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Judge Rules In Favor Of Spamhaus

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the yay-spam-for-everybody-wait dept.

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.'"

3 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. Re:More at stake than just SPAM... by EvilCowzGoMoo · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Notice that the Judge did not overturn the $11.7 million default judgment, only the attempt to suspend the domain name. While this is a victory in that we won't suddenly get hit with 10x more spam tomarrow... Spamhaus is not off the hook yet. This is likely to be just the start of some potentialy very good, or very bad legislation.

    We live in interesting times.

  2. Re:Ruling against Spamhaus still stands... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  3. I suggest following e360Insight's advice by pseudorand · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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/