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Spamhaus Fine Reduced From $11.7M To $27K
eldavojohn writes "In 2006, anti-spam crusader Spamhaus was sued for 'defamation, tortious interference with prospective economic advantage and interference with existing contracts' after blocking 'promotional e-mails' from e360. What with the case being in Illinois and Spamhaus being a British outfit, Spamhaus didn't bloody care. So, e360 was awarded $11.7 million in damages, which was later thrown out in an appeals court with a request for the lower court to come up with actual damage estimates instead of the ridiculous $11.7 million. (e360 had originally stated $135M, then $122M, and then $30M as sums of damages.) As a result, the actual damages were estimated to be just $27,002. While this is a massive reduction in the fine and a little bit more realistic, I think it is important to note that Spamhaus is a service that people proactively utilize. They don't force you to use their anti-spam identification system — it's totally opt-in. And now they're being fined what a foreign judge found to be 'one month of additional work on behalf of the customers' to a company they allegedly incorrectly identified as spam. Sad and scary precedent."
is that e360 managed to judge-shop to find a judge so fucking stupid that he didn't simply and correctly say "fuck you, piss off and take your nuisance lawsuit with you, SPAMMER."
I hope they continue to ignore the judgement. In fact, I'm a bit disappointed the original judgement was even dignified with an appeal.
Spamhaus, like any other RBL, has a removal procedure that e360 could have used. Provided e360 could prove they weren't spammers Spamhaus likely would have removed them from the database without issue and without cost.
So why didn't e360 try that? I see no info that they tried that at all. (Likely because they couldn't prove they weren't spamming people.) Instead they just sued Spamhaus in an effort to dry them up and get them out of the way.
As the summary pointed out Spamhaus is a voluntary service. Nobody is being forced to use Spamhaus. So why on earth should Spamhaus be forced to pay any damages at all? It's just insane that upon going through the court system _twice_ someone didn't ask "Well e360 can you prove you aren't spamming people?".
Anecdotal note: Many many moons ago there used to be an RBL named the BLARS Block List.
What Blars (yes it was a handle for an actual person) would do is block whole netblocks and then anybody who would complain he'd charge $250/hour to get removed IF he chose to do so. And you would be charged the fee even if he chose not to unblock you. So looking at that right there shows you what I consider the openly worst of behavior for an RBL service. Spamhaus is definitely not that.
"Bah!" - Dogbert
Well, I mean, the reason e360 got awarded anything is because Spamhaus "Didn't Bloody Care".
So I mean, yeah, its scary that they lost a case where essentially they incorrectly identified spam (an easy mistake), for an opt in service no less. But its not that scary when you hear that they didn't do anything to defend themselves.
If you are on a golf course, looking back at the tee-box, and someone yells, "FOOUR" at you - what do you do?
Spamhaus is as likely to pay $27K as LimeWire is to pay $1.5 trillion.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Just another example that the American Civil court system has lost all touch with reality and is just a bunch of lawyers working the system to make a buck for themselves.
Spamhaus has my ultimate support. What a colossal waste of the taxpayers money by e360 trying to sue a foreign, non-profit company for allegedly interfering with commerce. All Spamhaus has to do is tell e360 to go piss up a rope, which they in effect, did. Did e360 stop them, hell no!
Sure, someone needs to decide to use the service.
People need to decide to utilize product reviews, but that doesn't mean people are allowed to post factually incorrect information in a review and claim that they get a free pass because only the people acting on the review have any responsibility for action/loss of reputation/etc.
(not commenting on the merits of this case in particular)
After reading about this law suit we need a new blacklist category for people to opt into. Dirtbag companies who sue too much. e360 can then top the list. Who wants to do business with a company that sues like this? Personally I would be happy to opt into a blacklist containing the likes of MPAA, RIAA, e360, patent trolls, and other companies who abuse the legal system. Regardless of the lawsuit I would want my email service to block e360 emails.
will never see a dime. It cost them more to litigate then they earned from the judgement
What a shitty precedent. I guess Google etc. will need to rename the spam folder to something like "folder", so that they can't be sued for filtering out stuff. "Your honor, our software didn't say these items were spam. In fact, it merely put them into a folder titled 'folder'. It's up to each user how to interpret what that title means."
