Spamhaus to Ignore $11.7M Judgement

6031769 writes, "As reported on CNet, Spamhaus is choosing to ignore a judgement of $11.7M against them in an uncontested trial in an Illinois court. According to Spamhaus, the judgement has no impact on them, since they are a British organization." From the Spamhaus reply to the judgment: "Default judgments obtained in US county, state or federal courts have no validity in the UK and can not be enforced under the British legal system... As spamming is illegal in the UK, an Illinois court ordering a British organization to stop blocking incoming Illinois spam in Britain goes contrary to UK law which orders all spammers to cease sending spam in the first place."

Comments

wow

[freakybob]

I love how you can just ignore a multimillion dollar judgement. It's their attitude that I find amusing - they really couldn't give a shit.

Re:wow

[mustafap]

>It's their attitude that I find amusing - they really couldn't give a shit.

It's your attitude that I find amusing - They are preventing an illegal acting being commited in our country. Why should they give a shit?

Re:wow

[Kierthos]

Hey, attitude if everything.

I have to wonder though... could the decision (the one they're ignoring) be used as "evidence of their wrongdoing" if they were sued by the same spammer, but in the UK this time? I mean, okay, sure, the UK judge should look at the case and throw it out regardless, but does the decision here in the states carry any weight over there in the UK?

Re:wow

[neoform]

and they shouldn't care either.

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[MBGMorden]

Well, he didn't really say that they should give a shit - he just thought it funny that they were witholding of their shit.

Re:wow

[LiquidCoooled]

I would agree with you if they didn't reach into America, but on their site they say the following:

The Spamhaus Block List

The SBL is a realtime database of IP addresses of verified spam sources (including spammers, spam gangs and spam support services), maintained by the Spamhaus Project team and supplied as a free service to help email administrators better manage incoming email streams.

The SBL is queriable in realtime by mail systems thoughout the Internet, allowing email administrators to identify or block incoming connections from IP addresses involved in the sending of Unsolicited Bulk Email.

The SBL database is updated 24/7 by a dedicated international Spamhaus team (US, UK, NL, IT, CA, JP, CN) and is broadcast by 32 SBL zone mirror servers based in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, South Africa, Sweden, UK and USA.

Google cannot ignore the laws of the land where their servers are based, if they want to operate in foreign countries they should follow local laws.

Re:wow

[theckhd]

They are preventing an illegal acting being commited in our country. Why should they give a shit?

Now let's pretend that the plaintiff in the case wasn't a spam company with a stupid name, but instead is a regular user who gets put on the list by mistake. From what I've read about Spamhaus, they tend to "not give a shit" in that sort of situation either, which is unfortunate. A good example why vigilante justice isn't always a good thing.

An even more interesting quandry: What if a large, well-recognized organization with deep pockets gets put on the list by mistake in the same fashion? Any bets as to how long it would take before they get removed?

Re:wow

[legoburner]

Google operate businesses in countries where they operate, so have to obey local laws as they can be punished. Services like spamhaus are not legally based in other countries so only have to obey their patron law.

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[ergo98]

I love how you can just ignore a multimillion dollar judgement. It's their attitude that I find amusing - they really couldn't give a shit.

They aren't really ignoring the judgement. Instead they looked at it, discovered it is legally enforceable, and told the Illinois Court to get lost. They've declared the judgement irrelevant.

Re:wow

[ledow]

Not a chance. Failing to reply to an incorrectly served, non-jurisdictional court order for a country that you don't operate in, by a Judge with no savvy at all and on a law that not only doesn't exist in the UK but which operates under the OPPOSITE principle (i.e. if you spam, that's illegal in itself)? They wouldn't even give it a second thought.

They'd probably use it AGAINST the people who were trying to sue Spamhaus - poor lawyering, scaremongering, trying to impose laws across international jurisdictions, playing judges off against one another etc.

Re:wow

[russotto]

Making your case in the proper jurisdiction is pretty basic in law. If Spamhaus has no US presence, suing them in Illinois doesn't make sense. Even if they had a US presence but none in Illinois, suing them in Illinois wouldn't make sense.

The alternative is that any dirtbag could sue you in their own convenient jurisdiction (from Alaska to Zaire) and force you to go well out of your way to defend yourself.

Re:wow

[Score Whore]

by a Judge with no savvy at all

Why do you make stuff up? Not only that but all of the evidence suggests that the judge did exactly as appropriate.

It's like there's a scale in your head and you weigh your opinions on it and until the needle points at "Me! For! The! Win!" you keep adding stuff. Adding whatever it takes until your argument seems heavy enough.

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[Fnkmaster]

Absolutely. There are cases in civil law where by *responding* in a certain way in a jurisdiction you actually are acknowledging the jurisdiction of that court.

My guess is their UK lawyer told them it was lower risk to just ignore the whole thing, default judgment and all, then to spend all the money on a US lawyer to contest the jurisdiction and run a chance that they could lose a real case.

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[Anonymous Coward]

...a country that you don't operate in

Several American companies such as swsoft.com (Plesk) sell Spam Assassin bundled with their products. I am not saying this means they have to pay, but they do some form of business here in the USA I think.

Re:wow

[IPFreely]

So a spammer in the US is sending spam into the UK. It's illegal to spam there, so the US spammer is breaking UK law. Can the UK convict this spammer and bring them to justice? If the spammer ignored the conviction, would that be any different than Spamhaus?

Maybe spammers should also follow local laws in the foreign countries in which they spam^H^H^H^H^H operate.

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

> I love how you can just ignore a multimillion dollar judgement.
> It's their attitude that I find amusing - they really couldn't give a shit.

Not really. If someone in China went into their local court and got a default judgement
against you ordering you to pay them $100 Million, would you pay up?

I'm sure Spamhaus' lawyers know what they're doing.
The case was a shambles, they weren't even served properly:
http://http//www.spamhaus.org/legal/answer.lasso?r ef=1

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[LiquidCoooled]

No because the spammer does not own property in the UK, spamhous do.
they run a mirror of their servers from within the US, therefore they should either remove their servers from the country or abide by the laws and regulations placed in that country.

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[The_Mr_Flibble]

I didn't have a problem thankyouverymuch.

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[AceCaseOR]

This does pose an interesting question with regards to fighting spam. Spamhaus is safe from the $11.5M judgement in this case because they are based in the UK, and because their blacklist is hosted on UK servers, they are only subject to UK law. However, by the nature of the beast, Spam must travel to the E-Mail servers of people in the country the recieptiant (sp) lives in. So, my question is this - can we use Mr. Linhardt's tactics against him, and file suits against spammers in, say, China, Nigeria, and countries outside the US because their spam must pass through US mail servers to reach US users?

IANAL, but I know there are lawyers who read /. Is this idea reasonable, or am I just blowing smoke out of an orafice other then my mouth.

Re:wow

[jfengel]

Does the judge have any authority to speak on their behalf? If the defendant doesn't show up, does the judge have to grant default judgment, or can he ask why? Is there somebody in the process who could throw this case out on jurisdictional matters?

It's vaguely worrying to me that somebody could file a lawsuit against me in a different country such that I have to fly transatlantically just to plead that I'm not there.

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[ShakaZ]

Zaïre doesn't exist !!! Since 1997 & the fall of dictator Mobutu, the new dictator Kabila restored the original name of the country to Democratic Republic of Congo... as for now the're are in fact in the middle of their first more or less real democratic elections since 1960. I'm still surprised to see a lot of internet sites haven't updated their country databases almost ten years later...

Re:wow

[diersing]

An even more interesting quandry: What if a large, well-recognized organization with deep pockets gets put on the list by mistake in the same fashion? Any bets as to how long it would take before they get removed?

My last employer was one of the ten largest banks in the world. Our outbound SMTP servers where blacklisted by a "dedicated group of spam fighters" providing a blacklist service - SPEWS. I'm not sure how Spamhaus works, but I can tell you the SPEWS admins did not care much for our plight. They were chasing a particular spammer and to eliminate the problem they blocked a whole freaking subnet owned by MCI - we just happened to have our IPs in that subnet. I found that in this case, the blacklist admins were lazy (for blocking a whole subnet) and non-responsive (poor contact information is provided and pleas for removal where large ignored or flamed - following their procedure of posting in a forum to get removed). The whole process can be VERY frustrating.

Our saving grace was advising those email customers to drop SPEWS which 100% of them where willing to do.

As for this case, even though the "victim" is based in the US it really comes down to where the "crime" took place - on individual email servers using the Spamhaus BL around the world. I'm sure SH would argue in UK court that they offer a list, they don't enforce it and the onus lies on email administrators wherever they might be.

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[devilspgd]

You're confusing SPEWS and Spamhaus... Spamhaus goes out of their way to avoid listing innocent bystanders.

SPEWS is different, it's not intended to be a list of spammers, SPEWS is a list of spam-friendly networks, more of a way of managing a boycott on the basis that if you're buying service from a spam friendly ISP, you're enabling the ISP to stay in business, and therefore indirectly enabling spammers to continue their operations. By design, this catches non-spamming entities in the crossfire, in an attempt to encourage them to find a less spam-friendly provider.

Re:wow

[devilspgd]

Actually, the plaintiff claimed that Spamhaus was conducting business in the county where the lawsuit was filed -- That was potentially fraud, and had the judge been conscious during the proceedings, he could have kicked it on the spot (or at least asked for proof)

Re:wow

[speculatrix]

I had some direct experience of spamhaus when I worked for an ISP who once hosted them.

Unlike ORBS and SPEWS, they did care about their reputation, and were responsive as possible - given that they provided a free service and relied on volunteers.

I've heard from people who did get blacklisted that it wasn't too hard.

There's a fairly good chance that many slashdotters benefit indirectly from spamhaus, since most anti-spam systems use a weighting system to identify stuff as spam and will probably look up the sender of an email with spamhaus and use it as part of a "vote" to mark stuff as spam.

Re:wow

[devilspgd]

discovered it is legally enforceable

s/enforceable/unenforceable/

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

In order for the plaintiffs to have standing, they have to be sending spam to the UK. They have thus confessed to violating UK law, and legal actions against them in the UK should be very easy, now.

The reason the American judge is an idiot, is that his court has no jurisdiction since Spamhaus only operates in the UK, and that his order is for Spamhaus to bacome an accessory to violations of the laws of the country they do operate in. Talk about judical arrogance.

Add this judge to the list of those Who Should Be Impeached.

Re:wow

[flooey]

So, my question is this - can we use Mr. Linhardt's tactics against him, and file suits against spammers in, say, China, Nigeria, and countries outside the US because their spam must pass through US mail servers to reach US users?

I'd imagine the answer is (a) yes, it's technically possible, but (b) nobody would ever do it because neither government cares enough to bother with extradition for someone like a spammer.

Re:wow

[devilspgd]

If the defendant doesn't show up, does the judge have to grant default judgment, or can he ask why?

In theory, the judge could care. In practice, the judge's job is to assume the facts as put before him are factually accurate, unless contested by the opposing council. In practice, if one party fails to attend, the other party can say pretty much whatever it wants (within the bounds of reason) and it's accepted as fact for the purposes of that specific case.

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[devilspgd]

1) SpamAssassin != Spamhaus
2) So what? That's not SpamAssassin's problem, nor does it make them liable.

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[Puchku]

Don't worry. A court has to have jurisdiction over you to actually affect you. There are various kinds of jurisdiction, like pecuniary (financial), writ, and territorial. The most common is territorial, where you are a citizen of, or otherwise resident in, a particular court's area of jurisdiction. This is followed by pecuniary jurisdiction, where you are engaged in some financial transaction with a person/company in the court's jurisdiction. The point is, if you have NO connection to the place where a lawsuit is filed, it can't affect you. Most courts will throw out the case anyway, and even if an ex-parte judgement is passed against you, it can't be enforced until the other party approaches a court which does have jurisdiction over you. And if this happens, all you have to do is plead that the original order is vexatious, since the court did not have jurisdiciton. So basically, you don't need to be afraid of suits being filed against you in far away places.. What you must NOT do is go there to say you are not there... This is often seen as you submitting to the jurisdiction of the court. Bottom line.. Ignore such stupid lawsuits completely, as long as you are sure that there is no element of jurisdiction, which is exactly what Spamhaus did.

Re:wow

[The Evil Couch]

RTFA, or the summary at least.

It's an Illinois STATE court. A state court can't impose their ruling on anyone that's not actually inside their state.

Re:wow

[Viceice]

This is the same as the Singaporean goverment mandating the that Far-East Economic Review set up an actual shop in Singapore the Goverment can sue if they want to continue circulating in SG. After all, you cannot sue someone in their own country over something if that something is legal where they are from.

Re:wow

[The Evil Couch]

Illinois State court ruling != US Federal law.

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[Auraka]

Everyone has been saying this lawsuit doesn't mean anything as this US court does not have jurisdiction. My question is can this company now sue US based companies using spamhaus to filter email?

Re:wow

[70Bang]

But at least they're doing for us what we can't|won't do for ourselves: fight the good fight against spam.

If someone had put some teeth into U-CAN-SPAM in 2003, we'd have fewer spammers and there'd be the opportunity for individual pursuit; i.e., you could sue them instead of waiting for someone high up on the political ladder to do it. Once they'd get tired of getting slapped around and losing via summary judgement, they'd do some hard thinking about what they're doing. They'd likely move to a warm island with lots of sun, but that's when you go after their connections: put the ISP on notice -- something else spam laws should contain -- harbor a spammer, be given notice, and *smack*.

Here, they tried to created a gutted TCPA law here and didn't provide for individual pursuit. I managed to intervene with the SAG & the bill's sponsor and the language was added at the last minute because they couldn't argue with the logic I provided.

The important thing about the fines (when the offender, offendee are both in the US) is the jokers think they can just look the other way. What people forget is you aren't missing the money right now. So you refer the case to a collection agency. They make candygrams, er, landsharks, look toothless. Anything you get is a reward, knowing someone had some blood squeezed out of them.

At several states got together and got fax.com to change ownership.

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[myatmpinis1234]

IANAL, but I believe the Full Faith and Credit clause of the US Constitution allows rulings and judgements to be imposed in other states.

Re:wow

[70Bang]

Actually, the Illinois State Attorney General should skip his|her afternoon round of golf, realize they've got a spammer who has no problems shooting off their mouth in the court system (and public) and drop them into the clink for the weekend.

Remember: SAGs and ISPs are both capable of clobbering the bad guys.

Re:wow

[Robber Baron]

DEAR SIR,

CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS PROPOSAL

HAVING CONSULTED WITH MY COLLEAGUES AND BASED ON THE INFORMATION GATHERED FROM THE AMERICAN CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY, I HAVE THE PRIVILEGE TO REQUEST FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE TO TRANSFER THE SUM OF $11,700,000.00 (ELEVEN MILLION, SEVEN HUNDRED THOUSAND UNITED STATES DOLLARS) INTO YOUR ACCOUNTS. THE ABOVE SUM RESULTED FROM A JUDGEMENT AGAINST THE SPAM BLOCKING SERVICE SPAMHAUS, AS DETERMINED BY AN ILLONOIS COURT. THIS ACTION WAS HOWEVER INTENTIONAL AND SINCE THEN THE FUND HAS BEEN IN A SUSPENSE ACCOUNT AT THE CENTRAL BANK OF ENGLAND.

WE ARE NOW READY TO TRANSFER THE FUND OVERSEAS AND THAT IS WHERE YOU COME IN. IT IS IMPORTANT TO INFORM YOU THAT AS CIVIL SERVANTS, WE ARE FORBIDDEN TO OPERATE A FOREIGN ACCOUNT; THAT IS WHY WE REQUIRE YOUR ASSISTANCE. THE TOTAL SUM WILL BE SHARED AS FOLLOWS: 70% FOR US, 25% FOR YOU AND 5% FOR LOCAL AND INTERNATIONAL EXPENSES INCIDENT TO THE TRANSFER.

THE TRANSFER IS RISK FREE ON BOTH SIDES. I AM AN ACCOUNTANT WITH THE NIGERIAN NATIONAL PETROLEUM CORPORATION (NNPC). IF YOU FIND THIS PROPOSAL ACCEPTABLE, WE SHALL REQUIRE THE FOLLOWING DOCUMENTS:

(A) YOUR BANKER'S NAME, TELEPHONE, ACCOUNT AND FAX NUMBERS.

(B) YOUR PRIVATE TELEPHONE AND FAX NUMBERS -- FOR CONFIDENTIALITY AND EASY COMMUNICATION.

(C) YOUR LETTER-HEADED PAPER STAMPED AND SIGNED.

ALTERNATIVELY WE WILL FURNISH YOU WITH THE TEXT OF WHAT TO TYPE INTO YOUR LETTER-HEADED PAPER, ALONG WITH A BREAKDOWN EXPLAINING, COMPREHENSIVELY WHAT WE REQUIRE OF YOU. THE BUSINESS WILL TAKE US THIRTY (30) WORKING DAYS TO ACCOMPLISH.

PLEASE REPLY URGENTLY.

BEST REGARDS

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

They were offering their product to people based in that county. Depending on how the law reads, that could be considered doing business there. I don't have enough legal training to make that distinction, and I doubt an ass-talker such as yourself does either.

Re:wow

[tacocat]

And that is precisely why we are going to initiate a pre-emptive strike against the United Kingdom to prevent such behavior from getting out of control. Imagine the balls they must have to think for an instant that another sovereign nation can ignore anything the comes from the United States Rule of Law. I'm sure they have WMD's over there someplace.

They probably owe us War Restitutions from the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 too.

And look what they did to our language. They talk so funny you can hardly understand a word they say.

They drive on the LEFT.

We have no choice but to vaporize their whole bitty little island in the name of Democracy!!!!

Re:wow

[jezor]

And what if this wasn't spamming? Spamhaus is completely unaccountable, and I have seen them make mistakes. I have also seen them threaten hosting companies with listing all of the host's customers as spammers if one particular one doesn't stopped spamming.

Spam is a plague, but overzealous filtering can be a major problem as well. More to the point, if Spamhaus isn't willing to comply with U.S. law and its legal system, perhaps those ISPs and mail server operators who use Spamhaus' block lists might want to find a more reputable source for their spam filters. {Prof. Jonathan}

Re:wow

[SCHecklerX]

Um. It's TRIVIAL to remove yourself from the spamhaus lists. Just go to their site, fill out the form, and you are off. This is the reason that it is the only XBL/SBL list that I use to outright reject mail on the servers that I manage. All others will, of course, simply raise spamassassin hit counters.

Re:wow

[ischorr]

I think another important question here is culpability. Under US (and Illinois) law would a *US-based* operation similar to Spamhaus actually have a legal problem here? Are they potentially doing anything wrong?

It seems to me this Spamhaus is acting in an advisory capacity only. People ask them who they feel aren't sending out "trustworthy" emails, and they attempt to provide advice. Couldn't they just as easily make the same "restriction of trade" argument against, say, consumer reports?

Or it's somewhat like a situation where someone owns an operation where they send cars up and down neighborhoods with megaphones attached, spouting out advertisements about their pharmaceuticals at low, low prices. Someone analyzes the megaphones and sends out information about how residents can add insulation to their houses to help block the noise, but let other sounds through. The advertiser sues the person providing the info for "restriction of trade". There's a good chance that what the advertiser was doing was violating local laws (noise ordinances, etc) in the first place, but does the provider of info actually have any real legal responsibility here? If a company sells and installs the insulation, is there a legal reprucussion for them?

Re:wow

[TimTerrific]

> I love how you can just ignore a multimillion dollar judgement. It's > their attitude that I find amusing - they really couldn't give a shit. You know what? They don't have to give a shit--they are in the UK! LOL!

Re:wow

[ad0gg]

From reading their usenet group, spews seems to be a bunch of kids who when you threaten their fragile little ego they will just ban you for life. Does anyone actually use them besides hobbyists?

Re:wow

[topham]

Various instances of U.S. authorities illegally arresting, kidnapping and attempting to transfer people from one sovereign state to the U.S. have occurred in the past.

(Thankfully the odd American gets caught doing this in Canada and spends a couple years in jail for it, thereby limiting it to only the more desperate cases, or stupid people.)

With authorities willing and able to do this (they do get away with it often enough) for some of the lamest cases someone with a default judgement against them of several million dollars should rightfully be concerned. Any travel to; or across North America is illadvised.

I do not support what spamhaus does; Blackhole lists and the like are not a solution to the problem and tend to have significant collateral damage of parties who have little, or no control over any of the circumstances. I just think default judgements, particularly in cases where the question of jurisdiction do come up are entirely counter to the intended judicial system in most of the western world.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Checking the list of countries in Wikipedia, I see that Afghanistan to Zimbabwe could be used. Abkhazia could be used instead of Afghanistan, but it doesn't seem to be officially recognized by any other countries.

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[ari_j]

Paying court-ordered judgments that are obtained against you is one of the legal requirements for people who do business in the jurisdictions where the judgments were obtained.

Re:wow

[DragonWriter]

And because you can't extradite someone to face civil charges anyway.

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[DragonWriter]

I think another important question here is culpability. Under US (and Illinois) law would a *US-based* operation similar to Spamhaus actually have a legal problem here?

A US-based service would have probably spent the money to fight the suit, and quite likely, I expect, would have prevailed on the merits. Spamhaus chose not to because, I would guess, they judged that their assets exposed to a US judgement didn't warrant the cost of actually defending the suit, not because they thought they would lose.

Re:wow

[Morphine007]

IANAL, but I believe the Full Faith and Credit clause of the US Constitution allows rulings and judgements to be imposed in other states.

IANAG (I Am Not A Geographer), but I believe the United Kingdom is not actually beholden to the US Constitution since (and this my come as a shock to some /. readers) the UK isn't actually a state within the US... I know... I know... shocking... isn't it?

meh... who needs good karma anyway :)

Re:wow

[Creepy]

A state based injunction like that isn't even valid across state lines unless the business also operates there. If I were running my business in, say, Washington and had operations in Oregon, he would have to file suit in Washington, Oregon or in federal court for it to be valid. Filing a local case like that is a waste of time.

Re:wow

[DragonWriter]

In order for the plaintiffs to have standing, they have to be sending spam to the UK.

False. Indeed, their entire basis of the claim was that they were falsely labelled as spammers by Spamhaus, which is why they wanted Spamhaus ordered to pay damages and publicly apologize and admit that they weren't spamming.

So, no, they wouldn't have to be sending spam to have standing.

