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

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

[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.

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.

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: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?

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: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.