean you have to have your abuse desk write personal responses to each and every person who sends a complaint...just have them do their job, and eliminate your misbehaving customer.

No reasonable person is going to expect instantaneous action, either. I think 2-3 days (TOPS) should be enough to deal with most cases, even with a 1% spammer infestation. Again, most people aren't going to expect a personal reply. Not getting the same spam from your customer is usually good enough. (and will keep you off the lists!)

Finally, you might want to look into proactively discouraging spammers from signing up by creating a new clause in your customers' contracts stating that if the account is terminated due to spam, you will charge the customer a clean up fee (usually $500-$2000.) ISPs that have enacted such a clause see the spam emanating from them drop off quickly - and hey, if someone is STILL stupid enough to spam, use the money to throw a beer bust. :)

Seriously though, if your abuse desk does their job in a timely manner, you shouldn't have any problems with listing services.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it:

[Anonymous Coward]

Mark Felstein
555 South Federal Highway, Suite 450
Boca Raton, FL 33432

561-367-7990

mfels@aol.com

You know what to do!

Discovery! Yeah!

[jcr]

Spamhaus should depose the plaintifs, and get the names of EVERY one of the greasy little bottom-feeders that's given them any money for this frivolous litigation.

-jcr

Make your feelings known....

[TechnoGrl]

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

Re:Make your feelings known....

[TechnoGrl]

Oops... don't forget this one either ;)

Mark Edward Felstein
102 NE 2nd St # 200
Boca Raton Florida 33432-3967
Phone: 561/367-7980

respectively interpret differently

[Ptahian]

With all due respect, I disagree with the portion of Mr. Linford's reply:

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.

In fact the list, does not block receipt. It can be used by the actual postmaster to facilitate that process, but they could do something else like filter the email into a "spam" mailbox for each user, or just gather statistics, etc. It's information nothing more nothing less. -Ptah

Re:UK in American courts?

[CausticWindow]

It's not at all obvious.

We are coming to a point in history where US law is converging to global law. Military might talks. Mind you, it doesn't work the other way.

The spam assholes of America are some of the least dangerous assholes though. The US is brim full of more dangerous assholes.

Re:UK in American courts?

[CaptainCarrot]

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?

You don't. That's why the plaintiff had to lie about the Spamhaus' and Steve Linford's whereabouts, about US residents being principals in Spamhaus, and to falsely suggest that it might have a US office. Otherwise the suit would be thrown out at as soon as it landed on a judge's desk.

Support the defendants! Donate money to legal fund

[tsvk]

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.

Sue for anything

[nuggz]

You can sue for anything, really you can.

You should be allowed to sue for anything.
Who should judge what is worthy? A judge of course, nobody else should be allowed to make the decision if the case should proceed.

I don't see a better solution.

Re:Sue for anything

[Ironica]

You can sue for anything, really you can.

You should be allowed to sue for anything.
Who should judge what is worthy? A judge of course, nobody else should be allowed to make the decision if the case should proceed.

I don't see a better solution.

An excellent point, really. The problem is, it depends on a certain threshold amount of personal ethics and judgement, which we seem to have slowly sloughed off here in the US. You should be *able* to sue for anything, but you should not automatically come up with a lawsuit every time the world inconveniences you or takes away your favorite toy. Unfortunately, our legal system runs on dollars, not sense. It's not corrupt, really; it's just big and complicated (like a Hummer?), and the people who can give it enough fuel to get mileage out of it are those with lots of cash (yeah, like a Hummer). Meanwhile, there's thousands of "reasonable" lawsuits every day that never get as far as a filing, because people don't have the time and/or money to deal with it.

There's a lawyer in Downtown Los Angeles named Nancy Mintie, who has been practicing for 24 years. She has never lost a case. Seems amazing on the face of it... but on a closer look, she does nothing but pro bono legal services for homeless and poor people. There are so many people down there who are being horribly exploited and abused, so there's tons of very solid cases to work with. You walk into a court room and tell them that a landlord has to do something about kids getting chewed on by rats in their sleep, you don't have much trouble at all. It's the big bucks lawsuits that are touch-and-go, because they often don't have a solid foundation to rest on.

I've been trying to come up with a better solution, but really, how could you feasibly socialize the legal system? Universal Health Care is a cinch in comparison. After all, if the guy across the street has a better doctor than me, it doesn't mean he can take years away from my life. But if he's got a better lawyer, he can sue me for all I'm worth, and it may not matter if he has a better case than I do... as long as he has better representation.

Re:Spam vs. Commercial Email

[jcr]

If I sign up for Yahoo and check the boxes saying I want to receive email about something, it is not spam, no matter how much I whine about it. If I can respond to the email and request to be taken off a list and actually be taken off of it, then it isn't spam. Not all commercial email is spam.

Let's be very clear on this. Your first statement is correct. Your second statement, however, seems to claim that it's not spam if the remove address works, which is 100% bullshit.

-jcr

Re:Spammers are suing the wrong people

[aborchers]

ISPs are private businesses and are not required, unless their contracts stipulate so, to accept mail from every domain or IP address on the Internet, so where is the case against them?

Then again, making such a defense might endanger the "common carrier" claim that a lot of ISPs make to avoid legal liability for what goes on on their network.

At any rate, as long as spam-blocking is an optional service offered to users, then the receivers can be responsible for rejecting the mail, and I can't imagine even the current US courts ruling that consumers are required to accept unwanted commercial spew (unless of course its in the context of some otherwise offered service such as ad-supported free email accounts).