Re:wow

[Tiger4]

"Full Faith and Credit clause "

That only works AFTER they ignore the judgement. No other court, in the US or outside it, will enforce another court's direct ruling on the case. Not their case, not their problem.

However, practically every jurisdiction will enforce a bench warrant of arrest or contempt for another court, and force the persons involved to be extradicted to the governing jurisdiction, where they will answer for their actions. The courts are a sort of union unto themselves, and they definitely do back each other up in this way. It isn't over for Spamhaus. It is just that the battlefield shifted a bit.

Re:wow

[DragonWriter]

Now let's pretend that the plaintiff in the case wasn't a spam company with a stupid name, but instead is a regular user who gets put on the list by mistake.

Then their recourse is to: 1) File suit in a jurisdiction that Spamhaus can't afford to ignore, and/or 2) Make their case in the court of public opinion, and try to ruin Spamhaus' reputation as a an accurate spam identifier.

Re:wow

[karolgajewski]

that would only be true in the case where the Spamhaus mirror server is indeed in Illinois, and even then it'd be tenuous link.

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[bev_tech_rob]

No kidding

Look what happened to Dog - The Bounty Hunter. He got arrested due to a warrant from Mexico...

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[cayenne8]

"Paying court-ordered judgments that are obtained against you is one of the legal requirements for people who do business in the jurisdictions where the judgments were obtained."

But, this is against a non-profit organization, that just compiles a database and allows access for free.

Hardly what I'd call a 'business' in the classical sense. They aren't selling anything, not making money...and not forcing anyone to use their list. I don't see how you can sue someone for making a list of something available...

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[Grishnakh]

I don't see how you can sue someone for making a list of something available...

You're obviously not familiar with how we do things in America.

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[ahodgson]

It's turns out, that in America, it doesn't matter if you are actually doing anything wrong. Anyone can sue you for any reason and you'll go broke trying to fight them.

That's why there are no major blocklists left operating out of the United States.

Re:wow

[ahodgson]

From what I've read about Spamhaus, they tend to "not give a shit" in that sort of situation either, which is unfortunate.

My company was listed by mistake once. A spammer was using one of our domains on their IP info.

SpamHaus corrected the mistake within 24 hours.

In my experience, they are by far the most professionally run blocklist ever.

Re:wow

[ahodgson]

MCI is the biggest spam support operation on the planet. They should be blocked.

And SpamHaus has nothing to do with SPEWS.

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[mavenguy]

The fine article actually begins:

"The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ordered Wednesday that Spamhaus must pay $11,715,000 in damages to e360insight and its chief, David Linhardt, who sued the U.K.-based organization earlier this year over blacklisting.

This is a Federal Court not an Illinois state court (This assumes the fine article is accurate). Of course, Federal courts sometimes have to interpret and apply state laws. I'll let legal experts give a more informed opinion on the merits of this case.

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[ickoonite]

The English is a bit too good for a proper Nigerian spam, but otherwise you did good. I actually managed a chortle.

iqu :D

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[Anonymous Coward]

I love how you say that with authority, as if you knew what you were talking about. But sadly... you don't. Have you ever even heard of "personal jurisdiction" or "minimum contacts"? If they purposefully availed themselves to the laws of Illinois, they may be subject to jurisdiction there. At least the UK company (theoretically) consulted their team of lawyers before declaring they didn't have to comply with the judgment. You, on the other hand, are just talking out of your rear end.

Re:wow

[Cramer]

You're either reading spammer bull or confusing SpamHaus with some other blocklist. (SORBS (spamtrap) floats to the top of my list.)

I've had the privilege of working directly with SpamHaus -- as an admin at an ISP, I've actually had spammers blocked before they finished signing the contract. They're a real pleasure to deal with, unlike most of the other holier-than-god, elitest, script kiddie run blocklists. SpamHaus cares about stopping spam; not being a pain in the ass creating problems for people who aren't spammers. They don't block an entire ISP because of one email from one machine.

Re:wow

[Cramer]

Do you have any links to back that up? (anything from the last 5 years or so?) I can remember a number of such "political" statements being made by blocklists many years ago, but I don't recall Spamhaus being one of them. Someone listed UUNet's CORP mail servers once, briefly.

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[japhmi]

IANAR (I am not a rhetorician), but I believe the grandparent post was refering to if the judgement can be used against the mirrors of spamhaus's servers which do reside in the US.

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[Anonymous Coward]

You're obviously not familiar with how we do things in America.

By the looks of it - allowing spammers (which judging from most spam, are criminals) take judgements against organisations outside their jurisdiction and not attempting to trade in the jurisdictions in question - no wonder you don't want to tell us how it is done in USA

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[jezor]

From this on Spamhaus' own site:

"In order to terminate some persistent spam operations the SBL team occasionally needs to escalate a listing and it is in the application of an escalation that 'collateral damage' can occur. Once a known spam operation is blocked, the SBL team then attempts to open dialogue with the ISP providing service to the spammer and assists the ISP with collating evidence to terminate the spammer. In rare instances the ISP turns out to be knowingly assisting the spam operation for profit. In these cases the SBL Team may deem the ISP itself to be the 'Spam Support Service' and may escalate by listing the ISPs corporate resources (such as corporate mail servers), determined on a case-by-case basis to focus action on the ISPs executives and always with the primary objective of avoiding blocking legitimate customers."

I've seen this been threatened with clients, who were not themselves spammers. Beyond that, even the mere notion that "the SBL Team may deem the ISP" to be a "Spam Support Service" and the concept that blocking the ISP's other customers is to "focus action on the ISPs executives and always with the primary objective of avoiding blocking legitimate customers." (my emphasis added) smacks of non-accountability. These aren't objective standards; they are tactics.

I much prefer the Cloudmark collaborative model to Spamhaus' "We're right, you're wrong, and we're judgment proof" approach. {Prof. Jonathan}

Re:wow

[BrianH]

Yes, the spammer MIGHT be able to recover part of their 11+ million dollar judgment this way. I'll bet those servers might be worth a whole $5000 on eBay!

Spamhaus, in turn, will merely need to set up a new mirror in Canada to serve the US. If they're smart, they should already be contemplating such a move. A Canadian mirror would still serve their US customers just as quickly, but would put the servers out of the courts reach.

Re:wow

[Forge]

Close.

One of the underlying principles of Extradition both between states in the US and internationally is that the offence you are being extradited for should be illegal in both countries.

I.e. Britain will not extradite someone to Saudi Arabia on an Alcohol Consumption charge.

By that logic. Spamhaus has the full protection of British law as long as it remains within Britain. To clarify what that means. Think in terms of tons of burning metal sinking in the Atlantic while men splash around searching for missing limbs.

Unless of course Spamhous actually pisses off it's own (UK) government. In which case directors could be classified as terrorist and turn of in Guantanamo Bay.

Re:wow

[makomk]

One of the underlying principles of Extradition both between states in the US and internationally is that the offence you are being extradited for should be illegal in both countries.

Can't remember if that's still true or not; a recent treaty did some weird things to the requirements to extradite someone from the UK to the US (basically, loosened the requirements significantly).

Re:wow

[Grishnakh]

Yep, that's how the law works here. Basically, the one with the most money wins. (Sounds familiar, huh?) It doesn't matter if your case is complete BS; all you have to do is file a lot of lawsuits and make the other side go bankrupt due to all their legal bills involved in mounting a defense. Since we don't have a "loser pays" system, it's quite normal for a big company to sue a small one out of existence this way. There's even a term for it: "barratry". It's probably illegal in other countries, but it's pretty easy to get away with over here.

Re:wow

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

I saw oil there one time as well.

Re:wow

[SpacePunk]

Stay where you are buddy, we'll be around to you Brits eventually.

Re:wow

[SpacePunk]

SPEWS is crap. Israel carpet bombing a Lebanese neighborhood in order to get a couple of Hezbollah members is analagous to what SPEWS does to people who use networks that happen to get on their ban list.

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Judges don't get to investigate. It's up to the defendants to bring that up.

Re:wow

[schon]

I'm not sure how Spamhaus works, but I can tell you the SPEWS admins did not care

Judging the Spamhaus operators based on the actions of the SPEWS admins is like judging Americans based on the actions of Nigerian 419 scammers.

In other words, they are two completely independant groups of people, with almost nothing in common.

Re:wow

[Eil]

Operating a business in a foreign country and mirroring data in a foreign country are quite two different things.

Re:wow

[ClamIAm]

So if I commit a crime and then leave a state, they have no way to haul me into court? Um, no. At this point, another state or the federal government gets involved. In the case of international flight, a foreign or international agency will come into play (treaties, extradition, etc).

Re:wow

[Rik van Riel]

CBL, DSBL, Spamcop, AHBL and a bunch of smaller blocklists (like my own PSBL and bl.csma.biz) are all operating out of the USA.

Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing for blocklists.

Re:wow

[MadMidnightBomber]

My company was listed by mistake once. A spammer was using one of our domains on their IP info.

SpamHaus corrected the mistake within 24 hours.

In my experience, they are by far the most professionally run blocklist ever.

Seconded, and the only one I feel happy about deploying to do a SMTP reject. No false positives at a Uni where we were dumping ~60% of our total 1 million messages per month.

Re: wow

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is that a company which is not spamming CAN sue Spamhaus in the U.K. and win a judgment against them. E360insight could do that if they were not spammers, and they would probably win. Of course, they won't do that because they are spammers. If they even set foot in the U.K. they might find those feet in leg irons, since they are actually considered criminals there. (And rightfully so, I might add.)

Re:wow

[GISGEOLOGYGEEK]

Why should they give a shit?

what a pathetic joke. Another American judge thinks he can enforce American law outside of American borders.

Meanwhile no American judge will force the American president to respect American laws with respect to torture and prisoners of war.

What a great country you have there!

Re:wow

[Kadmos]

There are *many* people who block whole ranges of MCI because they (MCI) are a bunch of idiots. I am sick and tired of running around after MCI, trying to find out where they want to hide their spammers next. I just block a /16 and be done with it. If the bank you worked for is so cheap that they want to skimp on quality and do business with a spam haven like MCI then they should not complain when they have problems.

Who was the bank by the way? (just so I know not to trust them with my money).

Re:wow

[Cramer]

"escalate by listing the ISPs corporate resources" Right there is the difference. They explicitly target the ISP, not it's customers, in making their point. Their message is aimed squarely at the business decision making people who are turning a blind eye towards spammers in the name of profits. Other RBLs aren't as kind and block entire netblocks in making their point; effectively blocking thousands of the ISP's customers who are completely unrelated to any spamming aside from having the misfortune of being in the same netblock -- in fact, collateral damage is their point... the only recourse for those caught in the middle is to "switch ISPs" and, thus, cut into the profits of the ISP.

And don't play lawyer and read so much into their choice of words. They simply reserve the right to classify the ISP itself as a spammer. While they aren't the one's sending spam, they are knowingly facilitating spamming activities.

Dealing with Spamhaus in a civil and professional manner is ultimately far more productive than the far too common "colorful", threatening language used by spammer's ISPs. I've been one of those "deemed spam friendly" ISPs; and yet we were never "strong armed". Maybe my experience is colored by being a sysadmin... basically, the short answer is "until legal tells us otherwise..." Even after being canned, they have other accounts, in the name of numerous shell corps, or they pick a new name and sign up all over again -- the sales people get a commision, so they don't care that the same face keeps walking in.

Re:wow

[chickenandporn]

based on your response, I don't think you've had the pleasure of their hospitality and attention. I have. Subnet blocked. No response. Ignored me and my provider. Yes, it was Spamhaus. I think you confuse "go out of their way" with "get out of my way as I charge my high-horse of righteousness down upon your peasant village of innocent bystanders who are in the same zipcode as a spammer" Your idealism is respectable; my lost groceries due to carpet-bombing a subnet, well, I worry about that a bit more.

Re:wow

[devilspgd]

Honestly, I've been there and done that with Spamhaus... They were pleasant to work with.

Of course, in my case it was simply a previous customer of that IP block. If you're running a mailing list which isn't fully confirmed, or doing something else that is hitting spam traps on a regular basis, I expect your experience would be far less enjoyable.

If you weren't delisted, care to share the details as to why? Was it neighbouring customers, due to your provider, or an activity you were engaged in that was grounds for listing?

Re:wow

[chickenandporn]

My provider is LinuxLabs, a good bunch of guys so far as I know. The guy who runs it, he has gone out of his way to tailor a smaller package for my and my little server. Very good people to work with.

They have to move subnets, which I recall was because they ran out of IPs. Their new subnet included one reclaimed from a spammer a long time before. So we all moved like good little duckies, but my mail was bouncing. I complained to Spamhaus, but my complaints were bounced since I only have one email address, and apparently they protect their own servers, including "support@". I asked LinuxLabs, and as I remember, they were told to ask MCI to prove to Spamhaus that LinuxLabs was good guys. Meanwhile, Spamhaus suddenly had data that showed that this spammer was affiliated for a long time with Linux Labs.

So, in summary, it wasn't my activity, my provider's activity, nor the provider's customers' activity, but a history that my provider had to "disprove" connection with, and while disproving, Spamhaus added to their "proof of guilt". Meanwhile, my provider had to placate customers who were losing money due to lost connection with clients, and didn't know who or what Spamhaus was (of 120 or so RBLs at the time, if they did know).

Re:wow

[ArtStone]

This is a civil matter, not a criminal matter.

Extradition does not apply to civil judgements...

(Not paying your child support in the US being a possible exception)

IANAL

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the next move for Spamhaus to seek extradiction of the prosecutor and judge for conspiring to commit crimes in the UK against a British company?

Re:wow

[catman]

Please look up the difference between "state" as in "The United States" and "sovereign country" as in "The United Kingdom".

Re:wow

[catman]

The CAN-SPAM act specifies what spammers must do to legally send spam. It does not require anyone to receive spam. But ICBW, IANAL

Re:wow

[diersing]

You mean, except that they both provide blacklist services right? Since the BL service market is kinda like the wild-west at the moment, you should expect them to be lumped together a little bit by the casual observer. BTW, when I told people about SPEWS and advised them to drop them, it was with the recommendation to use Spamhaus.

Re:wow

[justdave2006]

Are you kidding me. Spamhaus blocked the entire country of romania to get one man booted from an ISP

Re:wow

[Anonymous Coward]

(Spills coffee)
To SpacePunk: The special 'Rory' award for the day's most gratuitous and distasteful analogy.
Keep up the good work!

First Spam!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey at least it's on topic

Good for Spamhaus

[ronanbear]

The right to block Spam is important. I hope their executives don't try going over to America any time soon though. If I worked for them I'd be pretty nervous about taking transatlantic flights.

Re:Good for Spamhaus

[tygerstripes]

I'd be pretty nervous about taking transatlantic flights

Like everyone isn't already ;-)

Seriously though, it's a civil suit, not criminal. They can't be arrested, can they? Or would they be liable for Contempt of Court? Even then, would it be enforcable outside IL? Any lawyers here to answer this?

Re:Good for Spamhaus

[clickclickdrone]

>They can't be arrested, can they
The poster is probably referring to two british company directors (different firms) who have been arrested as soon as they stepped off the plane because they run Internet gambling firms, quiet legal in the UK but illegal in the US.

Re:Good for Spamhaus

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, the U.S. can't keep terrorists off its borders, and someone will bother checking if some Brit tourist lost in some civil court in some god-forsaken state somewhere.

Re:Good for Spamhaus

[R2.0]

So let me get this straight.:

1) Generally recognized spammer files suit against Spamhaus, a British based company.
2) Spamhaus does business in the US, and therefor that portion of the business is subject to US law, including the jurisdiction of the courts. (everything rides on this)
3) Spamhaus totally ignores a pending legal action against them in a court which has jurisdiction over them.
4) Court enters default judgement in accordance with hundreds of years of legal precedent, including *English* common law.
5) Spamhaus is now open to the court seizing their US assets to pay the judgement, and an injunction against doing business in the US, enforceable under Federal law by US Marshals.

How is this smart? If they had simply responded to the lawsuit, this probably would have been over in a heartbeat. Instead, they are basically thumbing their noses at a legal system that they believe is beneath their consideration.

(Cue "US legal system sucks, blah, blah, blah))

Re:Good for Spamhaus

[sharkey]

Or Dmitry Sklyarov.

Re:Good for Spamhaus

[stiggle]

Unfortunately, everything is computerised and you have to provide ALL your details to the airline who forward it all onto the US government agencies to check.

Re:Good for Spamhaus

[ronanbear]

Or to look at it another way.

American spammer files a nuisance lawsuit British company in Illinois for blocking spam

British company is forced to spend a fortune hiring relevant lawyers and defending itself against a lawsuit without any merit. Spamhaus also have to spend another fortune ensuring that it complies with other regions laws

Spamhaus decide that it is easier to remove spammer from list. Other spammers follow suit and Spamhaus suddenly isn't blocking all that much spam.

Alternatively Spamhaus say that since they are operating in England they should be sued under British law. They ignore the judgement and the FUD attacks and keep doing everything their own way.

The spanner in the works is that an Illinois judge on a power trip takes a disliking to a British company refusing to show up even though the case is bogus and the court shouldn't have taken the case in the first place due to juristiction issues. Wild judgement is issued with massive punative damages which does little to harm Spamhaus. It's so large they'll never be able to comply. Instead, it just forces another company to stay outside the US due to an out of touch legal system. Oh and it adds about $11m to the price any American company that buys Spamhaus has to pay.

Re:Good for Spamhaus

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, if Spamhaus has no business operations in the US, none of the business is subject to US law.

3) Spamhaus totally ignores a pending legal action against them in a court which has no jurasdiction.
4) World revolves as normal.

It appears (by reading the spamhaus pages) that the suit was filed against the project itself, rather than any organisation based in the US

Re:Good for Spamhaus

[Pig Hogger]

How is this smart? If they had simply responded to the lawsuit, this probably would have been over in a heartbeat. Instead, they are basically thumbing their noses at a legal system that they believe is beneath their consideration.

Er, they DID answer to the lawsuite, but the clueless judge simply ignored it.

Re:Good for Spamhaus

[Antifuse]

I think the whole point here is that they're saying that #2 is, in fact, not true. The crux of their argument is that they are a British company, doing business in Britain, and thus are not subject to US jurisdiction. Internet jurisdiction is a bit of a grey area here - what constitutes "doing business in the US"? Is simply accepting business from US clients enough? Or do you have to have an actual business presence (ie offices, paying taxes in the states)?

Re:Good for Spamhaus

[devilspgd]

As if lack of jurisdiction was not enough, the Plaintiff additionally failed to give Spamhaus legal service of process of his lawsuit.

That alone is more then sufficient to have the judgement kicked, should Spamhaus ever desire to conduct business in IL.

Re:Good for Spamhaus

[TopShelf]

Is simply accepting business from US clients enough?

IANAL, but if I recall my introductory law course from 17 years ago, I believe the answer to that is Yes.

Re:Good for Spamhaus

[Puchku]

There are various tests for this. The Zippo test is the most famous, though there are many cases worldwide that have refined the principle.

Basically, in cases where the operator maintains a passive Web Site that merely makes information available for browsing, courts have been hesitant to exercise personal jurisdiction.

One end of the spectrum of judicial decisions involves holdings that financially-motivated, interactive contacts with a foreign state will give rise to personal jurisdiction; the other end of the spectrum reflects holdings that a strictly passive, informational Web Site will not give grounds to assert jurisdiction.

For cases in between, i.e where you can't put it easily in either category, the court has to apply it's legal mind to figure out whether they have jurisdiction or not.

Re:Good for Spamhaus

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, the U.S. can't keep terrorists off its borders, and someone will bother checking if some Brit tourist lost in some civil court in some god-forsaken state somewhere.

Unfortunately, the problem with terrorists is that they know that the authorities will want to catch them, so they try to conceal their identities or enter secretly. This is somewhat different from the situation here, where the foreign nationals who have been arrested at airports recently were not expecting the USA to decide they were criminals (since they had not broken any laws in their own countries), and therefore had not taken precautions to avoid discovery.

Incidentally, on what are you basing your claim that the USA cannot keep terrorists out? It seems to be doing a pretty good job. There haven't exactly been many terrorist incidents in the USA since security was enhanced post-9/11, and those that there have been -- like the Beltway sniper attacks -- were carried out by U.S. citizens, not by foreigners.

Re:Good for Spamhaus

[Kazoo the Clown]

It's a "nuisance lawsuit" if the company is in fact spamming, but in any case I think the suit could keep overzealous spam filtering in check. Any spam filtering company that is capable of producing false positives should be subject to such suits, as their "technology" is contributing to the unreliability of legitimate email and is IMHO unacceptable. Better to let a few million extra spams through than to risk blocking a single legitimate email, and if this is a sign the court would support that position, it is a Good Thing(TM)...

Re:Good for Spamhaus

[R2.0]

The way I read you, if Spamhaus simply lists suspected spammers on their British website, and US citizens go to the website and download, with no interation by Spamhause, they are probably safe.

If Spamhaus sells the data, they are screwed (in the US, anyway)

Re:Good for Spamhaus

[mysticgoat]

The crux of their argument is that they are a British company, doing business in Britain, and thus are not subject to US jurisdiction.

That's apparently only part of it. There is also the fact that they were not served notice of the court's actions in a way recognized as legal in either the UK or any part of the USA. Process cannot be served by email.

I was thinking that it would have been good for someone to file a Friend of the Court brief to bring to the court's attention the fact that it did not have jurisdiction. That would have allowed the judge a good way of dismissing the suit. But the more I have read about this case, the more the actions that the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois has taken in this matter suggest that replacing the judge with one who is competently knowledgeable about the way the world works today is really what is important.

Re:Good for Spamhaus

[ronanbear]

Actually by nuisance lawsuit I meant any lawsuit filed where the "nuisance" value of defending a lawsuit that you believe you are highly likely to win induces you to settle. It also happens where there is a very large cost associated with losing but significantly less gain in winning and less cost in settling

Sorta like what a patent troll often does.

Re:Good for Spamhaus

[Rasta Prefect]

It's a "nuisance lawsuit" if the company is in fact spamming, but in any case I think the suit could keep overzealous spam filtering in check. Any spam filtering company that is capable of producing false positives should be subject to such suits, as their "technology" is contributing to the unreliability of legitimate email and is IMHO unacceptable. Better to let a few million extra spams through than to risk blocking a single legitimate email, and if this is a sign the court would support that position, it is a Good Thing(TM)...

