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Judge Rules In Favor Of Spamhaus
Waylon writes "U.S. District Judge Charles Kocoras has ruled in favor of The Spamhaus Project. e360 Insight responded on its homepage, saying the judge's ruling was 'a devastating loss of personal freedom for all U.S. citizens'. As opposed to shutting down a voluntary service which tries to mitigate the millions of unsolicited emails that e360 Insight pumps out every single day." From the article: "In his order, Judge Kocoras wrote that the relief e360insight sought is 'too broad to be warranted in this case' and that suspending the domain name would 'cut off all lawful online activities of Spamhaus, not just those that are in contravention' of the default judgment. He also called e360insight's motion one that 'does not correspond to the gravity of the offending conduct.'"
Oh well, it is nice to see that over rules and regulations sometimes common sense and the people behind it does not get punished.
All i have to say about it after seeing 568 messages today in my mailbox. Yes, 2 is a valid mail, the rest is buy viagra and get a college degree scam.
cheers
We live in interesting times.
I recently started bouncing all the spam my filters can detect to a GMail account. After 1 week of operation, here's what GMail is reporting:
"You are currently using 839 MB (30%) of your 2776 MB."
The judge denied e360insight's motion to suspend the Spamhaus domain, but that doesn't mean the original ruling against Spamhaus was vacated. As far as I can tell, that still stands.
Yes, they got a judgment against Spamhaus. Judgments are meaningless if they aren't enforceable. Good luck enforcing it in the USA, since Spamhaus does not do business in the USA and has no assets in the USA to seize.
While some foreign judgments are enforceable in the UK, e360insight will have to go to a UK court and explain why their default judgment is valid, and why US law applies to a UK company which does no business in the USA. And since they're now in the UK, e360insight will have to explain why they are violating UK law relating to spam.
Highly unlikely to be enforced.
E360: I'm the head of network abuse for Arizona's oldest ISP and your IP addresses have been in our filters here LONG before the Spamhaus complaints against you.
There is a very hot spot for you in hell someday.
This decision has nothing to do with Freedom of Speech, it's about scum spammers taking advantage of the legal system.
Spammers: Die In A Fire.
Spamhaus: Keep doing a good job.
For those that think I'm trolling, look at my slashdot ID number, I've been around a long time.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
e360Insight's web site urges us to contact our Senators and Representatives, which is just what I did:
Dear Senator|Representative <XYZ>:
e360Insight, an American company, has recently sued Spamhaus, a British company, claiming that Spamhous's service, which lists the e-mail addresses and domain names of known spammers, has violated e360Insight's rights.
Spamhaus provides an invaluable service. Those of us responsible for administering e-mail services know and love the company. Though most users aren't aware of it, almost anyone who uses e-mail receives less unwanted e-mail because of Spamhaus.
e360Insight, as best I can tell from their website, is a major SENDER of unsolicited and/or unwanted SPAM messages. Their argument is incorrect because only individual e-mail administrators have the ability to block e-mail. Spamhaus has no such ability. We CHOOSE to use or ignore Spamhaus recommendations. If such recommendations compromised the e-mail service we provided, we would quickly stop using them due to user complaints.
A federal court has already ordered Spamhaus to pay $11.7 million (an unenforceable measure, since Spamhaus isn't in the US). e360Insight has also asked that Spamhaus's domain be shut down (which was was rejected by U.S. District Judge Charles Kocoras). Please encourage Judget Kocoras and any other federal judges involved to dismiss e360Insight's frivolously lawsuit and protect the rights of American's to use Spamhaus, a valuable service that makes e-mail a usable form of communication.
http://www.house.gov/
http://www.senate.gov/
I am being naive here. I can understand why it may be a bit difficult Joe Spammer who operates from basement and hides hides his identity. But a company like e360 should be easy to target. Right? Should not all we do be
1.) file a class action lawsuit
2.) ask them to show their full "client" email list to a judiciary (under NDA maybe)
3.) check with recipients of randomly selected emails - if they really did ask to be sent all these "advertisements".