You don't just get to decide for yourself *after you've already begun the process* that it no longer applies to you. Once you start showing up to court, you have to continue showing up... except in the very rare case where you're provisionally appearing strictly for the purpose of debating proper jurisdiction. This is like saying "time out... hold on, have we started playing the game yet?".
After you submit to jurisdiction, it takes a judge's ruling to say you're not. If you just stop showing up the judge has no choice but to rule in the other guy's favor in a civil case. If I were the judge, I'd probably add a "stupid tax" to your damages too.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
It is a damage award, and probably less than the plaintiffs paid their lawyers. It also isn't a "scary precedent". It isn't a precedent at all: it's what normally happens when you fail to show up and present your case.
> ...foreign judge...
So you feel that a USA court should refuse to hear a case brought by a USA plaintiff just because the defendent is foreign?
If Spamhaus had bothered to show up and present a defense they could have gotten the case dismissed with prejudice and had a good shot at being awarded fees and expenses.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
At least, not if they care about having default judgments filed against them in the US.
If you're served with a lawsuit, you need to respond to protect yourself. Even if it's not fair that you're being sued in the first place, even if the other guy is full of shit. That's how the legal system in the US works.
With so many new internet and computing technologies emerging, and with the spin of legal jargon, it's no wonder that judges really dont know how to rule.
I expect more of these types scratch-your-head judgments until the courts get a junk-mail bin for their cases.
oldhack: "Security is a waste of money until shit hits the fan. 5 minutes later, it becomes waste of money again. "
I want a job where I get $27k for a month. ... But not if I have to be an OBVIOUS SPAMMER to do it, like e360, because I have ethics, unlike e360.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
I think it is important to note that Spamhaus is a service that people proactively utilize. They don't force you to use their anti-spam identification system — it's totally opt-in. And now they're being fined what a foreign judge found to be 'one month of additional work on behalf of the customers' to a company they allegedly incorrectly identified as spam. Sad and scary precedent.
I have it on very good authority that eldavojohn kills babies and eats them for breakfast. He also drove his last 5 employers/clients to insanity resulting in their bankruptcy, and in 2 cases suicide. He is a horrible evil person, and you should never associate with him or employ him.
Remember, nobody's forced to listen to me so I should be allowed to say whatever the hell I want.
Since they already went all that bumpy road from $11.7M to $27k, I have no doubt they will come to $0 in no time.
They've calculated e360 loss to "one person-month"... Now spamhaus just have to redirect them to people who opted-in for their service, meaning e360 has to collect $27,002 from some 100,000 (or million, whatever) spamhaus users... Meaning You and I will have to pay $0.027... Or less.
I will pay my piece gladly - and I am looking forward for their invoice!
http://opencm3.net, http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/
That is all that ever drives spam. If they are aiming to convince people they aren't spammers, they shouldn't put so much energy into chasing after money that they feel they could receive from sending out email.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
While nobody likes spammers (except *maybe* their mothers) and Spamhaus is a great project and useful tool for fighting spam, there is still a problem here: As someone who is a mail admin for several companies, it's pretty outrageous when an RBL list marks you as a spammer (and we're not, of course). It can cost serious money when business emails aren't delivered, it can take serious time to resolve the problem, and it also causes embarrassment for the business.
I don't know Spamhaus intimately, but for most RBL's there is no accountability or appeal. They get to publicly call you a bad name (intentionally damaging your reputation and encouraging others to act on it), and expect you to just take it. They act completely irresponsibly, and assert that, effectively, accountability doesn't scale -- they couldn't possibly review all the businesses they slander via their algorithm. That doesn't cut it.