You don't think false positives are acceptable? Fine. Don't spam filter on your servers and don't use a mail provider that does it for you. Where you, or the government, get off telling me what me and my users are going to do with our mail I'm not sure. My organization chose to use Spamhaus - We've found them to be quite reliable. Spamhaus doesn't magically tap into "the tubes" somewhere and filter email out of the internet - they list people who have been reported spamming and WE choose not to accept mail from them because of it.

We filter around 85-90% of incoming messages, and have blocked over 19 million messages in the last year. Assuming it takes a second per message to evaluate and JHD, thats over two and a half man years we've saved dealing with spam. Not to mention the potential hostile work environment problems you have for employees who are offended by advertisements for horses fucking school girl nuns and suggestions that they need larger breasts. If we had to give up every form of spam filtering that could possibly ever result in a false positive due to the threat of lawsuits, we'd probably have to stop using email all together.

Re:Good for Spamhaus

[ahodgson]

They're a non-profit. They don't do business anywhere. They don't have clients, they don't advertise, and they don't do "business" or assets in the US.

Re:Good for Spamhaus

[schon]

1) True
2) False
3) False
4) False
5) Spamhaus has *no* US assets to be seized.

Re:Good for Spamhaus

[Kazoo the Clown]

You can filter out ALL the spam and reduce your bandwidth entirely by blocking ALL email. Your problem is solved, eh? But at what expense?

If the phone company or package services had your attitude they'd quickly go out of business. The only reason you haven't is that people have been caught off guard by new technology-- it's only a matter of time IMHO before email services become essentially (if not specifically) common carriers. Net Neutrality is a step in that direction, but even without it the essentials of common carrier status for email is inevitable. You cannot run businesses without reliable email services for everyone, which unfortunately is going to include some form of legalized (non-fraudulent) SPAM once all the dust clears.

Can you avoid the junk mail in your snail mail box? Advertising pointed at you at the grocery store? SPAM is not confined to the internet, and in fact has been around longer than the internet has, only the term for it is new. It makes money, and is perfectly legal in many forms, even though many of us would just as soon see it disappear. Go ahead, postpone the inevitable and concoct some hackneyed argument that email SPAM is somehow different, if it makes you feel any better.

I hate spam even more than you, but for different reasons-- not only do I hate getting all that crap in my inbox and wasting everyone's bandwidth, what I hate the most is that incompetent attempts to deal with it are decreasing email reliability. Incompetence much like the way the US gov has been dealing with terrorism-- the bull-in-a-china-shop-shotgun-approach that in their myopia may help with a few specific problems but makes many others significantly worse...

Re:Good for Spamhaus

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the court documents at http://www.e360insight.com/case_history.html, Spamhaus did hire lawyers and filed a response to the original complaint. Then at some point they fired their lawyers and ignored the rest of the case.

Re:Good for Spamhaus

[Rasta Prefect]

You can filter out ALL the spam and reduce your bandwidth entirely by blocking ALL email. Your problem is solved, eh? But at what expense?

Nice strawman. Like I said in my initial post, the ratio is quite good: 19 million spams blocked, maybe 30-40 false positive complaints over that period of time. It's a price we find quite acceptable. Frankly, I wish UPS was anywhere near that good at delivering my packages.

If the phone company or package services had your attitude they'd quickly go out of business. The only reason you haven't is that people have been caught off guard by new technology-- it's only a matter of time IMHO before email services become essentially (if not specifically) common carriers. Net Neutrality is a step in that direction, but even without it the essentials of common carrier status for email is inevitable. You cannot run businesses without reliable email services for everyone, which unfortunately is going to include some form of legalized (non-fraudulent) SPAM once all the dust clears.

Well, first off with your analogy is flawed - I'm not the Phone company or the package service, I'm the company mail room or corporate PBX.

Secondly, the're fundamentally different for economic reasons. Junk mail and telemarketers are both self limiting in that there is a significant cost associated with bothering me, and that keeps the crap to reasonable levels. I've never received so much junk mail that I've been unable to find the good stuff. I'd probably give up on email and go back to calling people if I didn't have spam filtering on my email account - if I turn spam filtering off the crap out numbers the good stuff literally 20 to 1.

Thirdly, we've already been doing the same thing on Telephone lines for years. Screening calls with answering machines, caller ID and secretaries, and more recently with a federal Do-Not-Call list. An approach that unfortunately doesn't work nearly as well on the internet.

Can you avoid the junk mail in your snail mail box? Advertising pointed at you at the grocery store? SPAM is not confined to the internet, and in fact has been around longer than the internet has, only the term for it is new. It makes money, and is perfectly legal in many forms, even though many of us would just as soon see it disappear. Go ahead, postpone the inevitable and concoct some hackneyed argument that email SPAM is somehow different, if it makes you feel any better.

All of it? No. But generally if you ask to be removed form lists, snail mail companies will comply. Likewise, you can talk to the USPS and ask to be removed from lists for saturation mailings.

I'm not sure what "the inevitable" is that you think I'm avoiding. If you mean treating e-mail as a common carrier service with spam filtering being banned, you're even more divorced from reality than I thought you were at the start of this thread. The only US law regarding SPAM specifically allows email providers to filter spam however they'd like. Morever, aside from a few fanatics who think that the right to have your email delivered appears in the 3 1/2 ammendment, most people WANT spam filtering. We allow users to opt out if they want. Noone ever has, including those with false positives.

I hate spam even more than you, but for different reasons-- not only do I hate getting all that crap in my inbox and wasting everyone's bandwidth, what I hate the most is that incompetent attempts to deal with it are decreasing email reliability. Incompetence much like the way the US gov has been dealing with terrorism-- the bull-in-a-china-shop-shotgun-approach that in their myopia may help with a few specific problems but makes many others significantly worse...

Well, there certainly people out there pursuing incompetent strategies for blocking spam. Spamhaus isn't one of them. In my experience they're quite professional and accurate. Spamhaus isn't SPEWS (Which isn't really incompetent either...They're

Re:Good for Spamhaus

[Kazoo the Clown]

Well, first off with your analogy is flawed - I'm not the Phone company or the package service, I'm the company mail room or corporate PBX.

At the moment. My point is though, that the analogy shouldn't be flawed and IMHO eventually won't be. The company I work for doesn't deliver any of my personal mail or phone calls, so consequently, if they choose to use (or implement) unreliable mechanisms that's their business. But when I pay for a service, just like when I put a stamp on an envelope-- if I pay for email, I expect that people can mail things to me unhindered-- because that is specifically the service that I am paying for. I'm the one paying for the ability to receive email, and that should include spam if I choose. As I said, opt-out services are fine, but right now an ISP can choose to not allow their users to opt-out and in fact, sometimes do choose that using spam's effect on their bandwidth as an excuse. Again, that's fine if that's made clear up front, but if your ISP of several years suddenly decides to turn on filtering which users can't disable and their email service suddenly turns unreliable, we should make big noises about it and not put up with that crap.

At the moment, all this stuff is still pretty new. But I think that in the long run business will not put up with such sources of unreliability in communications services. As soon as enough realize that either many of their customers are not getting their legit business or advertising emails (including those that would like to receive them), or that their customers responses are not reaching them because of spam filtering, some big money is going to get thrown at Washington and that sort of spam filtering is gonna be required to provide easy opt-out, or even required to be opt-in. And that is how it should be.

Privacy is another issue that is going to come into play as well-- since right now email is often sent in the clear and can be sniffed off the network, a secure "envelope" of some kind will become routine eventually-- at which point spam filters will not be ABLE to filter as they do now because there will be no point between the sender and the receiver where the message can be interpreted if the receiver doesn't allow it. Spam filtering is in one sense, an invasion of privacy, in that our emails are being scanned. The only reason it hasn't happened more quickly is that the government likes the ability to easily scan emails right now, plus the fact that spam filtering is a laudable goal. But they're likely to have to rethink how they go about that sort of snooping in the long run, because again, its a big security and reliability hole and business will require it. That is one case where email is different from phone or package delivery-- as it's not quite so easy for your neighborhood cracker to pick up insider stock tips by reading your snailmail or listening to your phone conversations (at least now that most cordless phones use encryption)-- not so true with internet email. Suppose the big company CEO's personal email is sniffed by a kid on his block and a few strategic stock purchases placed using some critical insidcer information? Sure, the CEO should know better, but the assumption that everyone is simply OK in the knowledge that their email is not very secure at all is gonna make some people pretty unhappy someday. And even knowing who the sender is, is a potential privacy/security issue-- properly secured email cannot be sniffed for not only the contents, but the sender either. Rest assured, it is in the works.

Anyway, since you like to talk about competence in mail servers so much..I've got about 3000 users and a total message volume coming in (not counting internal email) around 80-100,000 messages a day. Whats you're level of experience?

I've never run an email server, but I've been a user of email since 1983, and I know that most things are subject to change. Eventually, ISPs will lose their ability to access any of their users plaintex

All spammers must die!

[fe105]

It is probably best to kill all spammers! I have been fighting spam for many years now. Why do they get to cause other people so much grieve and work?

Killing people in general is not right, but if you do it in a humane way, like shoot them through the head with a .454 casul?

It can't be hard to find volunteers for doing this. Shooting casul is a blast! ;)

p.s. don't actually do this..

Re:All spammers must die!

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

Killing people in general is not right, but if you do it in a humane way, like shoot them through the head with a .454 casul?

Firm, but fair! I don't think anyone could find fault with that!! ;)

Re:All spammers must die!

[Anonymous Coward]

...provided the relevant precautions are taken to prevent colateral damage after the bullet passes through the moral vaccuum between the spammer's ears. (A few sandbags is probably acceptable)

Alternatively use a Glaser (Glazer?) Safety Slug to make absolutely sure.

Re:All spammers must die!

[DRWeasle]

I am sorry to say my friend but using a .454 is just a waste of good money and ammunition.

A good S&W 357 Mag. handgun is cheaper and will do just as good of a job with less mess to clean up. I often refer to this as the 35 cent solution.

1 box of .357 rounds = $17.50
50 rounds per box = 35 cents each.

Any questions?

Re:All spammers must die!

[Eunuchswear]

Come on, people have reported Glaser's and other frangible ammo bouncing of heavy clothing(*). Most spammers are so thick skinned you'd get no penetration at all.

You'll need some kind of armor piercing ammo.

A little colateral damage is only to be expected in the war on spam.

(* ok, this is probably an UL, but with spammers would you want to take the chance?)

Re:All spammers must die!

[Buzz_Litebeer]

Actually you have to weight the economics of the gun, and its repair into the mix as well.

But, as you say, the more spammers you kill the closer to 35 cents you get in actual money per bullet.

Re:All spammers must die!

[erroneus]

War on Spam?

While I generally disapprove of just about everything GWBush has done, I have to admire the fact that no matter what it is or how stupid it is, he never back down from a fight. If we could get him convinced that the "War on Spam" is on, I think we'd see a lot of interesting things happen.

Re:All spammers must die!

[PlusFiveTroll]

(A few sandbags is probably acceptable)...

What, a few more spammers sounds like a better backstop.

What do you burn witches with, more witches!

Re:All spammers must die!

[halcyon1234]

It is probably best to kill all spammers! I have been fighting spam for many years now. Why do they get to cause other people so much grieve and work?

Killing people in general is not right, but if you do it in a humane way, like shoot them through the head with a .454 casul?

Yes, but then the spammhaus people will just chose to ignore the "judgement" =)

Re:All spammers must die!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, AP punches straight through cleanly rather than expanding/tumbling and magnifying the damage. If you get a good hit they're probably dead anyway, but in other cases it can easily be the difference between a kill and merely wounding. Jacketed hollow-points in as large a caliber as you can handle well are the way forward. (Yes they're illegal for civillian use just about everywhere, but so is AP ...)

The bigger question

[portwojc]

If a company is sending spam why isn't the ISP for that company shutting them down? Isn't it against the AUP of most providers or at least the big carriers?

Re:The bigger question

[Neoprofin]

I would think that if the spammer is paying tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars every month in bandwidth costs the carriers will probably play dumb for as long as possible. As much as ISPs hate the cost of delivering spam I'm sure they love getting paid to send it.

Re:The bigger question

[Matts]

I wish it were that simple. Sadly your question is terribly naive.

See: http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/listings.lasso?isp=ver izonbusiness.com for example.

Re:The bigger question

[Frosty Piss]

Because (as is well known), American public corporations are not ethical. None of them. Money is the prime objective and how you get it is irrelivent.

Re:The bigger question

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I rather prefer that the ISPs don't shut down the spammers. Think about it. If the spammers stay with their current ISP/IP block(s), it's that much easier to keep them blocked from your own network permanently.

Re:The bigger question

[portwojc]

Yeah I know it sounds naive but it's not that naive. Having worked for an ISP in the past for many years I found it rather easy and honestly very enjoyable to shut off someone who's spamming. Of course that was back in the day providers actually cared...

Perhaps the lawsuits against spammers need to be directed at the providers as well for continuing to allow their customers to send spam. After all they aren't enforcing their acceptable usage policy.
They are profiting from it too indirectly.

Re:The bigger question

[aliendisaster]

I used to work for a hosting company (a shitty one). Spam was indeed against the AUP. But as long as the spammer was not over using his resources or clog up the network, nothing was said. Really the only time something was said was when they sent so much spam out that the processes brought down the machine and they called for support. Then the answer was "your sending too much email". After about 4-5 calls, the AUP manager would get the issue and let the customer know that sending spam was against the AUP. And what was the price for breaking the AUP? Upgrade.

Re:The bigger question

[Pig Hogger]

If a company is sending spam why isn't the ISP for that company shutting them down? Isn't it against the AUP of most providers or at least the big carriers?

Two words: "pink contract".

Re:The bigger question

[cortana]

Yeah... these days you shut down a spammer and a PHB reprimands you for nullifying a vast source of revenue^W^W^W^Wcustomer.

Re:The bigger question

[megaditto]

Verizon, who's hosting e360Insight that sued Spamhause, probably cover their asses by doing just enough to not come under a legal definition of 'spam': requiring e360 honors the Unsubscribe link in email...

So when you unsubscribe from e360Insight, they do in fact stop spamming you... then sell your verified email address to other spammers!

Re:The bigger question

[silas_moeckel]

I've worked with most big ISP's and worked inside a few mid sized ones. Here is the usual series of events:

Senerio 1,

buy a decent sized pipe to rented location
install servers and spam away
get abuse reports for the IP block and ignore
provider above starts getting abuse and tells client to look into issue
client come back with they are opt in, it was a virus, it was one of our clients and we told him no and canned him
repeat above till provider kicks them off or disconnects for non payment
move to new location and name repeat

Senerio 2

get dedicated server via stolen credit card
spam away till is shut down
repeat with new card

Now I have seen more of the second senerio and some of this looks automated where they literly script your signup forms and just keep inserting different card. Best way to stop this one was to verify card info on first abuse complaint, unfortunatly it costs to much to verify every new account at $10 a month and still have a profit.

Re:The bigger question

[SpAcMuN]

I used to work for an ISP that used spamhaus as well as a few other black lists, and we found once or twice that some of our address space was blacklisted on various lists. As soon as we figured it out, we would contact the blacklister and find out why we had been listed. Typically it was due to a customer of ours who was spamming (intentionally or by virus) through our network, and the blacklist was the first we'd heard of it. We would immediately turn them off, or cancel their services if it was intentional, then contact the blacklister and ask to have the entries removed. This was a rather quick process, and it paid off in the end. We blocked MASSIVE amounts of spam (I don't recall the rejection rate but it was very high). As for the customers, if they had something like a virus or an open relay, we'd test their network before allowing their traffic through our network again...not quite as fast a process.

Re:The bigger question

[theLOUDroom]

If a company is sending spam why isn't the ISP for that company shutting them down? Isn't it against the AUP of most providers or at least the big carriers?

Because the spammers are paying them money.

See, it works like this:
Unless the company is losing more business than the spammers are giving them or hosting spammers is causing them real and significant liability problems, they can simple ignore this fact and keep taking their money.

Re:The bigger question

[MadMidnightBomber]

If a company is sending spam why isn't the ISP for that company shutting them down? Isn't it against the AUP of most providers or at least the big carriers?

Because the spammer is often paying the ISP large sums of cash, lovely cash for the T1 lines they use to vomit their filth all over the rest of the 'net.

I can't bear to think of all the freaks coming out of the woodwork right now on news.admin.net-abuse.email - like it hasn't enough anyway. "My God! It's full of trolls."

Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[dfn5]

For example when you tell them that they blacklisted your IP address and you can vouche that you don't spam, but they won't do anything because you belong to a /16 where somewhere sombody is spamming. blacklisting might be a good idea, but organizations like spamhaus make it bad in practice.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[cortana]

Surely all Spamhaus do is maintain a blacklist of network addresses of known spammers? They don't block the spam themselves. How could they? It seems like the US court order is... insane.

Spamhaus are not liable if the information they published is used by a third party to decide not to accept your mail. Instead, blame the third party for making such a sweeping and unrealistic decision with only a minimum of supporting data.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[tokul]

Are you sure that you haven't confused Spamhaus with SPEWS or some DUL list?

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[Anonymous Coward]

They only block larger parts when the ISP involved does not cleanup the problems or moves the spammer around inside their IP space. As far as 'escalation' listings go, Spamhaus is sure one of the more moderate parties, who only escalate after contacting the ISP fails.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[fostware]

You're thinking of SORBS

spamhaus is actually quite responsive, even with the inherant delays of communicating from Western Australia :P

I have never had SORBS remove a wrong ISP block... well, not until a week later and I'm pretty sure it's not in response to me.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[IAmTheDave]

It seems like the US court order is... insane.

It's because judges in the US are old and really have absolutely no idea what they are judging on when they make judgements on technology. If they're as informed as Ted "Tubes" Stevens, well, it shouldn't come as any surprise that US courts are as insane as US lawmakers.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[OverlordQ]

For example when you tell them that they blacklisted your IP address and you can vouche that you don't spam, but they won't do anything because you belong to a /16 where somewhere sombody is spamming. blacklisting might be a good idea, but organizations like spamhaus make it bad in practice.

Complain to people who use the list, not the people making the list.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[ADRA]

If you're worried about someone sending spam from a shared IP block, I'd start walking to another provider where your CIDR sub-block is registered to you and you only.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[Sique]

They could be liable for libel though. If they blacklist an IP, and the blacklisting is not valid, then having it on the list is like labelling the operator of the IP a spammer, which is somehow libellous if incorrect.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[91degrees]

They don't block the spam themselves. How could they?

Yeah. But that's weaselling out of it.

They add IPs to the list knowing full well that those IPS will be blocked, intending that those IPs will be blocked, with the result that those IPs are blocked. For practical purposes, what is the difference between this and actually blocking them?

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[cortana]

But they blacklist networks, don't they. They simply state that users of that network send spam. I'm sure they have an entry in their database saying why each network was listed.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[91degrees]

Surely it's bad form to have a spam list that's inaccurate.

How does one complain to the people who use the list? email?

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[zerocool^]

....?

Because... the smallest allocation most routers will recognize when aggregating routes is a /24? It's a little more complicated than you think, Tex.

You can't own *one* IP address, man. For starters, no one is going to sell you one IP address. For second, you would have to justify why you want to add an ASN to the global BGP route tables for every person who wants their own IP. For third, even if you did manage to get a "/32 allocation", you couldn't do anything with it. You need 4 IP addresses to connect to the BGP-routed tubes; a network, broadcast, local, and remote IP. I guess you could run a webserver on your router, but whatever. THEN even after all that, most BGP routers will not forward any global route that is less than a /24 anyway.

The only way you can avoid getting lumped in with all the other spammers on your netblock is to own your own 256 IP address block and run your own router. You'll need something with an HDLC interface (you should be able to get an old bay networks router off ebay if you want it), and you'll need to get your own ASN. Then you'll need to buy enterprise level bandwidth, like a T1. You might be able to find someone to sell you a fractional T1 for $300-$400 a month.

~Wx

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[AnotherShep]

He would, but his e-mail won't go through.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[Anonymous Coward]

Then he could use a free email provider.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[ADRA]

--- or, you can get your ISP / host to do it for you, hence my comments.

Once again, if you're hosting your corporate email, you're more than likely hosting larger than 1 IP. My company had a block of 32 (out of the box) and they gave us our own ASN without even asking for it. If you're running on dynamic blocks, then there's no protection for you (for good reason). If you're buying IP space, make sure to get your own blocks. Some providers offer it, some don't.

The worst case is that you can't get your own CIDR block, your ISP hosts spam providers, the spammers are within your current netblock, and the ISP is unresponsive to the spam activity.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[jhagler]

It doesn't matter how much the judges know about technology, they know the law.

This is where we go back to the statement "default judgment". Since Spamhaus never bothered to show up in court to contest the charges, the judge had to decide in favor of the plaintif and award them whatever they asked.

Now, what the impact of an American civil judgment is on the directors of a British company, I have no clue. But I'll wager the folks at Spamhaus knew exactly what the impact would be and the decision to blow off the case was an educated one.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[Ilgaz]

"For example when you tell them that they blacklisted your IP address and you can vouche that you don't spam, but they won't do anything because you belong to a /16 where somewhere sombody is spamming."

It also means you share the same ISP who doesn't give a f to security, spam reports from naive people who thinks it will mean something and spare their precious time.

The only thing to make that ISP/IP provider take care is: Move to another ISP which cares about security and quality of customers.

You will figure what I mean by checking this:
http://www.spamcop.net/w3m?action=map;net=bmaxcnt; mask=16777215;sort=spamcnt
"Worst /16 blocks based on total spam count"

That is not some static thing, it is almost realtime. I am still sure about what you will see there. It never changed past 5 years except addition of zero administrated Poland IP monopoly which is owned by Orange to that list.

So, CNData guys (current mega spammer) are blocked likely by Spamhaus and Spamcop, good riddance. Let them close their God damn open proxy ports and freaking port 135!

CNData IP owners are damaged? Lets say, you hang out with some mafia types as a good citizen and whatever happens, police picks you along with them too. Can you blame the police? Or you should take care about your relations?

Am I harsh? Apologies, I am still reporting spam, even sparing my money and time, I see NOTHING being done, NOTHING AT ALL. Those people are sharing the money with those mobs, I am not american and I don't have to be politically correct all times. Those people doesn't manage their system ON PURPOSE. If you are customer and effected? Find a better managed ISP next time.

I hope Spamhaus also starts a legal fund just like Spamcop. Next time those crooks sue them, they shouldn't just ignore the order, they should sue back with some über evil lawyers and take to their pants including the moron judge losing his/her job!

