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

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: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: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: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: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.