Slashdot Mirror
Appeals Court Tosses $11M Spamhaus Judgement
Panaqqa writes "In a not unexpected move, the US 7th Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the $11 million awarded to e360 Insight and vacated a permanent injunction against Spamhaus requiring them to stop listing e360 Insight as a spammer. However, the ruling (PDF) does not set aside the default judgement, meaning that Spamhaus has still lost its opportunity to argue the case. The original judge could still impose a monetary judgement, after taking evidence from the spammer as to how much Spamhaus's block had cost them. This is unfortunate considering the legal leverage the recent ruling concerning spyware might have provided for Spamhaus."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Anyone know the email of the judge that would charge him money? ...
:D
Err....
Shouldn't I be able to list any domain or IP in any database I please? Isn't it the responsibility of the people using the database to determine whether it's a bad idea? Isn't the real issue between the people blocking email and their customers who are missing email?
I didn't realize you could make German haute cuisine using SPAM...I knew about all the uses in pan-Asian cuisine, but German food with SPAM could be interesting!
I can see it now: SPAMwurst, mit Kraut
that I get sued by the spammer if I reject their spam
I wonder how long will it be before some company like these fools comes along and starts lobbying the powers that be to tweak "CAN-SPAM" like fables. I say get to the hardcore bottom of it all. Oh more Viagra spam eh... Sue the damn pharmaceutical companies for allowing their advertisers to break laws. That will minimize a whole slew of spam. Think about the monies pharmaceutical companies would have to even dish out to hear a case if half the US started filing small claims cases, class action cases, etc.
Infiltrated dot Net
Certainly if someone wanted to receive e360's messages, or if they were EXPECTING a message from e360 and didn't get it, they can talk to their own mail admins and have e360 whitelisted. Why is it so hard to effectively explain to the courts that Spamhaus has nothing to do with whether e360's messages get through or not, other than responding to a query from the receiving end asking if Spamhaus believes they are a spammer?
In reverse, is the do-not-call list something that will be targeted next?
> The original judge could still impose a monetary judgement
:D
No he couldn't, because however much you Americans think you run the world US laws [currently] does not extend to the rest of us
I can't remember the original source but it was a few years ago I read an article about spam. Very interesting, most of the cost of advertising went to the advertiser (as it should) with paper media. Not so with spam, almost all the cost of spam goes to the recipient and hardly any to the spammer. You can easily spam 1000 per second from a server, so your looking at a very small fraction of a cent per message. But the user has to take their time to remove you message, their bandwidth is tied up etc. I think the estimate was in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars if you factor in the cost to the company paying the employee while they determine if it is spam or not. Even more if the spam has viruses, and causes system exploits. Spam filters work, sort of, sometimes they block stuff you want, and if not, you have to check your junk box every once in a while just in case, so it isn't saving you all the time associated with spam.
I think corporations that get spammed, including ISP's should be able to go to companys like DoubleClick and e360 and bill them for the aggregiate costs. "You sent 2 million emails through our network last month, here is your bill for 200k for bandwidth + costs for the end users". Money applied to spam filtering, or as a discount to the end user that had to deal with the unfortunate garbage.
Spamhaus are a UK company.
More and more, noone wants to do business with the US, or travel there as a tourist.
So why should we care if some far away country wants to claim we owe them some money? Let them come to Europe and say that!
The suit was mistargeted. Spamhaus doesn't force anyone to use it. It is the ISPs that impose it on email accounts, not Spamhaus, and consequently, THEY should be liable if they do not allow their users to disable such blocking. Use of Spamhaus contributes to email unreliability and should not be imposed by ISP services. An email account carries with it some expectation of usability, which IMHO cannot be simply TOS'ed away in the fine print. Email is unreliable enough without blacklist (or for that matter, even greylist) techniques being applied by lazy ISPs who are looking for a brainless way to reduce their email traffic load. Either ISPs are a common carrier or they are not, the imposition of blocking techniques should carry along with it some responsibilities for its failures.
Spamshaus came into Court and filed an answer that in part said, You didn't serve properly and you have no jurisidiction. Then they said, we are not going to play this game, we want to withdraw our answer.
If you don't answer at all, a default is entered. This is what happened.
Fight Spammers!
Whether e360 is now a spammer is not a fact determined by the default judgment. The fact determined by the judgment is that e360 was not a spammer when Spamhaus so identified it on the date of the action giving rise to the complaint.