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Surely all Spamhaus do is maintain a blacklist of network addresses of known spammers?

If that were true, and true of all spam blacklists not just Spamhaus, there would be far fewer problems.

Things go wrong when the addresses on their list are not those of spammers, but just someone in the same IP block as a spammer, someone who was the victim of a false complaint, someone who takes over an IP block that used to be owned by a spammer until they were kicked, etc.

Spamhaus are not liable if the information they published is used by a third party to decide not to accept your mail.

They may or may not be liable for the blocking itself, but I imagine if their actions amount to defamation and someone suffers as a consequence of the actions others take based on that defamation then there is a court case waiting to happen (and rightly so).

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[mgblst]

Right, and everybody even semi-intelligent understands all the nuances of new technology, as well as everything else in the world. Blaming judges for not knowing everything seems a little stupid to me. Judges realise they don't know everything, so they rely on experts to explain technology to them - this can make a difference, but when one side doesn't even bother to present their case, then it is pretty easy to get misled.

There are plenty of stupid people in the world, doing stupid things, without you saying that some things which are complicated but not stupid, are.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[Ilgaz]

Right now I can't logon to IRCnet since some moron using my IP was infected by a worm and became zombie for ages. I have to speak to a friend who only frequents there, I am a "victim" of SORBS... Not!

It is MY ISP who didn't care about numerous spam reports (must be no less than thousands) coming from Spamcop or numerous other ways of reporting. It is THEM who didn't care, it is THEM who still didn't care to contact SORBS (for sure!) for de-listing (even automatic) of IP which belongs to a OS X computer now. It is IP admins job to contact for de-listing or those worms can sure automatically fill a form there to delist themselves!

I am saying, people blaming SORBS or Spamhaus for their communication problems should be pointing their finger to their IP provider instead.

I am sure Spammers lawyers trusted to that general misunderstanding and wrongly blaming of the "messenger".

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[rbanffy]

Couldn't blacklisting some IP address, implying the company is a spammer (or nor trustworthy) be akin to slander?

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[gad_zuki!]

>For practical purposes, what is the difference between this and actually blocking them?

In every way possible. They are publishing a list saying "We have some credible reporst that these domains are spamming." Mail administrators make the decision to actually block. If there is wrong here, then the mail admins shuold be asked why they are using a supposedly unrealible service. Not to mention there is no right to email delivery. This looks like another wacky case of internet law.

Its the managers and admins who actually pull the trigger. If they read 'speed up your system by doing format c:" somewhere on the internet, guess who's at fault here. Its not the internet prankster.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[Pig Hogger]

For example when you tell them that they blacklisted your IP address and you can vouche that you don't spam, but they won't do anything because you belong to a /16 where somewhere sombody is spamming. blacklisting might be a good idea, but organizations like spamhaus make it bad in practice.

This is not the case. When a spammer spams, initially his address is blocked. If the ISP does not responds to complaints by REMOVING the spammer, the listing is "escalated" by being expanded, DELIBERATELY blocking "more" legitimate clients. This is a mean of alerting the other "more" legigimate clients that the ISP is a spam supporter, and that they should either pressure the ISP from dropping their spammers, or simply move elsewhere.

But anyone on a blocklist is not entirely innocent, because by giving their money to a spam-friendly ISP, they indirectly support spammers.

The idea is to eventually make spamming so undesirable that no ISP will keep spammers once warned.

Then the State has been subverted by spammers (CAN SPAM act), the only recourse left is vigilantism.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[Pig Hogger]

This is where we go back to the statement "default judgment". Since Spamhaus never bothered to show up in court to contest the charges, the judge had to decide in favor of the plaintif and award them whatever they asked.

Why should have they shown up in court? The court has no jurisdiction!!! If you were sued in Azerbaijan, would you show up? No way!!! They have no more jurisdiction on you than the Illinois court has in England.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[cortana]

Since Spamhaus have no connection with the US the judge should have punted the case back at the plaintiff.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[cortana]

Hear, hear. I should add that I use the Spamhaus blacklists on my servers--but I don't block mail coming from listed networks. I merely apply more stringent filtering to it. That is how to use blacklists sensibly and responsibly.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[Eunuchswear]

An ISP can allocate to you as many or as few IP addresses as they have available, for example:

$ whois 213.39.1.224
[...]
% Information related to '213.39.1.224 - 213.39.1.255'
 
inetnum: 213.39.1.224 - 213.39.1.255
netname: CALVA-FR
[...]
status: ASSIGNED PA

sure looks like a /27 to me.

Of course you're right that there isn't likely to be a direct route to anything less than a /24, but you can still get to me via my ISP:

[...]
% Information related to '213.39.0.0/18AS3291'
 
route: 213.39.0.0/18
descr: PSINet CH / Interoute
origin: AS3291

But what we're talking about here is spam blackhole lists, not routing, so it's no problem bunging a less than /24 in the list.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[element-o.p.]

Uh, no.

The theory is that if your ISP doesn't give a rip that you are spamming, then Spamhaus (and other blacklist operators) blacklist the offending network. Then *you* get pissed at your ISP and move somewhere else. Once enough customers jump ship because the ISP is irresponsible, then maybe they'll start to enforce their AUP's.

This was a concept that was thankfully pounded into my former employer's (an ISP) head before I started working there, but I still had to remind management quite frequently, that yes, we did in fact want to kick spammers off our network, no matter how many services they bought from us, for this very reason.

Yes, it's a PITA for the poor sap who's trying to send e-mail to Aunt Lucy but can't because his ISP is blacklisted, but it's an effective way of (let's be honest) coercing ISP's into playing nicely with others. Want proof? Why did the spammer spend the time, money and effort to take Spamhaus to court in Illinois? Because Spamhaus was *hurting* them. And that's a good thing >:]

Going slightly off-topic for a moment, this is an illustration of why I won't be moving to Illinois any time soon. For a related stupid story, see http://www.hackbusters.net/

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[cortana]

I should have chosen my words more carefully. I believe Spamhaus maintain a list of networks which are known to have sent spam. In this case all of your eventualities are irrelevant, except for that of the false complaint. In such a case I would hope that Spamhaus would review the original report and decide whether to remove the relevant network from the blacklist.

In the United States I believe truth is an absolute defence against defamation suits, and so I do not see how Spamhaus could possibly be held responible for actions taken by a third party based on information that Spamhaus published. Ironically this is not so in the United Kingdom--on this side of the pond, the defendant must demonstrate that it is the public's interest that the offending information be published. :)

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[fuzznutz]

They add IPs to the list knowing full well that those IPS will be blocked, intending that those IPs will be blocked, with the result that those IPs are blocked. For practical purposes, what is the difference between this and actually blocking them?

How about the fact that they don't actually block them?

I have never understood the controversy around SBLs unless you are a spammer. If I subsribe to a SBL it means I don't want your email when you are on the blocked list. If the SBL blocks email that I want, I simply don't use them. I can be arbitrary and capricious about my email. I can block you if I don't like your tie or bacause you lastname starts with a "W" or because you voted Libertarian. Spamhaus does not block anybody, I do. Spamhaus just provides me with a convenient list of addresses that they believe harbors spammer.

What makes you or anyone else think that you have some inalienable right to send me email that I don't want? If it affects your business, I say tough shit. You can't come into my house and force me to watch your commercials either. If I rip out all the ads in my latest issue of Islands Magazine, you can't do Jack about it either. SBLs are a Godsend when it comes to spam reduction.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[FireFury03]

Spamhaus are not liable if the information they published is used by a third party to decide not to accept your mail.

I guess it could be considered libel since by listing your address they are effectively making a claim that you are a spammer (assuming the claim is untrue of course). (IANAL)

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[penix1]

I agree it is tough for those caught in the middle of a ISP who supports spammers and spamhaus fight. That is the way is has to be though because nothing else has worked. ISPs aren't just put on the list willy-nilly-neigh. They are given every opertunity and then some to fix their problem. Now it is up to you to put pressure on the ISP where it hurts. If your ISP is more interested in supporting spammers than legit customers, that is something for you to consider.

As for this case, there are several issue that I think should have been done differently. You NEVER ignore a court summons or you run the risk of default judgements like this. The case they had in Florida against the eAmericaMarketing.com (or something like that) shows how to properly handle things like this. Answer the complaint challenging every word in it including jurisdiction, how spamhaus blacklist works, the amount of spam and / or spam support offered by plaintiff, etc. I suspect it would never make it to the discovery phase just like in Florida. It also would give spamhaus the right to file claims of harrassment, extortion, and whatever other UK laws that an action like this would provoke including the original offense of spamming UK residents. And best of all, they could use the same tactic this schmuck is using by filing it in the UK.

I feel ignoring both the charges then the order will really hurt the cause spamhaus is supposed to be pushing.

B.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[Malc]

"ow, what the impact of an American civil judgment is on the directors of a British company, I have no clue"

Well, they probably can't to the US now without risk of being arrested. In fact, I would advise them not to fly anywhere near N. America in case there's a problem that causes their flight to re-route and land at a US airport. There's been some stories recently of senior of staff from UK online betting companies being arrested in the US.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[Intron]

They don't block the spam themselves. How could they?

Yeah. But that's weaselling out of it.

So if I use a magic 8-ball to block spam, you would sue Tyco Toys?

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[whoever57]

Then he could use a free email provider.

Such as Gmail. The same Gmail that was listed by the XBL a few months back?

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[Sique]

That's right. It was just an answer to the theory of the parent poster that Spamhaus doesn't do anything worth a civil lawsuit, because they don't actually block. If an theoretical, alleged spammer would say that even the evidence Spamhaus might have about him wouldn't prove spamming, and thus the blacklisting were wrong, he could sue for libel. So even though Spamhaus' own list doesn't actually block anything, the fact that it is published to everyone, and other people use it for for blocking makes everything Spamhaus publishes on the list a public statement. And this might be contested in court.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[tomjen]

To make someone guilty of a crime mearly because they are near (or even best friends with) the worlds greatest crimminal is wrong. So is spamhause policy. If I am not sending spam (and I am not) I should not end up on such a list. I have an isp (a very local one) i am their customer. I dont care about who their other customers are. If spamhaus blocks me because of the other clients then I would hate spamhaus, not the ISP. If the firm sends out spam I support spamhaus but otherwise an inocent company has been hurt, and spamhaus should be forced out of buisness.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[Dun Malg]

I guess it could be considered libel since by listing your address they are effectively making a claim that you are a spammer (assuming the claim is untrue of course).

Even then it'd be a tough row to hoe. A reasonable belief that the information is true is generally enough to escape libel. If Spamhaus can show that its belief that a certain subnet was home to spammers was reasonable and based on believable reports, it's not libel.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[Ilgaz]

As you are a slashdot user, I don't have to explain what happens if your local ISP deals with devil and decides to snoop yes?

Careful I would say. Spamhaus only cares about MAJOR spam operations. If it is major operation and your ISP deals with them, it should really,really alert you as an online entity.

If you see my other messages I am actually victim of some moron zombie windows machine which spammed whole planet and got into SORBS, I really remember contacting my ISP about delisting and also used their easy web form hoping someone (The Postmaster!) will delist IP with one click.

Guess what? I am still there, my IP is in "open proxy" database. Do I blame SORBS? Hell no!

It is my moron ISP who let their customer spam whole planet with open proxy, not disconnecting him and explaining what that guy must do when he calls "My modem lights are off". As they don't click a freaking URL in a plain/simple english message, I am expecting too much of course. :)

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[Anonymous Coward]

But it DOES matter how much the judge knows about technology. Just look at the RIAA vs People cases, and how the judges can be swayed because they don't understand the defendants point of view.

This legal system is fucked up beyond recognition.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that doesn't work either. They'll tell you to complain to Spamhaus. That's actually one of the selling points of Spamhaus' BL, that you won't have to hear from the people you block because they will handle it for you.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[vipvop]

I agree, SORBS are completely retarded. More specifically, the SORBS-DUHL list - it may say it shouldn't be used as a SPAM blocking list but people still use it for that. My work has a static IP address (business DSL) and we got on the dynamic IP address list - trying to get off is impossible, even after getting our ISP to change the TTL for the DNS records, and various other steps.

Our personal impression at work is that SORBS is run by retards who like to feel important by getting major ISPs to work with them. I strongly recommend not using any of their lists, and use more effective SPAM filtering techniques. I could go on and on but if anyone doubts this just do a search for SORBS problems.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[OverlordQ]

Not all of the outgoing Gmail servers are on the list. Just a couple. Course I do find it annoying when my mail get's sent through one, but am I worrying? Not really.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[schon]

You NEVER ignore a court summons

Consider this message proper notice that I am suing you in Australian Federal court. The court date is October 10, 2006, you must be present at the courthouse located at 123 Kangaroo Ct, Melbourne, Australia. Failure to appear will result in a default judgement against you in the amount of $100,000,000 Australian Quatloos.

So, you're gonna buy a ticket to Australia now that I've said that?

The problem with your logic is that they *didn't* ignore a court summons - they were never served with a summons. You can't ignore a summons that was never served.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[RodgerDodger]

No, what the judge had to do was acknowledge he had no jurisdiction over Spamhaus in the first place. That was the law.

Some local US judges seem to do this sort of thing regularly - maybe it's a side effect of being an elected official (and thus trying to be popular with your electorate) instead of being an appointed official, and thus only interested (supposedly) in upholding the law?

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[penix1]

So, you're gonna buy a ticket to Australia now that I've said that?

Sure! I could use a break from good ol' WV even if it does cost me $100,000,000 Australian Quatloos...

The problem with your logic is that they *didn't* ignore a court summons - they were never served with a summons. You can't ignore a summons that was never served.

Yes, that is the flaw in my logic IF they weren't served. However, they posted not only the complaint but an answer to it on their website BEFORE the default judgment was entered. To say they knew nothing about it is IMO dishonest to say the least even if technically correct.

That is still neither here nor there as they have a default judgment against them that can be devastating to any spamhaus members that are in the US as well as any assets they may have here. Also, this spammer can use this conviction to further their cause. Do they really want to risk that for one spammer? This issue needs to be addressed not ignored.

B.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[zerocool^]

Hrm.

See, I was under the pretty clear impression that, even if you got an IP allocation less than a /24 (a webhosting company I used to work for had a couple of really small allocations from our ISP to cover our router interfaces), upstream providers never announced a route smaller than a /24 into the global route tables. They would aggregate smaller routes under their larger allocation and route the traffic internally to you.

But, I guess my question is - would a RBHL use the listed route, or the allocated block?

~Wx

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[Eunuchswear]

See, I was under the pretty clear impression that, even if you got an IP allocation less than a /24 (a webhosting company I used to work for had a couple of really small allocations from our ISP to cover our router interfaces), upstream providers never announced a route smaller than a /24 into the global route tables. They would aggregate smaller routes under their larger allocation and route the traffic internally to you.

You are exactly right.

But, I guess my question is - would a RBHL use the listed route, or the allocated block?

Afaik they use individual addresses, escalating to allocated blocks in the case of big spam operations.

I don't think they look at routes at all.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[91degrees]

How about the fact that they don't actually block them?

And criminal masterminds simply tell their stooges to commit crimes. It doesn't make them any less liable.

I have never understood the controversy around SBLs unless you are a spammer.

Accuracy of the lists.

If I subsribe to a SBL it means I don't want your email when you are on the blocked list.

Given that some people have had non-spam email blocked by certain block-lists, and complained about it, it appears that some people use block lists (possibly indirectly through their ISP), and DO want the email, then clearly this is not true in every case.

I can block you if I don't like your tie or bacause you lastname starts with a "W" or because you voted Libertarian.

Indeed you can. You have every right to. Can you also block email addresses of users of a server you administrate based on these same criteria?

Spamhaus just provides me with a convenient list of addresses that they believe harbors spammer.

Spamhaus provide a blocking list that they claim contains known spammers. Trying to rephrase that to make it sound inoccuous is just weasel words.

Look - these lists are a useful tool for spam reduction, and not a silver bullet. Use them as part of an anti-spam policy. The problem is that some people, who should know better, simply apply a generic block to all adressess on them, which affects other people.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[fuzznutz]

I can block you if I don't like your tie or bacause you lastname starts with a "W" or because you voted Libertarian.

Indeed you can. You have every right to. Can you also block email addresses of users of a server you administrate based on these same criteria?

You betcha I can. I administer a server for a smallish company and the CEO is absolutely tickled with the antispam efforts I have put in place. One of those efforts is Spamhaus. So far, I have had to whitelist only two servers for legitimate business. I also administer a server for a small group of friends. The general consensus amoung them is that they want to add greylisting to the antispam effort.

As I said before, nothing gives you the inalienable right to send me your email, spam or otherwise. You may not like it, but I don't have to accept your email. I do my very best to listen to my users and make sure they receive the email they need to do their jobs (and I don't monitor use or disallow personal use of company email), but if they disagree with the policy, they are perfectly welcome to get a free email account with any of the multitudes on the net.

Spam is a huge problem and I mean huge. It is unfortunate that such drastic measures must be taken, but when you get 2000 messages a day and only 20 of them are legitimate, something must be done. If it is a problem for an "innocent" server, you simply route your mail through an reputable server upstream or change providers.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[91degrees]

You betcha I can. I administer a server for a smallish company and the CEO is absolutely tickled with the antispam efforts I have put in place.

Would he be so happy if you blocked people who were libertarians or shose last name began with a W? Or even if Spamhaus listed some sites he wanted to receive email from?

As I said before, nothing gives you the inalienable right to send me your email, spam or otherwise.

But this is not the point. If you are an admin and you use a bad spammer list then you're incompetent. If you produce a list of known spammers, then you're obliged to make it as accurate as possible. This has absollutely nothing to do with the rights of the sender. It's all about the rights of the recipient. Your job is to block as much spam as possible whilst blocking absolutely no legitimate email ever. If you do block legitimate email then you're not doing your job properly.

Incidentally - I've thought of another possible objection people may have. These lists are also used as a means to bully others into not sending spam, or to get ISPs to remove spammers from their servers. Some people have objections to a self appointed third party decising who may and may not send email.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[91degrees]

Does Tyco sell the magic 8 ball as a spam blocking tool?

Do people use magic 8 balls to block spam?

Is a magic 8 ball predudiced towards some addresses oer others?

Did I say anything about suing anyone?

So, if a magic 8 ball was sold as a spam blocking tool, and it always said "No way" to certain adresses based on arbitrary and slighlty subjective criteria, and it was actually a popular tool to block spam, no, I wouldn't sue Tyco toys.

But I'd say that anyone who defended them as just a toy manufacturer was weaselling out of it.

Re:Spamhaus does alot of ignoring

[fuzznutz]

Would he be so happy if you blocked people who were libertarians or shose last name began with a W?

No, but I wouldn't do that while managing his server. If Spamhaus began arbitrarily blocking those, I would simply chose another SBL. Spamhaus is not the only player on the block.

Or even if Spamhaus listed some sites he wanted to receive email from?

They already do. I whitelist two sites to get around this problem. The CEO is fine with this.

This has absollutely nothing to do with the rights of the sender. It's all about the rights of the recipient.

My sentiments exactly. You have every right to send stand atop the highest hill you can find and scream to the top of your lungs. I have every right to put my hands over my ears and ignore you.

Your job is to block as much spam as possible whilst blocking absolutely no legitimate email ever.

Yes, and I do just that. I am not perfect, just as Spamhaus is not perfect, but Spamhaus makes my job considerably easier. I might have to tweak the server every now and then, but for the company, it is worthwhile considering the benefits. I am willing to bet that I block less legitimate email than was lost while sorting through thousands of spams each day before SBL implementation. Employees would waste hours each day sorting through email.

Incidentally - I've thought of another possible objection people may have. These lists are also used as a means to bully others into not sending spam, or to get ISPs to remove spammers from their servers.

I have no problem with that at all. In fact I find it abhorrent that any ISP would knowingly host a spammer. Putting pressure on rogue ISPs this way is not so different from boycotting, a time honored tradition. If an ISP wants to make money hosting a spammer (illegal is many states) then it must live with those consequences.

Some people have objections to a self appointed third party decising who may and may not send email.

Their objections are misplaced. Spamhaus does not prevent ANYONE from sending email. Spamhaus allows recipients to make decisions about who they want to accept mail from. BIG DIFFERENCE!

Hmmmm

[BCW2]

Sounds like a very appropriate response. Illinois is trying to enforce an ill-conceived law and Spamhouse is within their rights in under the laws of the country they opperate from. I do want to see the judges reaction to this one, it should be worth a laugh.

Re:Hmmmm

[Moby Cock]

Screw the judge. I want to hear what Ted 'Tubes' Stevens has to say.

Re:Hmmmm

[forgotten_my_nick]

They will probably have them extradited like the Natwest Three. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NatWest_Three

Re:Hmmmm

[Ilgaz]

Spam is a million dollar dirty business which even moved to "automatic" , "worm coder hired", "p2p shared" and "paid" thing.

If I was technical media,I would investigate the judge. If a mafia boss wrongfully released and reporter who investigates his wrongful actions go to jail,what would traditional media would do? IT media should start being real reporters, not some "New iPod images leaked" type of things.

I remember old times you could actually fight/argue with the spammer since it was a real person.

Those big time spammers are hiring worm coders to carry their business now and I heard even some "bidding" involved. There is no more "let me get a free AOL account and spam everyone" HUMAN around. It is all advanced AI code even including advanced OCR schemes.

Color me confused.

[Kirin Fenrir]

I'm no lawyer, so can somebody explain to me how a court can say that Spamhaus, a service that customers voluntarily sign up for, cannot index IP addresses theat users wish to block? There is nothing Spamhaus does that a local mail server cannot do, they just already have a blacklist for you. Spamhaus is just, "Hey, don't trust these guys."

That's like saying I can't go to Consumer Reports and get an opinion on what car to buy.

Re:Color me confused.

[kalirion]

No, that's more like saying Consumer Reports can't say "Don't buy a Ford Pinto."

Re:Color me confused.

[Kierthos]

Ehhh... not quite. See, e360insight is claiming that they're not a spammer, and thus their inclusion on the Spamhaus list is hurting their business, their image, is defamatory, and/or whatever else they think that they can get away with. And, because of this decision the (obviously clue-impaired) judge agreed with e360insight.

The analogy (with regards to your reference to Consumer Reports) would be if Consumer Reports published an opinion that a car company strongly disagreed with and believed was incorrect. You know, like saying "The new Ford SUV gets excellent mileage, considering it runs on the souls of orphaned children."

