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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."
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.
the more they over-think the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the pipe
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?
.454 casul?
;)
Killing people in general is not right, but if you do it in a humane way, like shoot them through the head with a
It can't be hard to find volunteers for doing this. Shooting casul is a blast!
p.s. don't actually do this..
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.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
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.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
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.
Caffeine is my anti-drug!
Duranin - A NWN2 Roleplaying Persistent World
>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?
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
"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.
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
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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.
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?
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.
"Illinois spammers."
JAKE
"I hate Illinois spammers"
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)
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.
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.
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.
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to phish...
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
You're using her as bait, Master!