This is a HUGE gift from the appeals court.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Though the default judgment still stands, the trial court judge will have to look harder at any injunction and money damages -- not take Linhardt's word for it.
The reason for this is my case against him, at http://www.barbieslapp.com/spam/e360/timeline.htm , because in my case, I argued (and lost) personal juridiction of Linhardt, in part because he said (and the court believed it) that he had no business in California. I pointed out in his affadavit in the Spamhaus where he said "e360 and I lost contracts..." and "e60 and I lost business opportunities.." and that of the 7 companies listed, 4 are in California, he explained it away by saying that he really meant that when he said, e360 and I he meant e360 and I in my role as president. If you don't suffer harm personally, you have no standing to bring a lawsuit. I filed a motion for reconsideration, on Linhardt's personal jurisdiction, in part based on this.
Spamhaus's lawyers are aware of this.
Fight Spammers!
At the bottom of the
Okay, here's my idea to reduce spam:
1) Send a massive spam campaign selling pharmaceuticals (viagra, weight loss, zoloft, hair regrowth, you name it)
2) When the orders come in, send out authentic-looking prescription medication, but instead of medicine the pills are made of fast-acting poison.
3) Thousands of people who are stupid enough to actually respond to spam, buy medication from spammers, and ingest said medication, are killed.
4) Massive media coverage of the event makes spamming seem "dangerous" to the average person, hence reducing response rates to future spam.
5) I make a tidy profit cleaning the gene pool.
So, where's the downside?
If they sue an ISP in the US, the ISP probably would show up. Linhardt only sues people he thinks will default. When he sued several NANAE participants, including me, he dismissed the case (a 2nd time) when the judge was about to rule on two motion to dismiss for lack of jurisidction. Mark Ferguson (www.whew.com) included documentation regarding Linhardt creating fake signup documents.
If an ISP was sued, both CAN-SPAM and the CDA gives immunity to the ISP for filtering and blocking. See White Buffalo Ventures, LLC v. University of Texas at Austin (5th Cir. 2005) http://www.spamlaws.com/cases/whitebuffalo2.shtml
Fight Spammers!
I skimmed the ruling, and he really goes through logical contortions to vacate the injunction, while having to accept that everything that e360 claimed was factual, because of the egregious legal errors that Spamhaus made.
He really had to work hard to "do the right thing".
I am satisfied with blocking e360. I don't care if it hurts their business, because they shouldn't be sending me or any of my users emails. Spamhaus provided a means to ensure that we don't get such emails.
I think Spamhaus could have avoided the issues they are dealing with now by not labeling spammers as spammers, and came up with a more politically correct term that is legally bulletproof.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
So, where's the downside?
...God would punish you for killing people. So would the criminal justice system.
God still might even punish you just for thinking up such wicked crap.
Jesus said that someone who commits murder in their heart or wishes death to someone is no different than someone who actually commits the real thing.
This is no worst than having Megan Law websites showing sexual offenders in the community. I remember when the Megan law website first came and an sexual offender sue that this infringed upon his rights but the courts showed that greater protection of general public is more important and one person rights. I hate to say that most sexual offenders re-offended after they are released. I say this is correct judgment. Spammers are no worst, in my opinion, than these sexual offenders and these people should be "blacklisted" somewhere. I don't need to subscribe to spamhaus and I don't need to look at the Megan Law websites but this information is open to those who need it which I think is important. Spamhaus and other blacklisting services should be able to blacklist true spammers and also allow people that have incorrectly placed on there list to be removed within reason.
However now with botnets this point is getting mute since spammers are taking over legitimate systems to send out there junk in their stead so legitimate system are being caught in this trap of being blacklisted instead of the real spammers. The best way to stop this is get the spammers and put them in a non-networked prison and give back all of the money they stole so they are truly punished for what they have done to all of us.
While I'm dreaming would like to have visit the Playboy Mansion....
Germany, IIRC, still has food purity laws. You can't sell a product as "beer" unless its only ingredients are water, yeast, hops, malt and barley. Sausages must be 100% meat from a named part of the animal (and the animal should not have been named "Fido").
Spam, I suspect, would fall under the category of "cheese".
You can expect Spamhaus to keep listing Lindtard's e360 spam-sewer ad vitam æternam.