Re:Color me confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a default judgement, so the courts really didn't say anything.

Re:Color me confused.

[soarkalm]

I think there might be something in that the blurb says "defualt" judgement. If the defendant doesn't show up, then the case automatically goes against him, no?

Re:Color me confused.

[jimicus]

Don't see why some consumer organisation can't say "We don't recommend you buy (product) for (reason)", however, and you choose how much attention you pay to this recommendation.

SpamAssassin already does this - it's quite possible to set it up so something can be sent from something registered with spamhaus yet make it through the filter if everything else indicates it's not spam.

Re:Color me confused.

[squiggleslash]

With libel laws being even worse in Britain, it'd be interesting for them to take the case to Britain now. In Britain, the burden of proof, in defamation cases, is actually against the defendant (that is, once it's proven a statement was made by the defendant that clearly harms the reputation of the plaintiff, the defendant has to prove it is truthful and fair. Yeah, fair. Truth is not always, by itself, a defense.)

Re:Color me confused.

[ADRA]

The judge was probably in the right sadly. Without -any- defense, the judge has no choice but to side with the plaintiff. Don't ask me how they came up with the damages though..

Re:Color me confused.

[91degrees]

What if they say "We recommend you don't buy a (product) because it's made from squashed babies". When the product isn't?

Re:Color me confused.

[cfulmer]

Not many details in the article, but I think that they may be claiming defamation -- along the lines of "You're going around telling everybody that we're spammers. We're not and your statements are hurting our business."

It's the same sort of thing as if somebody had said "Accountant Bob stole some client money," and Bob's business was hurt as a result.

Re:Color me confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

You, like everyone else in this story, have no idea what you're talking about.

Before you call the judge "clue-imparied" again maybe you should "get a clue" about what a default judgement means and what Spamhuas had to do (or rather not do) to wind up having one entered against them.

Somebody here is clueless, and I'm pretty sure it's not the judge.

Re:Color me confused.

[michajoe]

Damn, with a name like e360insight, is is f*cking OBVIOUS that they are spammers. Or purveyors of fine spyware. Or both.

Re:Color me confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm no lawyer, so can somebody explain to me how a court can say that Spamhaus, a service that customers voluntarily sign up for, cannot index IP addresses theat users wish to block?

I don't know what you mean by that.
Probably not.

Re:Color me confused.

[Punt3r]

But the definition of "Spam" and "Spammer" are nowhere near set in stone.

Most of us can agree that the pron and male-enhancement e-mails that use botnets and fake mail headers are spam. But some people consider _all_ bulk marketing email as spam.

So if Spamhaus's usage of the word doesn't match e360insight's, does that make it libel/slander? Do cross-cultural differences in interpretation of the language come into play? Does the intended audience of Spamhaus's "speach" matter (IT Administrators, not marketers)?

Spamhaus seems to provide a reasonable service (though I don't use it).

Re:Color me confused.

[Moodie-1]

Hey now! Don't knock the Pinto! I once owned one. A very nice one. And it was still (almost as) nice even after the hatchback (and rear bumper) was caved in more than a foot after some nitwit with no brakes rammed its rear. And I'm still here - no explosion, even though the car was not yet equipped with one of those gas tank guard plates. Was that luck? Or could it have been a case of the public's (mistaken?) belief in its exaggerated vulnerability in thinking think that the car was badly designed? Who knows? I wish I still had the car. It'd be worth some serious bucks today.

Re:Color me confused.

[Rucker]

IANAL, the article doesn't have many details, and my legal knowledge on this matter consists solely of Wikipedia entries, but it appears they could have argued Tortious Interference which may qualify as Minimum Contacts giving the court Personal Jurisdiction. Among other things, Personal Jurisdiction is required for enforcement of foreign judgements.

Whew. Gotta love Wikipedia.

Re:Color me confused.

[squiggleslash]

Given Spamhaus would have difficulty arguing that its use of "spam" and "spammer" is anything but negative, given it operates a blacklisting service, I doubt e360insight would have any difficulty claiming Spamhaus is damaging its reputation.

Re:Color me confused.

[Ilgaz]

Their site says 'Please contact us with questions about this case or to INQUIRE ABOUT OUR MARKETING SERVICES." (yea, right!). As a person reporting spam for years instead of ignoring, I see we are dealing with some dark, botnet connected, worm author hiring, open proxy bidding company here.

Such people are very advanced , they aren't stupid to spam via their own domain/IPs or distribute spyware/spamware (yes exists) via their own space.

So, if you check their IP space, they are clean.

It makes me wonder if large spam reporting organisations such as Spamcop or large device vendors like Ironport (Spamcops parent) and famous http://www.cyveillance.com/ can't provide evidence to court or spamhaus?

They have terabytes or petabytes of spam in their hand.

I don't think anyone including those crooks can mess with Cyvelliance ;)

Re:Color me confused.

[kalirion]

It was luck. I don't have a link, but I remember hearing in lecture at some college course or other that they did 20mph rear crash tests. In 11 out of 12 cases, the gas tank exploded. That's about the same odds as landing a gut-shot straight draw on the river in Texas Hold'em, isn't it?

Re:Color me confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

Regarding parent post's critique of the name e360insight and your mention of Cyveillance: Cyveillance 360 http://www.cyveillance.com/web/process/cy_360.htm

Re:Color me confused.

[Mister Whirly]

"I'm still here - no explosion, even though the car was not yet equipped with one of those gas tank guard plates. Was that luck? Or could it have been a case of the public's (mistaken?) belief in its exaggerated vulnerability in thinking think that the car was badly designed?"

Nope, that's statistics. The Pinto was more prone to having it's gas tank catch fire and explode. All that means is more likely than the average for other cars. Say the rate in other cars that this happens is 1 out of every 100,000 accidents. If the Pinto's rate is 2 out of every 100,000 then that is twice as likely to happen. Sounds bad, but the real world difference between 1 or 2 out of 100,000 is negligible (unless you are the 1 or 2).

Re:Color me confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the offense here potential libel? Spamhaus is publishing asserting the the company is spamming when they are not. It is like the Wall Street Journal calling a company crooked if they are not. The act here is of publishing false information.

Re:Color me confused.

[JoeRandomHacker]

The analogy (with regards to your reference to Consumer Reports) would be if Consumer Reports published an opinion that a car company strongly disagreed with and believed was incorrect.

Funny you should mention that. Consumer Reports was actually sued by the Sharper Image people after CR reported that SI's Ionic Breeze basically didn't do anything. If the facts as determinined by reasoned observations are on your side, it shouldn't matter whether the subject of the observations disagrees; you should still be able to report your observations without fear of legal reprisals.

Re:Color me confused.

[jimicus]

Then I probably wouldn't sue them in a country totally different to the one they're based in.

But IANAL.

Re:Color me confused.

[Kazoo the Clown]

I'm no lawyer, so can somebody explain to me how a court can say that Spamhaus, a service that customers voluntarily sign up for, cannot index IP addresses theat users wish to block? There is nothing Spamhaus does that a local mail server cannot do, they just already have a blacklist for you. Spamhaus is just, "Hey, don't trust these guys."

I have no problem with this is the customer is the end user, but in most cases it's not the end user who has chosen to block via Spamhaus, but an ISP. And before you say "well, choose another ISP," what if you had an email account established with an ISP for years and then the ISP suddenly decides to start using Spamhaus without consulting you? Does everyone have to host their own SMTP server on their own domain in order to insure a reasonably reliable email service? Would that even insure it, since someone else's ISP might enter a typo and inadvertently block your domain thinking it's a SPAM source? You can only guarantee that you won't bounce incoming email, you have no control over rogue entities who can block your outgoing email however they like and not be held responsible? Does it make a difference that some of these rogue entities have been given some semblance of acceptability merely because an assortment of ISPs have been convinced that using them is actually a good idea?

Suppose the US Mail service suddenly started using a blocking system to try to eliminate junk mail. Then that important letter is sent telling you that your Aunt Bessie died and left you 3.1M providing you stay overnight in her old haunted mansion on the next Halloween after her death or forfeit the whole thing. The US Mail system misrecognizes the letter as junk mail and blocks it. Would you just say "oh well, it's a reasonable sacrifice in exhange for blocking all that junk mail?"

Suppose your phone company decided that in the interest of blocking phone solicitation they would electronically block incoming calls to your number from a maintained list, and you're Aunt Bessie's lawyer's number inadvertenly and erroneously made it onto the list. Feeling better about blocking those phone solicitors?

On the other hand, if YOU ask the phone company to block calls from a list of numbers, or if YOU ask the mail service to block letters from certain addresses (and they would actually agree to it), I have no problem with it because YOU decided, not the carrier.

ISPs should be treated as common carriers (http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archiv ed_issues/ipj_5-3/uncommon_carrier.html), IMHO, and not allowed to pick-and-choose what they will deliver and what they will not. If they'd like to see spam reduced, then they should implement blocking services that their users can choose to enable, or NOT. The shotgun approach to spam simply produces unacceptable collateral damage.

Re:Color me confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear e360insight,
I have noticed your recent actions against spamhaus. As such (and I am sure you will appreciate this) I have now configured my mail servers to ignore any listing of your company which are included in the spamhaus blocklist. Instead I added your listing to my permanent list at the router. This listing will never expire.

Have a nice day asshole.

Re:Color me confused.

[91degrees]

Okayyy... What's that got to do with what you said?

Re:Color me confused.

[jimicus]

The argument is that some consumer watchdog organisation says "Don't buy this product, it's made from dead babies" (which of course it isn't).

${MANUFACTURER} isn't too happy with this report, so decides to sue the consumer watchdog.

All well and good so far. What doesn't make sense is why ${MANUFACTURER} should sue the consumer watchdog in a country other than the one where the watchdog is based - after all, the consumer watchdog is going to completely ignore the court.

My point is that were I the manufacturer, I'd be suing the consumer watchdog in the country it's based in.

It's the law.

[Anonymous Coward]

An $11.7M default judgement against a foreign entity. You guys crack me up.

Whats next?

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

Am I going to get sued for blocking all those random girls from eastern europe and asia from contacting me via Skype?

Re:Whats next?

[azzy]

Only if you let us share your list.

Please, can we share your list?

Re:Whats next?

[whoppo]

You mean if you've got skype, you've got hot ChiXors from EU and Asia calling you? What have I been missing?!?!

Re:Whats next?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, more likely you've got trafficked women (slaves) who are forced to flirt with you trying to get your money for their pimps. Welcome to the internet.

Re:Whats next?

[Malc]

Can I buy your Skype ID and password?

Re:Whats next?

[nlmille1]

You say po-TAY-toh, I say po-TAH-toh...

great

[stocke2]

this is just great, now spammers sue because you block thier spam. what's next? maybe cat burglers can sue those people with iron bars on thier windows, recoup thier loss of revenue

Re:great

[techpawn]

Didn't someone sue when they fell on a knife after breaking into someone's house and won or is that just an myth?

Re:great

[UbuntuDupe]

Or the RIAA can ...

nah, that's too easy.

Re:great

[tygerstripes]

Not quite, but in the UK if you top a wall barbed wire or crushed glass on which a burglar cuts themselves, you've broken the law. Brambles are fine though :-)

Re:great

[KarmaMB84]

There was a man that tried to rob someone's home but managed to get trapped in their garage with no way out for days. When the owners came back, he was barely alive and sued them. He won.

The knife thing is perfectly possible. I suppose in a civil lawsuit, the judge is at his discretion as far as allowing a case where someone had no business (breaking & entering) of being in a house where they were injured.

There have also been cases of people breaking into houses, getting shot then suing and winning. I guess the legal system in the US is saying "if you can't kill them in one shot and save us the trouble of prosecuting them, you deserve to lose everything you have".

Re:great

[VdG]

There was an interestsing one locally (to me - not you) recently. Woman woke up to find a burglar in her bedroom. She dashed into the kitchen and grabbed a saucepan and proceeded to beat him about the head. When the pan broke (!) she got another one and continued, eventually chasing him down the street.

When the burglar reached court, the judge appluaded the woman's actions. Contrary to the image the UK tabloid press like to present, it is not illegal to defend your person or property with force in the UK.

Re:great

[Anonymous Coward]

When I took business law (lo so many years ago...but I digress) there was a case in California where a man was in the process of burgling a school (on the roof) when he stumbled over and fell through a skylight. When he hit the floor beneath, he broke his back. He sued, saying that the school district was negligent for not putting up a warning sign that a skylight was there. He won a substantial award, which was upheld upon appeal.

Re:great

[trewornan]

it is not illegal to defend your person or property with force in the UK

Perhaps someone should have told the judge in Tony Martin's case.

Re:great

[VdG]

That went waaay beyond self defense. Shooting someone in the back, from a considerable distance when he tried to run away and could not conceivably have been considered an immediate threat is not acceptable behaviour.

Tony Martin got what he deserved and the whole thing got grotesquely distorted in the press as they tried to make him out to be something other than the nutter he really was for the sake of a good story. Unfortunately, it's made a lingering impression on the public consciousness and still gets trotted out from time to time as an example of how the law is failing us, sob.

There was some back-bencher tried to get a law through earlier this year to enshrine the right to defence in law. A pathetic attempt to garner votes, as the law already makes it clear that you're allowed to defend yourself pretty much however you see fit. (All the stuff about having to lose less force than your attacker is complete nonsense, although like all law it's all pretty complicated and you don't have a completely free hand: killing people is always frowned upon and using an illegal weapon won't do you any favours.)

Re:great

[Eunuchswear]

And this is why no walls in the UK ever have barbed wire or broken glass on them.

Not.

Why bother writing something that 0.001 nanoseconds of thought would have revealed as nonsense?

Re:great

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a man that tried to rob someone's home but managed to get trapped in their garage with no way out for days. When the owners came back, he was barely alive and sued them. He won.

Nice story, but do you have an actual citation of the case?

Re:great

[BillX]

Would that be "intentional interference with prospective economic advantage"? ;)

Re:great

[tygerstripes]

Clearly that's as far as your thought went then, troll. You can top your wall with rusty knives if you like, but if a burglar cuts themselves on it you ARE liable under UK law.

In the same way, if you keep a meat-cleaver under your bed in case of break-ins and use it, you will be convicted of assault/GBH/whatever because it is perceived that it was a premeditated act (ie whoever comes through that door, you were deliberately prepared with a weapon that was likely to cause serious injury and possibly death). If you just have a baseball bat by your bed because "you're a sportsman", however, you're covered because it was an impromptu defensive weapon. It's basically the same with topping your walls. The exception is on industrial sites where the presence of unauthorised persons is an obvious threat to themselves, such as utilities, chemicals and other heavy industrial processing.

So it sucks, and the law is hardly a help when it comes to defending your home - that much is true. Fortunately it's rare that a burglar is stupid enough to reveal themselves by attempting to prosecute the property owner, although if they get caught and convicted then they probably will out of spite and compensation.

I've seen this sort of criminal proceeding first-hand, so unless you've ever worked with UK community policing, you can keep your damned trap shut.

Re:great

[Eunuchswear]

You have seen someone charged with a criminal offense because they put barbed wire on a wall?

Care to identify the case?

Re:great

[Eunuchswear]

Ok, seems I may be slightly wrong here: http://www.askthe.police.uk/content/Q78.htm says:

Using barbed/razor wire and broken glass in order to stop people getting in to your home is not advisable. You are making yourself liable to civil action as you owe a duty of care to ensure that visitors to your property are reasonably safe. As absurd as it may seem you also owe a lower duty of care to trespassers.

So, not a crime, but you might get sued.

Good for them

[Damastus the WizLiz]

I actually find the whole situation ammusing. But I say good for them. I am glad the company knows its rights and will not be walked all over by a court system well known for allowing people to abuse the ability to file civil suits.

Re:Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

"a court system well known for allowing people to abuse the ability to file civil suits"

You mean like the High Court in England which allows perjurers like "lord" Archer and Aitken to falsely sue for libel? (Aitken lost. Archer won. Both were subsequently convicted of perjury and other criminal offences relating to Perverting the Course of Justice. Both were imprisoned)

Re:Good for them

[Skye16]

Abuse... the ability? IMO, I'm much happier with the system that allows anyone to file a civil suit for any reason, than to allow our legislative body determine who should be allowed to file a suit and under what circumstances. That would quickly turn into a case of the rich and powerful tilting the field even further in their direction.

Re:Good for them

[Damastus the WizLiz]

I have to agree the right to file is a good thing. but there are alot of suits that should be dropped immediatly on grounds of common sense.

operating in the US?

[gEvil (beta)]

"This ruling confirms e360insight's position that Spamhaus.org is a fanatical, vigilante organization that operates in the United States with blatant disregard for U.S. law,"

Are they operating within the US or are people choosing to use their service within the US? There's a big difference between the two as far as I'm concerned.

Re:operating in the US?

[theckhd]

FTA:

The Spamhaus blocklist is a database of verified spam sources that is supplied at no cost to help e-mail administrators clean incoming e-mail streams.

It seems it's the latter.

Re:operating in the US?

[gEvil (beta)]

Exactly, which gives them every right to ignore this ruling IMHO. However, if I were involved with Spamhaus, I certainly wouldn't visit the US anytime soon.

Re:operating in the US?

[theckhd]

I agree. However, Liquidcooled brought up a good point in an earlier thread:

The SBL database is updated 24/7 by a dedicated international Spamhaus team (US, UK, NL, IT, CA, JP, CN) and is broadcast by 32 SBL zone mirror servers based in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, South Africa, Sweden, UK and USA.

Google cannot ignore the laws of the land where their servers are based, if they want to operate in foreign countries they should follow local laws.

I wonder how exact this analogy is though, since Google is distinctly for-profit, and make money off of the work the servers do. I can't seem to find a reference on the Spamhaus website as to how Spamhaus supports itself.

Re:operating in the US?

[gEvil (beta)]

I would think it's a matter of whether they have any administrative offices or are incorporated in those other countries. If they're just plunking some files down on a server and have no corporate (or nonprofit) business presence in those countries, then they shouldn't be held to the laws of those countries.

Re:operating in the US?

[Fnkmaster]

Right - my guess is (I don't know this for sure) there is no "Spamhaus-owned" server in the US at all. Just a server run by some company or organization that chooses to mirror the Spamhaus list.

And the people involved in all the mentioned countries are not employees of Spamhaus - they are just volunteers who donate some time to do stuff for a UK organization.

Just because an organization has volunteers from another country or companies in another country that mirror its free data does not mean the courts of that other country automatically have jurisdiction.

If they are actually hiring full time employees or leasing server space in the US themselves, then they might have an issue.

Re:operating in the US?

[BiggerIsBetter]

Interesting comment. I recall that recently a gentleman operating a certain online gambling site in the UK was arrested in the US, for breaching US laws by operating his UK site. I wonder if this inspired the spammer to follow suit?

good luck lads.

[gbjbaanb]

While ignoring the US system of 'Justice' is probably something Americans should do too, especially when it concerns implausibly large damages payouts, I think Spamhaus will need a lawyer or two. I refer the honourable anti-spam heroes to a similar case of fairness, justice and all-round puppy-like agreements.

Re:good luck lads.

[squiggleslash]

The Natwest 3 concerns a criminal case. This is a civil case. There's no risk of extradiction.

Re:good luck lads.

[Ender Ryan]

While ignoring the US system of 'Justice' is probably something Americans should do too, especially when it concerns implausibly large damages payouts

Personally, I'd love to see that, but in the U.S., I'm pretty sure you'll just wind up in jail, or have your bank accounts seized and the money distributed to the winning party... and then wind up in jail.

Re:good luck lads.

[Apocalypse111]

...especially since there's just no juresdiction in the first place.

Re:good luck lads.

[rahrens]

Actually, this case, and others like it, filed against foreign entities residing in foreign countries, is allowed under a federal law (which is why it was filed in fed court) allowing US citizens to sue foreigners that have harmed them under US law. this came about as a result of a case or cases some thirty years ago where some US citizens were either held hostage or otherwise harmed in some way. I cannot remember the exact situation, but the stories of American citizens being unable to hold the guilty parties accountable resulted in Congressional action because of public outrage.

The idea is that if you are harmed by someone outside of the US, and they have broken US law (tort in this case), then you can sue, and if you win, get a judgement against them that can be upheld in any US Federal court. At that time, you can then have whatever US assets the losing party may have either held until the he pays, or have bank accounts, etc, seized for payment.

Since in this case, the losing entity not only resides outside of the US, but apparantly has no US assets, then all the winner can do is watch them to be sure they never gain such assets. Since there is no expiration date on such a judgement, the winner can hold that judgement over the losing party's head basically forever.

Re:good luck lads.

[forgotten_my_nick]

yea if they really wanted they would just kidnap them anyway? :P ... I'll get my coat.

Slight error

[Guppy06]

"in an uncontested trial in an Illinois court."

It isn't an Illinois court, it's a federal district court that happens to be in Illinois.

Re:Slight error

[labnet]

I'm interested.
How do extradition laws work in the USA?
Would it have to be a criminal rather civil prosecution before the USA could extradite someone over a court finding?

Cost to defend themselves not worth it

[RaigetheFury]

Why should a UK waste it's funding on defending a frivolous lawsuit that doesn't affect them. Now how the hell a US court can sue a company that doesn't exist within it's jurisdiction blows my mind.

Re:Cost to defend themselves not worth it

[clickclickdrone]

But that's what the US does, assumes whatever works there works throughout the world whether it's laws or just general ways of life. people and companies throughout the world are constantly fending off legal actions in regard to things that are quite legal on their home turf but illegal in the US.

Re:Cost to defend themselves not worth it

[ohearn]

Because US politicians seem to think the entire internet is in teh jurisdiction of the US courts.

Re:Cost to defend themselves not worth it

[amliebsch]

If they have servers in the United States, then doesn't it exist at least partially within U.S. jurisdiction? Just like Ebay has to obey French law for its French servers, for example.

Re:Cost to defend themselves not worth it

[aliendisaster]

Didn't you know? We're all living in America.

Re:Cost to defend themselves not worth it

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think eBay FR is a registared FR company.

Figth back

[Anonymous Coward]

If I remember right there is a law in Uk that states that filling a meritless case is illegal.

I think that this is the case.

Missed opportunity

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I dont know why Spamhaus missed this great business opportunity.

It shoud send out the following email to everyone.

Dear Email Recepient,

My name is Sir Arthur Cunnigham, Bar-at-Law, Queen's Bench, City of London, the United Kingdom. The Illinois Supreme court, Chicago Illinois, USA has awarded a judgement against me for the sum of 11 million dollars. If you have received any unsolicited email from me, I will have to pay you, 535$ as your share of the settlement. Even if you have not received any mail from me before, this email itself will entitle you a share towards the settlement.