Imagine someone created an algorithm that claimed to detect people who are frauds via their online presence, and publicly posted its output. Imagine you were on that list and people stopped doing business with you. Is it permissible for the list's owners to say, 'well, false positives are too expensive to detect, so if you're a false positive on that list, too bad'?
While RBLs are very helpful services, they must be accountable, just like everyone else in the world. Nobody else gets to say, 'it's just too expensive to be responsible for my actions'.
Hence forth every US citizen will have to travel ANYWHERE in the world were ANYONE at all chooses to sue them for ANYTHING at all.
This new law co-signed by the travel industry who would love to voice their support but are to busy singing "we're in the money, we're in the money".
If you disagree with this new law then you are saying John Hasler is a twit.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Getting an estimate of actual damages was a good call. They need to do the same thing when suing pirates. Don't sue them for some ridiculous amount, just what the ACTUAL DAMAGES for not paying for the movie.
If they didn't care earlier, why should they care now?
It's still ridiculous on top of being unenforceable. Maybe they should sue e360 in Britain for the lulz.
I agree,
let's all send 'promotional emails' to e360!
but seriously, WTF!?
Thanks to spamhaus (and some other rbls) my servers are for 99% spamless, they should give a fine to e360 for spamming, oh sorry it's 'promotional emails', like those who 'promote' all kinds of pharmaceutical products....
I think it is important to note that Spamhaus is a service that people proactively utilize. They don't force you to use their anti-spam identification system -- it's totally opt-in.
People proactively buy the newspaper too. Doesn't mean the newspaper publisher can't be held liable for libel and slander. Spamhaus publishes a news report in DNS about which IP addresses are trustworthy. If they get it wrong and that harms someone, there is ample cause for a tort.
That people opt-in to Spamhaus is not relevant.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Now, I despise spam at least as much as anyone here... on the other hand, I *really* have issues with some of the blacklist projects. I think spamhous, and definitely dnlsorbs, has blacklisted *me*... or, rather, as near as I can tell, they blacklisted an ISP more than once... and the last time, I was on RCN in Chicago, which provides 'Net access for much of the city, and they blacklisted all or part of their *entire* address range.
That's not acceptable.
And it was a pain to get off. At least they're "slightly" better than five or so years ago, when cogeco in Canada used them, and I couldn't email a friend, even though I was on my friend's whitelist.
mark
You'd have a point, except that in this case you don't.
Spamhaus did initially show up, which was an acknowledgement that the US court has jurisdiction. Had Spamhaus either entirely ignored the suit or stayed to convince the judge that they were a wholly foreign corporation with no US presence, that'd be fine. But they half-assed it, and so the judge had to provide a ruling; absent any representation for Spamhaus, a default damage award was entered.
"NUTS"
Frankly, cases and rulings like this illustrate just how out of control the judiciary is. We seriously should consider bringing back the practice of tar and feathering as a means to punish judges, especially unelected and unfirable for life Federal judges, offer them the choice: Resign or tar and feathers.
Corporatism != Free Market
Judges don't have to find against in absentia. for example, if George Bush is brought to a court to answer against me for sexual abuse charges and George (unsurprisingly) doesn't turn up, then he's not found guilty because
a) I've not shown any abuse
b) The court has no jurisdiction
If e360 doesn't like Spamhaus, then don't use it! :)
Also, e360 should tell all of its customers that in order to receive the 6 billion+ emails, that they should not use SpamHaus on their mail servers. Oh, wait....
Wasn't there a case back of some company that made anti-spyware software that got sued by a company because their sw was labeled malware?
from their site:
"To meet public demand for its DNSBLs, Spamhaus has built one of the largest DNS infrastructures in the world. Its network of over 60 public DNSBL servers spread across 18 countries serves many billions of DNSBL queries to the public every day, free of charge."
for a business to operate equipment in a country, that equipment is required to follow laws pertaining to that country.
Let's hope that e360 spent a lot more than $27k on lawyers for this case.