For what is worth...

[NomadPgmr]

I wonder if ValueWeb knows that they are hosting a run by multiple spammers with the intent of promoting spam. This is in violation of #9 in their AUP. I wonder if they are aware of this??

PING emarketersamerica.org (64.70.171.85)

whois 64.70.171.85@whois.arin.net
[whois.arin.net]

OrgName: CyberGate, Inc.
OrgID: CYBG
Address: 3250 W. Commercial Blvd. Suite 200
City: Ft. Lauderdale
StateProv: FL
PostalCode: 33309
Country: US

NetRange: 64.70.128.0 - 64.70.255.255
CIDR: 64.70.128.0/17
NetName: CYBERGATE-1
NetHandle: NET-64-70-128-0-1
Parent: NET-64-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Allocation
NameServer: NS.VALUEWEB.NET
NameServer: NS2.VALUEWEB.NET
Comment: ADDRESSES WITHIN THIS BLOCK ARE NON-PORTABLE
RegDate: 2000-04-03
Updated: 2000-11-28

TechHandle: CN313-ARIN
TechName: Network Administrator, CyberGate Network
TechPhone: +1-954-334-8080
TechEmail: netadm@valueweb.net

The Attorney is a kid

[anagama]

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.

Re:Discovery! Yeah!

[billstewart]

Isn't it fun when they go out of their way to toss a nice slow pitch right over the plate? (Hmmm. American Baseball may not be totally familiar to Steve at Spamhaus, since he lives in the UK, but actually that plays into the real point...)

Spamhaus isn't a US entity, and Steve Linford isn't a US resident, and it's highly likely that the court has no jurisdiction over his actions, so it may be much cleaner for him to say "no thanks" and not be part of the suit. That means he may not get to play the Discovery game (or at least he'd need a real lawyer rather than me advising him.) But any of the US-based defendants certainly can go file discovery motions as part of their response, even if the result of them is to demonstrate that they're not part of the suit or that they didn't do the actions they're accused of or that those actions aren't a tort.

You can have *so* much fun with discovery in this - not only should they be able to get the names and real addresses and phone numbers of all the spammers that the plaintiff alleges are part of his organization, but also

• all the IP addresses and domain names the spammers own or use and
• copies of all the ISP contracts the plaintiff alleges to have, or that the plaintiff's spammer buddies allege to have, and
• any other ISP contracts that they have which the plaintiff is *not* alleging were blocked, because that obviously indicates something relevant, and
• exactly what hardware and software and which ISP connections were used to deliver the spam that was allegedly blocked, and what recordkeeping capabilities it has, and
• any records they have about the dates and times and recipients that they attempted to deliver messages to which were blocked, and
• how they determined that the recipients use SBL as instead of or in addition to other blocking lists, and
• why they assert that SBL was actually used to block their spam as opposed to some other list, and
• the contents of those messages, and
• who if anyone had hired them to deliver the messages, and all their names and addresses,
• or if the spammers were trying to sell the products themselves, exactly what those products were (Ajax Model 28 Penis Expander), or if they were medical products, whether they met all legal requirements for selling them, e.g. Viagra,
• or if the spammers were promoting web pages with their spam, exactly which web pages and who paid them to promote them, and
• where they obtained the addresses of the recipients they were spamming, and
• whether the information was delivered directly by the spammers, or by using open relays and/or open proxies, and their IP addresses, and whom they obtained permission from to use each of those, and how they located them, and
• precise cost accounting data used to calculate the alleged damages, especially because the spammer alleges, probably correctly, that they're high enough to trigger some jurisdictional or procedural effects under Florida law,

and any other information you can think of that the spammers would probably rather NOT have exposed to public view. And be sure to get all of them in electronic form, and delivered to all the defendants, because even if Steve Linford and Spamhaus aren't under US or Florida jurisdiction, they're certainly parties to the case, and it'd be a real shame if there were no particular way to impose confidentiality rules on the non-US defendants for use of that data.

Yeah, it seems like a lot of data. But the plaintiff's suit doesn't just claim something fuzzy like libel (where he might have had a chance suing in the UK, though probably less likely here) or restraint of trade, it claims that the defendants engaged in activities that caused damages to the plaintiff by interfering with the plaintiff's legitimate activities, and that means that the actual activities that the plaintiff claims to have engaged in and the defendant's actions which allegedly i

Why bother with the small fish?

[csguy314]

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

Re:Spam vs. Commercial Email

[An Onerous Coward]

All I want to know is, how the hell am I supposed to tell the difference? I get e-mails from RedHat, because I signed up for their newsletters. I get them from Yahoo, because I signed up for their services.

But how are you, the consumer, supposed to tell if one of your "white hats" is actually one of Yahoo's "marketing partners?" Seriously, every spam I get comes with a disclaimer that says I "opted in." I remember one especially infuriating one that listed about a dozen different ways to opt in, and at least half of them were so vague as to make it impossible to say, "no I didn't."

My philosophy is, if I'm not absolutely sure I signed up for something, then kill them all. Let /dev/null sort them out. If an e-mail "marketer" is using some obscure loophole in some bogus website EULA, then they're not white hats. They're just not the deepest shade of black around.

No. Re:IANAL...

[DDX_2002]

Pleadings aren't made under oath, so nothing contained in them can be perjury. If you deliberately state facts you know to be false, however, you could run into civil liability for abuse of process.

Wrong phone number

[kiwimate]

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.