So please send me your name, your address, your social security number, your bank account number, the routing number of your bank so that I can remit the said sum without undue delay. In addition to verify your identity, please let me have a valid credit card number, its expiration date and the card verification number. Please allow six weeks for me to raid^H^H^H^H credit your account with the money I owe you.

Have a nice day. Thank you

Re:Missed opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

U hv mssd het pnt.

Re:Missed opportunity

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

You are right. I misunderstood the synopsis, I had not read the details. I seemed to have completely misunderstood the case.

Competence of the court

[Flying pig]

Can any lawyer comment on how and why the US court thought it was competent to try the case in the first place? I know many Americans think that US law applies to all other countries, but in general American lawyers know better than this. It will be interesting to see if the US court tries to get extradition of the Spamhaus board to the US, and if our heroic government, pledged as they are to defend our rights, cave in to them as they did over Enron.

Re:Competence of the court

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAL but ....

Business law in most places seem to allow a case to proceed if at least one of the parties is within their jurisdiction.

Secondly, many countries will give consideration (not necessarily power) to a judgement served from another country if the plaintiff is in the foreign country. In other words, the UK government and legal system can choose to look at the judgement when it is officially submitted to them and enforce it or they can ignore it. It all depends on the laws in the UK, the specific enforcement being asked, the specific laws that apply in the UK and of course, political connections and intergovernment agreements.

That's why Yahoo caved in to the French (or was it German?) courts about display Nazi era collectibles. That's why a lawsuit in Australia against a NY newspaper may be applicable.

Re:Competence of the court

[MadMidnightBomber]

It will be interesting to see if the US court tries to get extradition of the Spamhaus board to the US, and if our heroic government, pledged as they are to defend our rights, cave in to them as they did over Enron.

IANAL, but this is a civil not criminal case, so I don't think extradition isn't an issue. Also, I believe a reasonable number of HM Government's mail servers are using the Spamhaus Block List so I don't think there's too much to worry about here.

Just hope...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just hope the Spamhaus people aren't planning on visiting the US any time soon... http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/18/13 6225/

Okay - I'm not a fan of RBLs

[91degrees]

The people who run these things usually have a rather superior attitude, and a rather childish attitude toward the law.

But this lawsuit seems completely ludicrous. Even with an undefended lawsuit it should have been obvious that this was outside their jurisdiction. Isn't there some restriction here?

Re:Okay - I'm not a fan of RBLs

[SSpade]

The people who run these things usually have a rather superior attitude, and a rather childish attitude toward the law.

SpamHaus is (almost always) one of the rare exceptions to that.

But this lawsuit seems completely ludicrous. Even with an undefended lawsuit it should have been obvious that this was outside their jurisdiction. Isn't there some restriction here?

Perhaps. SpamHaus, to the extent there is an entity called SpamHaus, does have infrastructure in the US or under the indirect control of US corporations.

Default Judgements

[Anonymous Coward]

Before we all go off half cocked about Illinois coursts and how stupid the decision was... It was a default Judgment which means Spamhaus failed to show up in court and the Judge found in the plaintiffs failure.. Shame on them from not coming to fight it, and shame on us for putting judges in place that can not see through some technical jargon to realize when something is total crap and dismiss it on lack of merits.

Re:Default Judgements

[IdleTime]

Ahem.. This is another example of braindead americans who think that the whole world is within their jurisdiction.

A UK company can not be hauled in front of the courts in USA. if you, an American company ro citizen wants to take legal action against a foreign company, it has to be done in the country where the company is a legal entity.
Americans are the dumbest idiots.

Re:Default Judgements

[ledow]

I hereby sue you for stupidity which is illegal on my planet of Jupiter and hereby order that if you don't attend the case on my planet, you will be liable by default for seven squillion Jupitan dollars.

Of course you should pack up all your gear, drive immediately to NASA and catch the first shuttle, shouldn't you?

Re:Default Judgements

[Apocalypse111]

Shame on them from not coming to fight it

Why fight it if it doesn't affect them?

Re:Default Judgements

[Anonymous Coward]

Self-important bigots are the dumbest idiots.

I corrected that for you. Unfortunately, you're as dumb as the people you're talking about for not realizing that you're perpetuating the same breed of stupidity that supposedly annoys you.

Preach on, fellow idiot.

Re:Default Judgements

[amliebsch]

Dare I ask where you got your law degree? Significant operations in an area are usually enough to establish jurisdiction, regardless of the location of legal incorporation. That said, whether the operations of Spamhaus in the United States are significant enough to establish jurisdiction is an open question.

Re:Default Judgements

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy should still get done for a felony charge of making a false declaration to a court. Spamhaus has no operations in il..

Re:Default Judgements

[Apocalypse111]

Its not a question of significance, its still a question of jurisdiction. US law still doesn't apply to a British company. If they were a US company based in Oregon, then the "conducting operations in an area" thing you mentioned would be relevant for reasons of interstate commerce and such. Consider the following example:

I make a website that has a lot of content on it that is perfectly fine and legal in my country. However, it is illegal for people in, say, Spain to view. However, lots of Spaniards come to my site anyways. This doesn't mean that now some group/person in Spain can sue me for damages. It just doesn't work that way.

Re:Default Judgements

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Shame on them from not coming to fight it,

So if you get an e-mail message telling you you're being sued in Nigeria, because some of the comments you made on you blog as aprt of your work with a non-profit can be construed as Libel and you're being sued for millions you don't have, you're going to go buy a plane ticket and head to Nigeria?

...and shame on us for putting judges in place that can not see through some technical jargon to realize when something is total crap and dismiss it on lack of merits.

Us? I didn't appoint that judge, so stop blaming me. I really wish you had not appointed him, since that court is listed as one of the most unjust in the country according to the "judicial hellhole" report that monitors notably abusive courts where less than ethical lawyers tend to venue shop for cases with little merit. Stop it.

Re:Default Judgements

[amliebsch]

Your website example is true because the company is not physically operating within Spanish borders. Consider, however, if such company maintained offices in Spain, operated servers in Spain, and actively conducted business inside Spain. Would you still argue they are not subject to Spanish civil law simply because they do not have a Spanish corporate charter? That doesn't make any sense, and that's not how jurisdiction law works.

Re:Default Judgements

[incabulos]

Shame on them from not coming to fight it

Crackpot backwards laws (such as whatever dumbass law this judge was ruling on that seems to help criminals and make firewalls & filters illegal) in foreign countries are things that ought be be ignored. Why should one idiot regime in some wretched craphole be able to threaten the rest of the world with awful laws? Do you see bikini models in the US meekly travelling to Saudi Arabia and submitting to Sharia law? Its asinine that you could even conceive of such a thing.

Say what you will

[Billosaur]

Linhardt and his company are indeed spammers and remain on the Spamhaus blocklist, the organization said. Posting a note that e360insignt was inaccurately labeled as a spammer would be a lie, Spamhaus said. If Linhardt wants a ruling that counts, he needs to refile his case in the UK, according to Spamhaus.

There are many out there that have had bad experiences with Spamhaus, but in this case, this guy is a known spammer. I'm surprised the court even gave credence to the lawsuit, but apparently the judge is not up on the Internet and spam. They are correct -- if he wants a judgement, he needs to file in UK court, where, given their recent history of prosecuting spammers, he stands little chance of succeeding.

Re:Say what you will

[TheGreek]

I'm surprised the court even gave credence to the lawsuit,

Spamhaus chose not to defend the suit, so the Court pretty much had to issue a default judgement.

Re:Say what you will

[_xeno_]

I don't think the judge was necessarily clueless - according to the article, it was a "default judgement." IANAL, but my understanding is that in civil cases, if the defendant doesn't bother showing up to court (as in this case) then they default on the case and the plaintiff wins automatically.

From my understanding, in that case, the judge essentially accepts all the plaintiff's arguments as true and applies a judgement based on that assumption.

So it's not so much that the judge was clueless as that Spamhaus is totally ignoring US law, which sort of makes sense for a UK group.

Re:Say what you will

[CmdrGravy]

Really there was no case in the first place since an American court has no jurisdiction over UK companies.

If they can do this then surely I can bring random American citizens to court in the UK and sue them for millions of pounds on totally bogus grounds. They don't turn up, I win. They happen to visit the UK so I have them arrested and imprisoned until they come up with the cash. Sounds like a good scheme to me.

Re:Say what you will

[Billosaur]

I don't think the judge was necessarily clueless - according to the article, it was a "default judgement." IANAL, but my understanding is that in civil cases, if the defendant doesn't bother showing up to court (as in this case) then they default on the case and the plaintiff wins automatically.

IANAL either, but my understanding is that a civil trial judge also has the right to decide the lawsuit is frivilous or not an issue within the court's purview, and dismiss it summarily. The judge should have looked the spammer's lawyers in the eye, laughed, and declared the case thrown out, if for no other reason than he should have known that US courts hold very little sway overseas.

Re:Say what you will

[ArtStone]

If that generalization was true, then the EU would have no jursidiction over Microsoft.

Re:Say what you will

[nosferatu1001]

You're kind of missing something vital: MS does business in the EU. Really, they have offices and everything, just down the road from me (i live in Reading...

If you DO BUSINESS in a country then the assets of that business are in the jurisdiction of that country. E.g the offices down the road from me....

If you DON'T DO BUSINESS in a country then your assets (that are not in that country) are not in the jurisdiction of that country.

Guess which one Spamhaus is? Publishing a BL IN THE UK does NOT mean you are doing business in IL. it really is very, very, very simple.

Re:Say what you will

[nosferatu1001]

No, wrong. The court has to determine if it has personal jurisdiction, that is whether it should even be hearing it in the first place - it is the first duty of any UK court, and i believe any US court. To not do so pretty much shows how much of a laughing stock your courts have become....

Spam is a problem.

[drewzhrodague]

Spam is a serious problem. I run my own (Sendmail, thank you very much) mail server. I subscribe to a bunch of these blacklists, and also trade this huge list of spammers with a friend of mine from a local university. I still get spammed.

Some of us DIY sysadmins are on cable modems. Some of us are at a budget colo with no reverse DNS. I'm on some of the blacklists some of the time, and so there are some places I just can't send mail.

I don't trust any of the new mail systems, and I'm happy to deal with this anarchaic system. I'd like to be allowed to form spammer lynchmobs, and physically kick their asses though.

Re:Spam is a problem.

[squiggleslash]

Funnily enough I've had anti-spammers call me a spammer because I operate my own mail server too - for incoming email only.

I've never trusted the bulk of anti-spammers and I see no reason to do so today. The bulk of them are stupid, and are more concerned with hurting perceived supporters of spammers (including the old "Person who has an account on an ISP that's owned by another ISP that has another subsidary that has a spammer as a customer" chestnut) than actually making the Internet work smoothly.

There are relatively easy ways, if you operate your own server, to deal with spam. The most obvious, which has worked for me for over a decade, is to provide every entity you do business with with a unique email address - an alias to contact you by - and close that email address if you start receiving spam on it. It's hard to go wrong, the only people who are hurt are those who provided the email address to spammers in the first place.

Unfortunately, with the anti-spam fuck-ups spending more and more time trying to convince ISPs to block all port 25 traffic and encouraging blanket anti-server policies, it's becoming harder and harder for an individual to implement this solution, despite the rather obvious fact that if it were commonplace, spam would become almost impossible to do as it would be in nobody's interests to sell email addresses. (Not to mention the fact that if the problem with spam is that it overloads ISP email servers, letting people run their own pretty much solves that problem.)

Real anti-spam solutions involve holding people accountable for their actions and their use of the Internet. That means encouraging the use of static IP addresses so repeat offenders can be blocked. It means encouraging people to run their own servers rather than sharing ISP machines. It means solutions like the one I've mentioned, one-to-one email addresses rather than one-to-many where any of the many can hurt all the others.

I can't comment on Spamhaus specifically, and it would be nice to think they recognize these issues, but I do believe they're proposing the wrong solutions. And perhaps in the short-term that's necessary, but it would be nice to hear the anti-spam lobby back away from the "We need to harm the Internet to save it" and "Trust us. And if you don't, we'll do what we can to undermine you" positions and move towards encouraging geniune accountability.

Re:Spam is a problem.

[Technician]

Spam is a serious problem.

I agree. For the most part I don't have e-mail at all. I check my box once or twice a month and clean it out. Those who know me know this and will let me know if they sent anything that I need to look for.

Spam has killed e-mail as a useful communications tool.

I like spamhaus...

[Anonymous Coward]

we use XBL on our MTA but that reply is poorly worded and lacking the outright sarcasm the situation demands.

Jurisdiction?

[interiot]

How did the Illinois judge decide they had jurisdiction over a UK-only company in the first place? I thought courts throw out cases that they have no jurisdiction over.

Re:Jurisdiction?

[phoenix.bam!]

I really have no idea, but I assume since spamhaus does not seem to have filed any motions, like one for dismisal, the judge just ruled for the default judgement.

Re:Jurisdiction?

[Rucker]

I'm not sure the court doesn't have jurisdiction. Spamhaus is offering a service to US entities, right? Imagine if a British company started offering banking services to the US. Because the company is in Britian, does it mean they can ignore all US banking laws? I doubt it.

Re:Jurisdiction?

[Anonymous Coward]

Swiss banks and lots of others offer banking to US people and they do ignore US Banking laws.

Re:Jurisdiction?

[Anonymous Coward]

US Courts have a recent history of deciding they have jurisdiction over anywhere in the world. There was another slashdot story about such a case some time ago. Enforcement is another matter of course, but they supposedly have handed down several judgements on the basis that justice is justice (neatly ignoring the fact that laws differ).

Re:Jurisdiction?

[Fnkmaster]

My guess is that the problem was that no lawyer showed up to say "Hey, my client doesn't think you could possibly have jurisdiction because it is a UK organization with all business activities in the UK, and if you don't like the fact that US users choose to download my client's IP list, tough tits to you".

The question is did they just fail to adequately notify and did Spamhaus accidentally not show, or more likely, did they not have a lawyer there because their UK lawyer told them in advance that a default judgment that would inevitably be entered against them is probably unenforceable in the UK.

My vote goes for the latter. They probably figured the expected cost and risk level were lower by just not showing up to even contest the jurisdictional issue and just saying "stuff it" after the fact to the entire proceeding.

Re:Jurisdiction?

[tinkerghost]

IANAL -etc
Spamhaus didn't contest the jurisdiction. If you don't contest jurisdiction, the judge just moves forward with the case under the assumption that you don't object.
In this case Spamhaus didn't object because they didn't care at all. They are entirely a UK organization from what I can find, so US courts in general have no ability to do anything to them. Because the suit appears to be filed against spamhaus, and spamhaus isn't a legal entity in the US, I'm not sure how exactly the court even 'recognized' that e360 was suing anyone ...

Re:Jurisdiction?

[UbuntuDupe]

Actually, I remember surfing for Swiss banks (shut up) one time and the ones I saw specifically said they don't offer services to US cusomters. Not "non-Swiss", I mean, specifically, the US. Probably because of some disagreement a while back.

Re:Jurisdiction?

[Anonymous Coward]

If a court clearly lacks jurisdiction, the judge is supposed to raise the issue on his own, even if none of the parties mentions it. But this is a case where jurisdiction appears to exist because of something called "minimum contacts." Basically, since Spamhaus was doing business with an Illinois company, it had sufficient contact with Illinois to establish jurisdiction. Since it had jurisdiction, and since Spamhaus didn't show up, the court had no choice but to enter a default judgment against them, regardless of the merits. Them's the rules.

Re:Jurisdiction?

[august sun]

How did the Illinois judge decide they had jurisdiction over a UK-only company in the first place?

Because this all happened in the second worst judicial hellhole in America.

What is a judicial hellhole you ask?

Judicial Hellholes are places that have a disproportionately harmful impact on civil litigation. Litigation tourists, guided by their personal injury lawyers seek out these places because they know they will produce a positive outcome - an excessive verdict or settlement, a favorable precedent, or both.

[quoted from the above link]

Re:Jurisdiction?

[jrumney]

US Courts have a recent history of deciding they have jurisdiction over anywhere in the world.

A shame they haven't included Guantanamo Bay in their "rest of the world". Military kangaroo courts excepted.

Re:Jurisdiction?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anywhere except gitmo that is.

Re:Jurisdiction?

[rahrens]

See my post above about this same thing.

Basically, this Federal law allows US citizens to sue foreigners that have harmed them in some way in order to gain compensation from the defendant's US assets. It allows the plaintiff to then hold that judgement for award if or until the losing party does gain sufficient US assets to pay the judgement. Since it a US court, it can order US assets of a foreign entity anywhere in the US to be seized for payment. This was the result of a law passed many years ago. It is NOT intended to give US courts jurisdiction over foreign soil. It is to allow US citizens to gain compensation for damage or harm done to them by persons outside of normal US jurisdiction.

Remember the hostages from the US Iranian embassy? They sued under this law, then ended up fighting the Justice Department over getting the Iranian assets turned over to them to cover the judgement.

Re:Jurisdiction?

[npsimons]

Hey, about the ATRA, you might want to think twice about linking to an organization that is little more than a PR/lobbying front group for big business. Not that I'm for frivolous lawsuits, but the plain truth of the matter is that most frivolous lawsuits are laughed out of court. Most of the abuses of the law system that succeed come /from/ big business.

CIA to the rescue

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

If we rename spamming, e-mail-bombing, we may convince the spooks at Mother's Company, Langley, VA to do some extrodinary rendition of the Sapmhaus board of directors and executives. Just a thought.

Re:CIA to the rescue

[Zebadias]

Why would spamhause (who make lists to block spam) be responsible for spam?

Precedent?

[TheWoozle]

Isn't this a bad thing, not for Spamhaus, but for companies that do the same kind of thing and *are* in the US? WIth this case as precedent, can't the spammers now attack US-based anti-spam companies?

Re:Precedent?

[aliendisaster]

I don't believe so. Because Spamhaus did not appear (which they shouldn't have), the judge settled by default. If the company was based in the US, they would have appeared as they have to follow US laws. Then they would have won and probally brought a known spammer to his knees.

Re:Precedent?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no prcecedent set by a default ruling. They didn't show up to court to defend themselves; therefore the judge had no choice but to uphold the plantiff's claims. There can't be a precedent in a situation where the jduge's hand was forced.

Kill Spammers and Politicians

[drewzhrodague]

Agreed. I would support a bill to legalize assassination. Wouldn't our spammers and government officials think twice if their actions were going to get them killed/tortured/beaten/imprisoned?

Re:Kill Spammers and Politicians

[Anonymous Coward]

Awesome! Could you post your address and a picture of yourself here, just in case that bill ever passes? I'd love to go over to your house and assassinate you. Maybe your family, too. Why? Well, just because I think you're a dick. And after your bill passes, it'll be legal to kill somebody you don't like!

Re:Kill Spammers and Politicians

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with thinking like this is that no matter what a person (politicians or otherwise) chooses to do someone, somewhere is going to get bent off about it.
 
I live in the mighty pothole state (Pennsylvania to those who have never travel through it), I always thought that the way to make the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) more efficient would be to have an elected head of the organization. But you stop and think about it: regardless of what the guy does he's going to have people wanting his head on a stick, if he fixes the roads people will be upset about long traffic lines and detours, if he leaves things go he will be thrown out for letting the roads deteriorate.
 
This guy has no chance of being re-elected since Joe and Jane Voter can't seem to keep a cool head about them and admit that at least the situation is improving or that, at times, life has some inconvenient moments that we simply need to suffer with.
 
In this way, if you had legalized murder, someone is always going to hold some grudge against you. Right or wrong. Do you really want to give someone the legal ability to wipe out your entire existence with little to no provocation? At least in cases of self-defense killings you need to prove a serious threat.

I occasionally buy products from spammers

[Anonymous Coward]

just to piss the elitist spam haters off. a side benefit is that I am now an incredible lover with a huge penis and I get great deals on real estate loans.

I'll keep this in mind

[Anonymous Coward]

And the next time someone in the U.K. sues me, I'll simply ignore the judgement. Ignoring other countries' laws is fun!

Re:I'll keep this in mind

[ledow]

Troll and obviously supposed to be sarcasm.

But maybe the next time someone in a foreign country tries to sue you for something that's a) not illegal in your country (in fact, SPAMMING is illegal in the UK, so they are not only obeying UK law but preventing the people in question from violating UK law themselves) b) nothing to do with you and c) without consulting you, serving you correct legal papers (reason enough to ignore any legal document) or bothering to contact any form of legal contact in your country, then maybe you can use your powers of sarcasm to get you out.

Seriously, this case is a joke... serving legal papers by EMAIL? WTF? Of course, email is a guaranteed delivery system that ensures that person on the other end recieves it, is the correct person and cannot deny ever having recieved it (that's how to do real sarcasm, by the way)

Re:I'll keep this in mind

[Anonymous Coward]

>> serving legal papers by EMAIL? WTF?

Indeed, serving legal papers by email to a group you're suing for dropping your emails.

Re:I'll keep this in mind

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, you don't ignore the Saudi laws condeming non-muslims for proselytising ? Or the European laws on working time, and I suppose you obey the Belgian Priorite a droit as well ?

Of course you "ignore the laws of other countries", thats WHY they are "other countries"
Fwit.

Re:I'll keep this in mind

[CrimsonScythe]

serving legal papers by EMAIL?

Sounds like a GREAT idea! Especially since the suing company is suing because their emails are being blocked. This is brilliance you see too rarely...

Blues Brothers?

[Stavr0]

ELWOOD
"Illinois spammers."

JAKE
"I hate Illinois spammers"

You'd think that would be the case!

[drewzhrodague]

If a company is sending spam why isn't the ISP for that company shutting them down? Isn't it against the AUP of most providers or at least the big carriers?

You'd think that would be the case, but once carriers have their money, they don't so much care. I send out lots of abuse reports, and I will more often than not -- hear nothing at all, and have nothing done about it. Monster.com is one of the more annoying spammers I get. They just don't care.

DEFAULT judgement

[Balthisar]

Remember... this is a default judgement. If you're sued for anything and don't show up, you lose by default. There's nothing to do with the competence of the judge or the court, the merits of the case, or anything. If I sue you for moderating me down and ask for emotional damage compensation, you'd better show up to defend yourself or I'm going to win by default. If you're got a super low user id, I may ask the court to hand over your account to me.

