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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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: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: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.

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).

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?

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: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: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

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.

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.

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: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?