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....

^_^

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: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?

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!

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

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: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.

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.

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

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

[Dopefish128]

Thou shalt not suffer a spammer to live?

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