Re:DEFAULT judgement

[ledow]

Yeah, but the question of whether it would be legally binding or not also depends on a lot of other things, such as the jurisdiction and whether it's a reasonable venue... an Illinois court is no more a reasonable venue for a UK-only company than the planet Jupiter. You could not be reasonably expected to absorb the costs of defending yourself in a foreign country like that, without even mentioning travel costs, legal costs, unfamiliarity with the law etc. the fact that what you did is not illegal in your country etc.

Judgement or not, it's null and void on more than one account - improperly served, incorrect jurisdiction, unreasonable venue, etc. the list goes on. The error, unfortunately, lies with the judge here for failing to account for jurisdiction.

Re:DEFAULT judgement

[Anonymous Coward]

DISCLAIMER

Only the Court of Congo-Brazzaville has full jurisdiction over any legal action against this post. By starting to sue or answering this post, you acknoledge you've read and accept this disclaimer.

Re:DEFAULT judgement

[splutty]

What do you consider a super low user id? I've always wondered about the UID fascination in this place :)

Splut.

Hmmm. Where did I leave my moderator points.

Re:DEFAULT judgement

[Improv]

There is no cabal...

Re:DEFAULT judgement

[lightspawn]

Remember... this is a default judgement. If you're sued for anything and don't show up, you lose by default.

So how does it work, exactly? If companies all over the world sue the spammers, do they have to show up to defend themselves in dozens of countries or lose all by default?

OK, everybody sue the bastards in your respective country. Problem solved.

What's wrong with the legal system and isn't there any way to fix it?

If only it were that simple

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work for a marketing company that later got into spamming (and shortly thereafter I tended my resignation). The ISP's are in collusion with the spammers. They tell the world one thing, and then they tell the spammer to pay a fee to get a different block of IP addresses under a different subsidiary name. They know where the money is.

Okay. So I did a bit of research.

[91degrees]

It looks like there was a pre-existing restraining order. This according to Spamhaus, it was "served" by email. Which is not a legal manner to serve an order and has no effect in the UK anyway.

If the organisation was on the RBL, how do they know they were served?

(Note for the humour impaired - The fact that I have a note for the humour impaired should tell you something).

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:redirect

[McGiraf]

Stop blocking them, instead redirect them to my skype account.

More will come

[Cigarra]

You can kill all spammers, but there will be more soon taking their places.
As long as it is profitable, it will be done.

Re:More will come

[Anonymous Coward]

It's profitable to kill spammers?

Perhaps they want to drag it into a UK court?

[Vip]

If spamming is illegal in the UK, as Spamhaus suggests, then it would
be in their best interest to drag David Linhardt into a UK court.

Once Linhardt shows up in the UK, and admits to spamming, it's over?
Spamhaus would receive judgement through the UK courts.

Maybe the $11.7million judgement is the enticement?

Sounds stupid, but we're talking about a spammer here...

Vip

Re:Jurisdiction

[cpt kangarooski]

Well, if you get a court order to enforce a civil judgment, and it's ignored, it's possible to be found in contempt and jailed.

Also, just wait until you can say that you are a lawyer, but that it's not legal advice.

Learn to Spell

[Anonymous Coward]

Haus House. Learn to spell you limey bastards! The Amerikkkan way is the only way!

No Contest

[JavaNPerl]

If you don't try to fight a lawsuit you are going to lose even if you are right.
I believe they thought fighting the case would acknowledge that an Illinois court had jurisdiction over them.
I'm not sure why the court believed they had jurisdiction over the case.

Re:No Contest

[j00r0m4nc3r]

I've stopped trying to understand a lot of the things that our judicial system does.

Woah - this is a GREAT Idea

[lars_boegild_thomsen]

In an uncontested trial in a Somali court, yours truly obtained a default judgement that all Americans with an L in their name is to pay me a sum of USD 100 each.

What do you mean you don't care?

It's a weird weird world :)

Re:Woah - this is a GREAT Idea

[starfishsystems]

I'm sure that people in Somalia will be shocked at your suggestion that their court has no jurisdiction elsewhere in the world. Come on, they are the centre of the universe. Everybody knows that.

more on the subject

[Anonymous Coward]

Link below contains a colorful communication between two parties :)

http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/evidence.lasso?rokso _id=ROK7008

Someone tell the IRS

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the spammers now have a default judgement for $11M, it's time to tell the IRS about this windfall. Just because they can't collect doesn't mean they are not liable for the taxes on that income!

A better analogy

[bwcbwc]

It's a bit more like hiring someone to go through your snail mail and throw out all of the financial offers from Car Dealers, Credit Card companies and other vermin.

Re:A better analogy

[Pig Hogger]

It's a bit more like hiring someone to go through your snail mail and throw out all of the financial offers from Car Dealers, Credit Card companies and other vermin.

Not exactly. It's more like telling the mailboy in the mailroom to look up a separately-maintained list of the addresses or post-codes of known junk-mailers.

Lack of a leg to stand on

[chiller2]

At the most basic level the case has no merit for the simple reason that nobody forces system administrators to use Spamhaus. It is an opt-in service and represents a decision by the administrators of the e-mail servers that they do not want mail from hosts listed in said RBL. End of story!

Who is worse? The spammer or the lawyer that gives him the time of day?

Re:Lack of a leg to stand on

[drew]

At the most basic level the case has no merit for the simple reason that nobody forces system administrators to use Spamhaus.

Yes, and maybe if they had showed up in court to make that argument, the judge wouldn't have granted the plaintiffs a default judgement.

Re:Lack of a leg to stand on

[nosferatu1001]

And the jurisdiction was so completely wrong the judge should have raised that himself and thrown the case out.

But then its a hellhole down in IL....

You been screwin the milkman!

[quantum bit]

...and then he ran into my knife. He ran into my knife ten times.

Do you know what a default judgment is?

[BKX]

The Illinois judge wasn't trying to enforce some ridiculous law allowing spammers to spam from Chicago. The judge issued a default judgment. In our adversarial system, if you file a suit and the defendant doesn't respond, you automatically win (unless your suit was extremely ridiculous, but this was a standard defamation suit, not a suit alleging that David Letterman killed my baby with mind-rays through the TV). If the defendant can later show that he didn't know about the suit, couldn't get there for some (really good) reason or that the suit was filed in an incorrect jurisdiction, then the default judgment can and will be overturned, and the plaintiff allowed to refile.

Illinois is most certainly not trying to enforce some crazy pro-spam law. Hell, the judge probably just barely skimmed the filing when wrote the decision, and even then, just to make sure his decision made sense when read back by the plaintiff. It wouldn't surprise me if a serious amount of OCR and cut-and-paste was involved. The judge's reaction to Spamhaus's response is probably, "You go, Spamhaus. Keep stoppin those Viagra ads with yo bad self."

Re:Do you know what a default judgment is?

[Ilgaz]

Is there/Will there be a law allowing spammers do business in Chicago or Illinois?

Is there a database of those IPs assigned to that area? If something like that happens I am sure spammers who aren't stupid will move the operations to that area and Illinois IP will end up documented on some text file free for everyone to add their MANUAL bounce lists. Nobody can stop anyone from doing it.

Just like Korea,China and (unfortunately, due to Orange owned tpnet) Poland.

When people start blocking IP space they generally don't remove them back. Illinois (legit) businesses and netizens should be careful.

I mean lets say, Korean govt. bought billion dollar amount of antivirus and firewall software and forced everyone to install cleaning up entire country from organised Spammers like those awarded millions... It is of course:Impossible. Even it was possible, it will take YEARS for filters etc. catch on.

Those guys awarded money are no less than any other kind of mafia. They are just modern mafia.

It is not "poor lady got tricked by pyramid scheme and sending everyone spam manually" anymore. 99% of spam comes from worms/zombies which were sponsored by those mobs.

Do me a fa0ver

[thegnu]

a side benefit is that I am now an incredible lover with a huge penis and I get great deals on real estate loans.

C0ulddD You sa+isfie my w0me0n Tonite! I'm having trouble, because of my t1ny p//en15.

Re:Do me a fa0ver

[Anonymous Coward]

the perils of forgetting the AC check box

Spamhaus provide all details to law enforcement

[stiggle]

Spamhaus provide a special version of their ROKSO database to law enforcement (if requested) which not only contains all their details, but logs and other information to backup the claims that they are spammers.

The court case was probably done in the States because they knew Spamhaus would not contest it and then they can turn round and say "we're not spammers and have won court cases to prove it".

gobal supremity

[Anonymous Coward]

fools don't they know that USofA law is supreme everywhere in the world.

Don't come to America

[Quila]

Steve Linford should be careful of his travels to America. Who knows what could happen if he ever sets foot in this country. There is a difference between civil and criminal, but people operating perfectly legal online casinos in foreign countries have been arrested when visiting the US.

Re:Don't come to America

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a difference between civil and criminal, but people operating perfectly legal online casinos in foreign countries have been arrested when visiting the US.

I don't really have a lot of sympathy for those people. You can't really expect sane laws when you visit a theocracy.

Interesting and possibly relevent

[91degrees]

I googled for "ignoring goreign lawsuit" and got a page mentioning that Canada will enforce foreign lawsuits. This is, of course, Canada rather than the UK, but they have a similar legal tradition. Could this backfire?

Re:Jurisdiction

[BeNude]

IANAL but it would seem to me that what's good for the goose...

If spamming is illegal in the UK and if the spammer from Illinois sent spam in the UK, then Spamhaus
would be able to counter-sue them! Whatever international jurisdictional agreements that might
exist would likely work both ways.

Money talks, bullshit walks

[Pig Hogger]

Now let's pretend that the plaintiff in the case wasn't a spam company with a stupid name, but instead is a regular user who gets put on the list by mistake. From what I've read about Spamhaus, they tend to "not give a shit" in that sort of situation either, which is unfortunate. A good example why vigilante justice isn't always a good thing.

If they are legitimate, their deep pockets would be used towards their ISP in order to make them kick their spammers, or simply move elsewhere to cleaner IP space.

Money talks, and bullshit walks.

Re:Money talks, bullshit walks

[networkBoy]

What ISP?
I know of several companies with say about 100 outward facing IPs that are registered to the company and connect directly to a peering point (or 10). In effect these companies are their own ISPs. If they get accidently black listed they are phucked. Then what?
-nB

Re:Money talks, bullshit walks

[Pig Hogger]

I know of several companies with say about 100 outward facing IPs that are registered to the company and connect directly to a peering point (or 10). In effect these companies are their own ISPs. If they get accidently black listed they are phucked. Then what?

Do they OWN their own IP space? If they don't they're NOT "their own" ISPs.

But to answer your question, they should either move or pressure their ISP to dump their spammers.

Money talks, bullshit walks.

Re:Money talks, bullshit walks

[Anonymous Coward]

"Do they OWN their own IP space?"
Yes, a class c range to be exact.
-nB

Already done...

[Max Threshold]

It's called the Second Amendment.

Stop US Mail spam!

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what spam ticks me off for than email spam - the damn mailers and advertisements that are sent in my US mail. There is no way to opt-out of that, despite the mail carrier simple not giving it to me. I'm far from a tree hugger, but damn, they kill alot of tree to try to sell me something.

Legal documents

[waxigloo]

Here is a link to the whole timeline from e360Insight's webpage -- it includes info about the court and the judge and the decision: http://www.e360insight.com/case_history.html

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

Um. Why do you think the High Court of England and Wales, which is the court which would have to do any enforcing against the company, would be remotely interested in the Full Faith and Credit clause?

You can cry all you like

[herbieNYC]

Regardless of whether this ruling is enforceable in the UK (which it isn't), the fact remains that e360insight.com IS sending out thousands of emails that most people don't want. Doesn't matter what they are selling - cheap Viagra or a legitimate product - I don't want their advertisements in my users inboxes. That's exactly why I use Spamhaus to keep people like E360insight from littering my mailserver with their unwanted offers and advertisements.

Costs are also a big difference

[iconnor]

In the USA, each party pays their own costs no matter what happens. However, in the UK, if you file an action and it does not win, then you have to pay the costs for the other party. So, at the best, they can force them in the UK legal system, and because the spammer is not in the UK, they can seek the spammer puts up security for costs (to ensure they pay if they don't win). Thus the spammer would never touch the UK system as they would end up loosing the money they pay their lawyers, plus the cost for spamhaus to defend it.
ps... IANAL - anymore.

Re:Costs are also a big difference

[eunos94]

The problem with "loser pays" legal systems is not only is the penalty bigger, but the reward is bigger. If they lose, they pay (legal counsel) times 2. If they win, they pay (legal counsel) times 0. In the end, it's a zero sum game. The average is still (legal counsel) times 1, which is the same as "pay your own legal counsel" systems. It doesn't really help or hurt, unless you argue that risk averse people will leave the system more.

Re:Costs are also a big difference

[Sique]

It can get a little bit more complicated. In a civil lawsuit more often than not no one completely wins. The final judgement is somewhere inbetween the initial demands of both parties. The legal costs are depending on the initial demands, and how much of them you actually get rewareded with. Take for instance the infamous SCO Group vs. IBM. SCO Group initially demanded $5 billion. If for instance they manage to prove in the end a damage of $5, they technically lost 999,999,999/1,000,000,000 of their case, so even though in the end they would get money, they have to pay 99,9999999 percent of the legal costs. Talk about a Pyrrhus' victory.

Re:Costs are also a big difference

[nuzak]

Actually, all "loser pays" systems I've heard of leave the award of legal costs up to the discretion of the Judge. We actually have something like that in the US too, but there's vanishingly few opportunities for it to be available and the amount is limited to some trivial subset of the actual fees.

Sure, a bad judge can screw you, but that can happen in any case, and at least you have an avenue for appeal.

Re:Costs are also a big difference

[cheshire_cqx]

Not always true. There are types of cases where the loser must pay attorneys fees, and circumstances where the court may award them.

Prepare the Cow-a-pult!

[patrixmyth]

Spam? We've already got some.
Now GO AWAY, or we shall TAUNT YOU a SECOND TIME!

Good point

[ldholtsclaw]

A company I used to work for was being harassed by the Department of Revenue from another state demanding we collect sales taxes on mail order items shipped into their state. The advice of our lawyer was to hang up on them whenever they called and just throw away all correspondence without opening it. I was suprised, but they quickly got the hint and left us alone. I was told that if we had actually talked to them, it would be construed as "entering negotiations" and we'd be forced to comply. Our lawyer evidently thought this was what they were trying to do.

As always, IANAL, this is not legal advice and YMMV.

But that's the point

[Anonymous Coward]

There ARE US citizens saving their money there. And they aren't following US banking codes.

Spamhaus do not offer anything other than a list of ip addresses of known spammers. This is offered in the same way as a Swiss bank account is offered to the US: if someone decides themselves to use the service, they do. That isn't the bank's concern.

There are many pictures from the US Government website that contravene sharia law. If GWB is taken to court in Syria, doesn't turn up can he be arrested in Syria?

At least use British spelling

[tetranz]

Call me picky and I'm sure it doesn't mean anything legally but it would be a little more convincing if www.spamhaus.org didn't use american spelling.

http://www.spamhaus.org/legal/answer.lasso?ref=3

organisation isn't spelt with a zed.
I saw realize elsewhere on the site.

Re:At least use British spelling

[Malc]

Last time I checked the OED, it said "realise" was an obsolete spelling and that "realize" is the correct one. Ever since then I've enjoyed how we collectively just ignore it.

You do realise that "realize" was the original spelling, and that after US independence people starting use some French spellings as perhaps some form of being trendy? Well, maybe. That's the suggestion I've heard. It would make more sense to me for words like "centre".

Re:At least use British spelling

[timlewis_atlanta]

In British English, the use of -ise rather than -ize is more popular, but both are valid.

American English uses -ize as a standard.

http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutsp elling/ize

Re:At least use British spelling

[tetranz]

Thanks. I stand corrected. I don't think that fact is widely known in New Zealand where I think the organize is considered much the same as color or center.

This does explain something I saw on a recent trip to Canada. British spelling everywhere but I was surprised to see the emergency turnaround points on highways were for "Authorized vehicles Only".

Re:At least use British spelling

[Anonymous Coward]

organisation isn't spelt with a zed.
'Course not. It's spelled with a zee.

Re:At least use British spelling

[Malc]

As a Briton who's naturalised to Canada, I can tell you it's a bit of a mix. Lots of "U"s like in colour. Some people still use -ise endings, but it's not the norm. Vowel combinations have been dropped in favour of the American spelling, e.g. "estrogen" instead of "oestrogen". And one of the national retail icons is nothing to do with sleep deprevation: Candaian Tire (UK: tyre). We still use "centre", not "center", and we do dates properly!

Talking of road signs: I always wondered why the French stop signs say: "Arrêt". Surely that means "stopping". Shouldn't it be: "Arrêtez". My French isn't very good (i.e. I could be wrong), so it allows me a cheap Toronto joke about francophone drivers.

Re:At least use British spelling

[Reliant-1864]

Both mean "stop" depending on the context. For example, in English, the same word is used in "You should stop here." and "STOP!". In French, the two are treated differently

Turn-about's fair play, though...

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose you'd be similarly amused if Microsoft simply told the EU to "cram it" in their ongoing legal wrangling with the United States-based company?

Personally, I think that's what Bill ought to do (it's not like M$ can't afford to tell that entire continent to find 'em another operating system...)

They may be UK but their servers are in the USA

[iSearch]

And they sell their commercial services to US companies and citizens. My legal knowledge is limited but if you are doing business in a country then you are indeed subject to their laws.

Re:operating in the US? Umm No

[Pontiac]

Spamhaus operates from London..
I had to setup our contract with them so I have delt with them a few times.

They don't have any offices or servers in the US.

visits to Europe

[midgley]

It will be interesting to see what happens if David Linhardt visits Europe.

Parent is incorrect.

[RealityThreek]

It wasn't this at all. e360insight won by default because Spamhaus didn't show up.

Whew

[Anomalyst]

It isn't an Illinois court, it's a federal district court that happens to be in Illinois.

Whew, living in Illinois I was worried about our excessive contribution to juduicial idiocy. But since it is federal then it's really the fault of "Da Bush". Since I didn't vote for the moron/sock-puppet (choose one), I am not responsible.

You are mistaken.

[www.sorehands.com]

There is a difference between a valid judgment and an enforcable judgment.

The I have not seen the complaint, but I suspect that the complaint makes the allegation that Spamhaus transmits the data into the judisdiction, causing the harm in the jurisdiction -- thus subject to that jurisdiction.

I won the same argument against TJ Web for their spamming.

If it is correct that UK will not enforce a foreign default judgment, then spamhaus is safe unless they have assets that the Plaintiff finds out about. Remember the Dmitry Sklyarov? He just happened to be in the USA when he was arrested for supposed crimes committed while in Russia.

Spamhaus isn't blocking you.

[Medievalist]

...you tell them that they blacklisted your IP address and you can vouche that you don't spam, but they won't do anything because you belong to a /16 where somewhere sombody is spamming. blacklisting might be a good idea, but organizations like spamhaus make it bad in practice.

You are misunderstanding the function and purpose of organizations that publish spam listings. Individual site administrators choose which lists to use, and for what purpose - for example, Spamhaus's lists are commonly used to assign extra positive modifiers in SpamAssassin rulesets, and Spamhaus has nothing to do with this. You haven't got any right to tell them what lists they publish, or how granular they should be (personally I'm fine with blocking a /16 if there are spammers in it - I don't want to receive your mail if you are part of a spam-friendly address block, end-of-story, and that's my personal choice NOT yours to make). Spamhaus hasn't any right to tell you how you ought to post to Slashdot, either, and you notice they aren't complaining about your post or demanding the CmdrTaco pull it down.

The Internet is made up of individual sites run by individual people who agree on certain things (like for instance RFC822 and the Internet Protocol). Nowhere in these agreements is there anything that says a site administrator has to provide mail delivery on the terms of the remote sender; it's the right of any recipient to refuse any mail for any reason as long as they are SMTP-compliant in that rejection, and it is the right of the site administration to negotiate users' terms of service with those users.

You can always vote with your feet, either by getting a new service provider (I recommend Gmail) or by getting your correspondents to get a new one. At some point we have to take responsibility for the world we inhabit...

Guess what time it is boys and girls!

[Robber Baron]

So are we going to do a bulk mail freight train on David Linhardt and e360 Insight?
C'mon! Lets have some addresses...

Go Spamhaus

[Actual Reality]

I wish we had companies like that in the US. Spammers have a lot of nerve suing someone for blocking their unwanted garbage. What is more amazing is that spam is illegal in the United States also, yet the spammer can get a court order to allow him to spam. Go figure... AR

e360insight has a phenominal site....

[Dewser]

Ok yes that is sarcasm, so if you are truly a legitimate business wouldn't you probably have more to your own website other than just your whining about the injustices of a RBL company putting you on the list??? Anyway as a system admin, I am not saddened by this story one bit. Maybe Lindhart should have thought out their marketing practices better. People hate spam! Maybe focus that marketing money to an actual website and pump the money into getting it recognized by search engines better.

As far as the lawyer, well, I won't get into my feelings on lawyers, in most cases they are right down their with spammers and tape worms.

Here is a copy of what Spamhaus.org has on them:
-----------------------
63.78.194.0/24 is listed on the Register Of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) database as being assigned to, under the control of, or providing service to a known professional spam operation run by Brian Haberstroh / Atriks.
e360Insight : bargaindepot.net / bargainshoppecorp.com
See also: SBL45648, SBL45649

www.bargaindepot.net. 3600 IN A 63.78.194.2
bargaindepot.net. 3600 IN NS ns12.bargaindepot.net.
ns12.bargaindepot.net. 172800 IN A 63.78.194.2

Registrant:
e360Insight, LLC
ATTN: BARGAINDEPOT.NET
c/o Network Solutions
P.O. Box 447
Herndon, VA. 20172-0447

Domain Name: BARGAINDEPOT.NET

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
e360Insight, LLC qp3zx6n33ee@networksolutionsprivateregistration.co m
ATTN: BARGAINDEPOT.NET
c/o Network Solutions
P.O. Box 447
Herndon, VA 20172-0447
570-708-8780

Record expires on 05-Nov-2008.
Record created on 17-Mar-2005.
Bulk whois optout: Y
Database last updated on 26-Apr-2005 14:32:13 EDT.