Part of the theory is that you direct harm to a jurisdiction, you are subject to that jurisdiction. See Calder v. Jones, 465 U.S. 783 (1984). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calder_v._Jones
Now if you are in Spam, hijack a system in Korea to send spam to China, where should you be liable?
Fight Spammers!
SpamHaus has many issues that are not resolved. One thing is their privacy policy which does not describe the information they collect and how someone can correct it. Spamhaus has a removal procedure but it is unclear and does not work in all situations. Whenever there is an inquiry to SpamHaus they just say it is al "volunteers" (which it is not) and they never respond. Now Microsoft (FrontBridge) and Cisco (IronPort) are getting into the act. I think it is real problem that both these companies also operate blacklists or reputation scores without a clear dispute resolution procedure.
This is like the ealy days of credit reporting agencies where many people found it difficult, if not impossible, to fix mistakes. Much like operations like SpamHaus, credit reporting agencies are not required. These issues led to all kinds of regulations and lawsuits.
It is easy to dismiss all this because a spammer filed a suit ... but wait until your business gets on one of these lists and you can't find out why or correct it..
To me, this looks just like a case of libel. (Or slander. Or whatever.) IANAL.
Party A said, "Party B is a spammer."
Party B said, "I am not, and now you've cost me money because of your accusations."
Party B took Party A to court and won. They got money from Party A to cover the money they lost because Party A libeled them.
Party A could have gone to court and said, "They ARE spammers. Here's the proof," and they might have won. Party A didn't bother.
I really don't see the problem here, now that the monetary amounts aren't insane.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Perfect historical reference. Linky for the kids.
They tried to have spamhaus.org seized in the past, even if it's held by a French registrar these days, won't the .org TLD be a vulnerability in that regard?
No. That's wrong. Because SpamHaus does not block anything.
The more correct analogy would be if you ask SpamHaus what their opinion is of Bob and they say "I don't like Bob".
Then when you don't do business with Bob, Bob gets mad and sues SpamHaus for damages.
And you ask someone else and they say that they don't like Bob OR his family.
Yes, that is what this is about. People asking other people what their opinion is of the people trying to send them email.
This is a civil suit, not a criminal matter. So their CEO is not personally liable. The whole point of a corporation is that liability is with the corporate entity itself. So if I run a business and I get sued, my personal assets like house and so on cannot be taken by the suit. It is limited to the business.
So their CEO would have a problem if he came to the US. It isn't like they'd throw him in jail. The only way Spamhaus would have a problem is if they opened a US branch. Then the spammers could go after their US assets.
Basically if a company gets sued in a country they don't do business in, they just don't have to care.
Refuting the "evidence" should be secondary to establishing jurisdiction.
Since SpamHaus was not operating in that Court's jurisdiction, shouldn't that have cause the case to be thrown out?
Otherwise, anyone anywhere in the world can sue you and you'd have the burden of representing yourself in all the different venues. Why?
If someone sues you, and you fail to show, the court will nearly always rule in their favour. The reason is that in civil court, the burden of proof is a preponderance of the evidence, meaning that their evidence is more likely than yours. So if you are not there to present any evidence, well then they win. For that matter they'll usually win in summary judgment, since there'll be no one to oppose the motion.
As such, if you get sued in a court that has the ability to enforce sanctions on you, you'd better show up no matter how stupid the suit.
In this case, however, there wasn't a reason. Spamhaus has no US operations and as such no US assets to touch. A US court can't do anything to them in a civil matter (in a criminal matter the US could have them extradited). So the judgment is irrelevant. This would be the same situation as, say, if Microsoft were sued in North Korea. Since they have no North Korean operations, they'd have no reason to respond. The courts (this is of course supposing NK has courts) would have nothing they could do.
Spamhaus is a reporting agency that identifies spammers. And yet, they got sued, and lost. In that case, all bets are off people, we can now sue for anything, and it's high time we stuck it to the reporting agencies, and I mean the CREDIT REPORTING AGENCIES.
Ever try and get your credit report fixed because it's littered with errors? And the three different agencies have three different reports, and these days, to even get your report, you need to sign up for (and then cancel) some idioting "membership"?
