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Spamhaus to Ignore $11.7M Judgement

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the i-say-it's-spam-and-i-say-the-hell-with-it dept.

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."

4 of 471 comments (clear)

  1. Slight error by Guppy06 · · Score: 4, Informative

    "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.

  2. Re:Color me confused. by Kierthos · · Score: 5, Informative

    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."

    --
    Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
  3. Re:Jurisdiction? by august+sun · · Score: 5, Informative
    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]
  4. Re:wow by diersing · · Score: 4, Informative
    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.