Domain servers in listed order:

NS12.BARGAINDEPOT.NET 63.78.194.2
NS13.BARGAINDEPOT.NET 63.78.194.3

UUNET Technologies, Inc. UUNET63 (NET-63-64-0-0-1)
63.64.0.0 - 63.127.255.255
E360INSIGHT, LLC UU-63-78-194-D8 (NET-63-78-194-0-1)
63.78.194.0 - 63.78.194.255

CustName: E360INSIGHT, LLC
Address: 427 S LA SALLE ST
Address: FL 4
City: CHICAGO
StateProv: IL
PostalCode: 60605-1029
Country: US
RegDate: 2005-01-27
Updated: 2005-01-27

NetRange: 63.78.194.0 - 63.78.194.255
CIDR: 63.78.194.0/24
NetName: UU-63-78-194-D8
NetHandle: NET-63-78-194-0-1
Parent: NET-63-64-0-0-1
NetType: Reassigned
Comment: Addresses within this block are non-portable.
RegDate: 2005-01-27
Updated: 2005-01-27
-------------------

So maybe they should review their business practices. boo frickin hoo hoo!

Re:Jurisdiction

[Malc]

Maybe you can state whether the Hague Conference on Private International Law has any relevance here.

An example I've heard of recently involves divorce settlements. A spouse can't move to another country and expect to avoid support payments. In fact it would probably be detrimental to them. A court in the jurisdiction of their marriage would make a ruling. And then a court in the spouse's new jurisdiction would accept the ruling and enforce it.

Maybe it requires similar laws in both jurisdictions though. I don't know much about such things though.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Swanktastic]

Considering the judgement was handed down by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, one would hope the they're subject to US jurisdiction.

War on Spam

[Sirfrummel]

War on Spam

The problem is... what oil is there to be taken over?

Re:War on Spam

[NinjaFarmer]

War on Spam

The problem is... what oil is there to be taken over?

The oil in the tubes of course!

Re:War on Spam

[karolgajewski]

My god, that's *IT*. We're running low on oil because the tubes are stuffed with spam, preventing the oil from flowing.

(I'm trying to be funny, not sarcastic)

A lot of ignoring is implicit in their FAQ

[NotQuiteReal]

Starting with the first item You're blocking my email, I'm gonna sue!

That'll be $38,000, thank you very much.

[timlewis_atlanta]

Did I read this correctly ? They paid their lawyer 38 grand to get this pointless, invalid, and unenforceable judgement ? What a bunch of dumb-asses.

Linhardt also shows us what an amazing knucklehead he is when he says "Spamhaus.org is a ... organization that operates in the United States". Um. No it's not. But at least he demonstrates that his grasp of world geography is on a par with the average US high school "graduate".

Re:Jurisdiction

[TheRecklessWanderer]

Every nation is a sovereign nation. The laws of one nation have no validity in another nation. If a nation signs a treaty, then it is required (mandated) to have legislation reflecting that treaty, but it is unenforcable except by procedures set out in the treaty itself. As for civil law, the US judicial system has no jurisdiction outside the US. Now, if you have one of the officers of a corporation in the US, then you can bring him to trial. If you have an extradition treaty with The UK, then you can try to have the officers extradited, but my understanding is that pertains only to criminal matters of a grevious nature, and the UK only has to exercise due diligence to get the offender back to the US. But here's the big kicker, the US is not entitled to enforce it's legal system on any other country in the world. Additionally, there is nothing stopping a foreign country from blocking snail mail and burning it (Saudi Arabia does it all the time) so why would it be any different with Emails?

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

There are three things that the District court must have in order to render a judgment against the defendant, personal jurisdiction, subject matter jurisdiction and a proper venue. If the court does not have all three it can not render an enforceable judgment against the defendant. Here the court arguably is the proper venue (because some judges think that if someone does something over the "interweb", they are doing it at the place of the customer) and the court probably has subject matter jurisdiction, but doesn't have personal jurisdiction.

A court has personal jurisdiction over a defendant if they domicile in the state, consent to jurisdiction, reply to a complaint in anyway other then to object to jurisdiction, or have minimum contacts with the state. I'm not going to go into minimum contacts, but I doubt the plaintiff can argue the defendant has them.

The plaintiff now has a judgment against the defendant that probably can not be enforced. The full faith and credit clause requires courts in different jurisdictions to honor the decision. The plaintiff can only enforce the judgment in a jurisdiction where the defendant has $$$, so if the British Company doesn't have any mansions, yachts, or bank accounts in the U.S. the plaintiff is left holding a worthless judgment.

Oh yeah, this is not legal advice and I am not representing any of you.

If I Were You

[Nom du Keyboard]

If I were Spamhaus, I'd definitely put any USA travel plans on hold into the indefinite future. Even transiting in airports is dangerous these days.

Re:If I Were You

[SLi]

I wonder why Americans seem to think that their country is so wonderful that everybody would want to come there. I've seen this thing mentioned at least 10 times in this story already.

Re:If I Were You

[ArtStone]

It might have something to do with the large numbers of non-US persons attending US universities, vacationing in Florida, underming IT salaries working on H1-B visas, and whining (now) about having to actually go through a screening process prior to entering the country (except for the non-OTM migrants arriving from Mexico through the virtual fence)

Why not sue them back?

[VWJedi]

If e360insight is sending spam to people in UK, and they've admitted it in a U.S. court (though not in those terms), then UK companies should sue them in a UK court for their illegal activities.

If it works one way, it should work the other way too.

Posting to a Website isn't answering a judge

[billstewart]

The website isn't Spamhaus's legal documents filed with the various courts that have asserted jurisdiction over them answering those complaints - it's Spamhaus's answers to their readers about what's been happening lately. There's no indication whether that's what was initially filed with the judge or not, though apparently Spamhaus did initially give some reply and lawyers were involved, but Spamhaus didn't continue to defend the lawsuit (presumably because it believed there wasn't appropriate jurisdiction.)

Re:Posting to a Website isn't answering a judge

[Pig Hogger]

Why should have they bothered to do more, given that the court has no jurisdiction at all whatsoever????

This word is important: default

[Orgasmatron]

It means that the other side didn't even show up. It also means that the court didn't bother looking into the merits of the case. One of the claims could have been that the operators of Spamhaus were little green men from Pluto and no one would even notice.

No precedent has been set. None.

The court didn't decide that the claimant was right, or that spamhaus was doing anything wrong. The one and only thing that the court gave an opinion on was whether or not the defendant appeared.

Excuse for War

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is the spammer could hire a private army and task them to render (kidnap) SpamHaus executives to the USA, and they would get away with this, since they have the judgement. Don't mess with the USA, you can never be sure if the Marines turn up at your door next morning. This case could be an excuse for Uncle Sam to repay for the 1812 invasion. Wars have been started over even smaller issues.

Conquered Britain will see Bush inaugurate Blair as hereditary king, the royal family and Gordon Brown will be sent to the mines. Bush will then declare himself the Emperor.

Enforcement of US Judgments in the UK

[sweetnjguy29]

First of all, it is not that difficult to enforce a US judgment in England especially since a 1983 decision, Israel Discount Bank v. Hadjipateras, allowed the enforcement of a US $10 million judgment.

Secondly, it must be established that the US Court had jurisdiction under not just U.S., but English law. Jurisdiction can be established if the defendant was physically present in the foreign country or carrying on business in the country "at a definite and reasonably permanent place". I think that English Courts should take the position that a url is a definite and reasonably permanent place.

Thirdly, England might not recognize a US judgement if it is against it's Public Policy. For example, multiple and punitive damages are considered to be contrary to public policy. So, if an English law says "no spam allowed" and an American law says "allow spam", English law trumps.

So, Spamhaus really has nothing to worry about. But the rationale it gave...was slightly confused.

Re:Enforcement of US Judgments in the UK

[schon]

First of all, it is not that difficult to enforce a US judgment in England especially since a 1983 decision

Read the article - they said that you can't enforce a default US judgement in the UK. There is a slight difference.

Re:Enforcement of US Judgments in the UK

[sweetnjguy29]

A default judgement is still a judgement. I think the point of Spamhaus is that traditional English notions of fairplay and justice are not met by the lack of procedures afforded by a default judgement in the US, and violate an important English public policy. That argument, has very little merit, since they were given an opportunity to appear and failed to defend their case!

Re:Enforcement of US Judgments in the UK

[nosferatu1001]

However by responding they would have accepted the jurisdiction - as it is in order to obtain this rediculous sum of money the spammer now has to prove jurisdiction in the UK - kinda hard to do, when by appearing he would be arrested....

SPEWS is junk

[raddan]

The whole premise behind SPEWS is flawed. The company that I work for is one of those "caught in the crossfire". Like a good mail administrator, I contacted my ISP (Cogent), and tried to reason with them (the abuse guy at Cogent is an idiot, but that's beside the point). But we don't have any real pressure here-- our monthly bill is a drop in the bucket compared to what spam revenue brings in. So, according to SPEWS, we should switch ISPs. What SPEWS doesn't take into account is that large businesses can't just switch ISPs *like that*. Most of the time, you have a contract, and in our case, we have 4 more years of that contract. Sure, we could find another ISP and eat that cost, but so far, for all of Cogent's flaws, they completely blow the competition (Verizon) out of the water. So we're stuck. SPEWS blows.

There are better ways to fight spam than blacklisted netblocks. Use one of those.

Re:SPEWS is junk

[meringuoid]

So, according to SPEWS, we should switch ISPs. What SPEWS doesn't take into account is that large businesses can't just switch ISPs *like that*. Most of the time, you have a contract, and in our case, we have 4 more years of that contract.

You signed a five-year contract with a spam-friendly ISP whose abuse department you freely admit are idiotic, and you now express surprise that you're having problems with email delivery?

Next time around, when choosing an ISP, if reliable email is mission-critical make sure it's one that actually knows its arse from its elbow when it comes to mail admin work.

Re:SPEWS is junk

[catman]

Cogent is supposed to provide you with a service for 4 more years, right? Since their spam support prevents them from supplying that service, just tell them "breach of contract" and get out. Oh, you already prepaid for the whole period? So sue them, "non-delivery of service".

I'm about to not renew the contract with my old ISP - they do run a very good spam tagging program, but I don't want spam filtered - I want it blocked. As it is, I still have to check the spam filter for false positives (none so far...). The money will go to pay for a fixed IP address for the ADSL connection to my home mail server, which blocks spam using CBL and SPEWS. (Or since this is a home system, just use webmail to those on my address book that block dynamic IPs. Can't blame them.)

Re:SPEWS is junk

[raddan]

So you're saying that in your company bean-counters don't make the decisions? I think we lucked out that they picked Cogent over Verizon, but I'm not going to fool myself into thinking that the reasons were technical. We give input, but we don't make the decisions here.

Re:SPEWS is junk

[jank1887]

Once again, the problem is not the blocklist. It's the contract forcing you to stay in business with a company providing poor service.

Andrew Jackson said it best.

[techno-vampire]

To quote (approximately) President Andrew Jackson, "The court has rendered its judgement. Now, let's see them enforce it."

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll just add a few things ... Default judgments carry res judicata effect, and are considered "on the merits" for res judicata purposes. That means a decision like this, which is settled by default, is not contestable on the merits later on. If plaintiffs seek to enforce their judgment in another court (even UK court), and defendants argue that the original court lacked jurisdiction, and then LOSE on this point.... they will not have the opportunity to defend against the original suit. The judgment will probably stand.

Re:Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Alaren was saying outside of IL, but inside the USA.

liability

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I understand, they are not blocking anything, they just list certain netblocks in their DNS.
Anyone who consults this to block spam is doing so voluntarily.
How can they be liable at all?

yeah!

[/dev/trash]

How dare someone being given justice.

Re:wow ... free speech

[pbhj]

I thought in the States you had laws allowing free speech? Surely a non-profit saying in a list that someone that is a spammer, get this ... "is a spammer" ... is free speech?

I thought the US legal system was bonkers ...

[pbhj]

>>> "default judgment"

Wha??? So if I claim the someones yacht ran over my foot and sue, but they don't turn up in court; then rather than examining the evidence the court finds against them, automatically!!??

Boy is that some strange notion of a justice system. I thought the court was supposed to examine the arguments of the plaintiff and defendant and came to an opinion based on the facts of the case. This means if one side adds no additional detail then the court has a slanted view, granted, but the plaintiff still has to give evidence of the complaint (like a doctors note saying "this man had severe lacerations consistent with a yacht's keel running over their foot" and a witness saying "yer, I saw the whole thing guv'nor").

Re:I thought the US legal system was bonkers ...

[DJCacophony]

Boy is that some strange notion of a justice system. I thought the court was supposed to examine the arguments of the plaintiff and defendant and came to an opinion based on the facts of the case.

If the defendant doesn't show up, then there are no "arguments of the defendant", only "arguments of the plaintiff". How can the judge possibly weigh in favor of a side that has no evidence and no defense and no witnesses?

Travel costs...

[LordEd]

Now there's a reason to defend the case. Counter-sue for both legal and travel costs. Free vacation!

Would anyone sue Piratebay from the US?

[Anonymous Coward]

I found this funny. This is like suing the Piratebay for violating DMCA and copyright from the US side. I wonder if RIAA should do this and get a multi-million or billion judgement against the piratebay.

Sure.

[twitter]

a page mentioning that Canada will enforce foreign lawsuits. This is, of course, Canada rather than the UK, but they have a similar legal tradition. Could this backfire?

When Air Strip One finally merges back into the Atlantic supercontinent some 200,000,000 years from now, UK law may more closely reflect Canadian laws.

Re:Sure.

[91degrees]

Hmmm... The law tends to be affected by national borders. It typically pays no attention to geography.

Re:wow ... free speech

[Ironsides]

I thought in the States you had laws allowing free speech? Surely a non-profit saying in a list that someone that is a spammer, get this ... "is a spammer" ... is free speech?

The right to free speech does not grand the right to libel/slander. What the e360 is saying claiming is that they are not a spammer and that the claim that they are is false, e.g. libel. They sued, Spamhaus did nothing to defend themselves, and a default judgement was rendered against them.

Freedom of Speech does not grant the right to yell Fire in a crowded theater either.

It's not like Spamhaus is the only one blocking

[Carl S. Gutekunst]

I find it curious that e360Insight's domain names and IP addresses are on many block lists, including at least a half dozen that are U.S. based, such as the widely used SURBL and lesser known but well regarded lists like Security Sage and AHBL. Yet e360Insight chose to go after a target that common sense says is out of reach.

Reading some of the historical articles, it became clear. Lost business and tarnished reputation have very little to do with this: it's personal.

Re:wow ... free speech

[ari_j]

More importantly, freedom of speech does not allow you to just ignore lawsuits brought against you for defamation. The correct response if you are in the right is to defend yourself in court. If the lawsuit is truly meritless, there are provisions under US law that allow you to get monetary sanctions against the idiot who brought it.

Couldn't they get spamhaus.org domain?

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK spamhaus.org might be considered an asset.

Ignore bogus US-lawsuit-nation frivolous lawsuits

[lpq]

From the article:

To get the bogus 'SLAPP' lawsuit [sic] case accepted in Illinois, David Linhardt had fabricated that Spamhaus "operates business in Illinois". Illinois District Court Judge Charles ['Kock-Up'] Kocoras," ... typical of corrupt US judges in the Yankee Trader States, failed to perform due diligence, "failed to seek proof and erroneously ruled his Illinois Discrict Court had jurisdiction over the United Kingdom.

SLAPP, or Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Partiticpation are used by companies to silence public participation and outcries against shadey and/or illegal acts performed by those companies. The U.S., Yankee trader, Court system is complicit in protecting these illegal and shadey acts by creating a safe harbor for US companies to use threat and extortion (comply with our demands and pay us now, or our protection-boys in the US Court System will make it worse for you) to silence those who would speak out or attempt to use civil means to hinder or block the offending company's shadey business practices.

Operating outside the juridiction of Corrupt US Courts is one way to express and organize opposition to these companies that manipulate the US Revenge (root meaning of Justice) system. Any entity that successfully fights against this corruption should get the people's whole-hearted support and blessing.

US Civil Law was created to protect companies and the wealthy. It is best administered by having one's own "legal" team of Pharisees team on retainer. If you don't have your own private lawyer, then then non-criminal law wasn't written for you. :-|

-lpq

Spanner in the works?

[samfreed]

Did you mean "spanner" or "spammer"?

Spamhaus Internet terrorists.

[justdave2006]

Spamhaus Internet terrorists. Becoming what you oppose Editorial by Dave Hayes Many folks have asked me why I stopped "contributing" to the everlasting debates in NANA (news.admin.net-abuse.*). I generally respond with something along the lines of "I don't wish to become that which I oppose". Indeed, recently I've "plonked" several entities (among them the terrorists known as "spamhaus" and "spews") simply because I no longer wish to beat my head against the stone wall of ignorance. Terrorists? Yes that's right. One definition of "terrorism" is "attacking innocents in the name of your cause". Nowhere is this more ironic and extreme than in the deeds of my old nemesi, the anti-spammer zealotry collective, some of whom are now known as spamhaus and spews. The terrorism they practice is implemented in the form of "mail blacklists". Blacklists are not a new notion. In the 1950's, the infamous McCarthy blacklists contained names of "possible communists", which ultimately led us to a more sterile culture. The social costs of what came to be called McCarthyism have yet to be computed. By conferring its prestige on the red hunt, the state did more than bring misery to the lives of hundreds of thousands of Communists, former Communists, fellow travelers, and unlucky liberals. It weakened American culture and it weakened itself. ---Victor Navasky, Naming Names (New York: Viking Press, 1980) Modern internet technology has created our own version(s) of social blacklists. Many anti-spam zealots have turned to this method for freeing their mailboxes from spam. Simply expressed, these organizations maintain databases which are supposed to contain the IP addresses of known spammers. They then provide these databases to various electronic mail servers, so that the servers can reject email based on what's in these databases. The bottom line is, if the machine that sends your email is on this list, a number of mail servers will automatically reject all email from your server. If (and only if) they restricted these blacklists to actual spammers, I doubt very seriously that I would have problem with this practice. If we could trust human beings to maintain a logical and calm viewpoint about life, I doubt that I would have a problem with these blacklists. Unfortunately we cannot trust these things in either case. Fact: Spamhaus and spews have added innocent IP blocks to their blacklists. The anti-spammer idealotry goes like this: "Anyone who gets service from a network friendly to spammers is supporting the spammers and therefore our enemy." (The friend of my enemy is my enemy too?) So here's how this goes. Once a network provider is branded "a communist"...er excuse me..."a spammer", ALL of their IP ranges are blocked. Typically a network provider is providing services for smaller service providers, many of whom would never and have never engaged in spamming of any kind. No notice is really given on these blacklisting events, rather you find out when mail starts bouncing to some destination. Usually an end customer is the first to notice, and that customers is directed by the bounce to complain to...their own ISP! In essence, the customer is tricked into presenting the terrorist anti-spam agenda to the ISP. The ISP turns around and finds out that their provider (or provider's provider) is what the anti-spam zealots want "silenced". Until that target complies with their arbitrary agenda (usually of the form "stop spamming", but this is not always true...see below), everyone else has to suffer with electronic mail blocks. What's wrong with this? Everything. * First and foremost, the most often heard reason anti-spammers are so rabid about anti-spam is "it makes electronic mail unusable for average people". If this is true, then how does blocking innocent email help this situation? In fact, blacklisting innocents contributes to the problem. The hypocrisy here is so thick I doubt even a knife can cut it. * The dishonor of the practice of blacklists is amazing. Many naive internet mail administrators add blacklists like spamhaus "bec

spammers are a lower form of life

[spampatrol]

The fact: Spamhaus is doing the world a great service. It alone is responsible for dramatically improving the online experience of hundreds, if not thousands, of people just in our org. Spamhaus is a TOOL people OPT IN to use, those who do not wish to use it may opt out or never opt in, and select something else or nothing at all. That some legitimate orgs get caught up is a most unfortunate side effect, and there should be ways to address this where warranted (ie, not some bottom-feeder sending threats saying he/she wants their junk servers removed).

The rant: Too bad all this prevention comes at our own expense. Spammers & scammers are the lowest forms of life. They should be dealt with most severely (FYI, these groups-spammers and scammers-have in many cases converged. They're often the same people. Don't believe me? Just read a few of the "HOT STOCK TIP" spams running rampant on the web). They are devoid of morals, despicable and venal in the truest sense, and their apathy towards the will of anyone not sending them money speaks volumes about their character. They exploit others and their victims bear the cost. Greed mongers, and should be treated with the same consideration they extend to others - none.

A few things worth noting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Spamhaus have very good British lawyers representing them, the same barristers that represent Microsoft in England, so they are not without excellent legal counsel. They are acting upon this expert advice, not on arbitrary guesswork.

Secondly, this was an attempt by Attrik's and scumbag affiliates to discover what information Spamhaus has gathered for law enforcement. To understand this you must understand that per U.K. data privacy laws Spamhaus' ROKSO service will only publish information gathered from public data sources or public services such as WHOIS data, etc. Spamhaus also maintains databases of data gathered from less private sources but only for law-enforcement's eyes.

Attriks and his friends are probably within the legal crosshairs of law enforcement. They are longtime scumbags that will eventually be prosecuted by FTC, States' or U.S. Attorney Generals and they wish to know what information has been provided to law enforcement.
This is not the offensive shot across the bow that folks might assume but a frightened attempt at preservation by longtime career spammers scum.

I long for the day when they are all wearing orange jumpsuits in a place with no doors or windows.

For more fun read news.admin.net-abuse.email

Re:wow ... free speech

[ultranova]

Freedom of Speech does not grant the right to yell Fire in a crowded theater either.

Apparently it doesn't allow you to keep a list of people and allow public access to the list either. I'm starting to wonder if it allows anything.

Re:wow ... free speech

[ultranova]

More importantly, freedom of speech does not allow you to just ignore lawsuits brought against you for defamation. The correct response if you are in the right is to defend yourself in court.

If someone sues you in a Chinese court, are you going to go there to defend yourself, or are you going to ignore them ? Spamhaus is based on UK, not USA; the US court in question has no jurisdiction over them, so why would Spamhous care ?

The correct answer to a barking dog behind a fence is to ignore it.

Re:wow ... free speech

[ari_j]

If you do business in China, you will not just ignore the Chinese court. I don't do business in China, so I would likely ignore it. I get the impression that Spamhaus does some substantial business in the US. The US court in question therefore does have jurisdiction over them, at least to the extent they do business in the US.

If the barking dog is on a leash, your decision whether to ignore it or not should be based in part on how close you are and how long the leash is.