Well, no more going through hell to fix your credit report. Based on this case, I'd say it's now do-able to just sue them (preferably for 11 million, although you could go RIAA on 'em and initially sue for 1.5 Trillion), and when you win, you should have enough money to not care about your credit report.
I'm not a lawyer, but I'd love to hear from one willing to take this case!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I think it is important to note that Spamhaus is a service that people proactively utilize.
If we're inventing new terms, let's have them be sensible? "Proactive" and "utilize" (in this sense) are both pretty bad.
Proactive is just about redundant and doesn't exactly convey the sense that's intended. A person being proactive isn't "in favor of being active", they are "taking initiative". It's nice to have a simple term to express this, but let's invent something other than "proactive".
When one "utilizes" something they cause that thing to become ("-ize") useful ("util-"). They're not merely using it. They are converting or applying something so that it can be productive or effective where in its former state (unconverted or not thus applied) it was not. Spamhaus lists? Already useful.
It is important to note that Spamhaus is a service that many people take the initiative to use.
I know these terms have been around and aren't being invented here at this moment. I'm saying they're neologisms (or maybe in utilize's case a "neosemantism") that are best not promoted. The more you conflate meaning or get vague with meaning in language, the stupider you make us all. If you're going to change language, do it in an intelligent way. Please don't push us towards an idiocracy.
I'm missing part of the background here.
I remember Spamhaus deciding to just declare the court had no jurisdiction and give it up, on the basis that no fine could be collected.
So why appeal? Why not just leave it as it was. Let e360 try to collect the money from Spamhaus's imaginary US division. When did Spanhaus change its collective mind?
That's what I meant (cf OJ's murder trial). OJ tried for murder in criminal court: not guilty. So sued in civil court: guilty. Same here.
You ain't being accused by spamhaus, they just collate other people's opinions. You are being accused by me when I drag your email into my spam box.
I've dragged your email into my spam box because I never wanted to read another asinine email like it again and I hope my email account will learn that your email is garbage. If my email account learns by submitting spam to spamhaus, wonderful, maybe my other email accounts will learn that your emails are garbage too.
You are accountable to me and my spam box trigger finger. I don't care about your stupid new product. I don't care about our "pre-existing business relationship". I only care that your email is fucking garbage that should be deleted without anyone in the whole fucking world ever reading it.
You surely realize that google mail does not outsource all their spam detection to spamhaus? If I flag your email as spam in google, then every single email you send me will make you look bad to google, who has the capacity for blocking like half your spam or even docking your page rank. If I used say 10minutemail.com because you looked particularly scummy, well I just hope google docks the page rank for people listed by spamhaus.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Isn't the function Spamhaus provides essentially the same thing as Consumer Reports? And now e360 is pissed/suing because they got a bad review, but can't even argue the bad review was false.
If you don't show to contest the lawsuit, the judge usually finds for the plaintiff by default. What else did Spamhaus expect? I agree, though, that it's quite ludicrous to expect an individual or small business to show in some court on the other side of the world, but I don't think our laws have quite caught up in this regard yet.
What I don't understand is why they even bothered to do that. They are in the UK, why waste money on foreign lawyers defending a case with zero legal validity in the UK. The only thing the US could do would be to stop US people connecting to the Spamhaus service and if the US wants to emulate Chinese censorship that's their problem and nobody else's. This seems like a complete waste of money.
Spamhaus ... looked at the case, decided they could spend boatloads of money fighting a frivolous lawsuit ..., or since they are not in the U.S.' jurisdiction, they could save themselves the worry and the stress by ignoring the lawsuit.
So why bother turning up at all? More importantly why bother appealing it? Since the case is utterly irrelevant for them why care at all?
Why does it not surprise me that this case was tried in Illinois. The only thing that seems to come from that state these days is faggotry, bigotry, and cancer. I wish Canada would invade and annex it.
You have to have them served and you are required to report to the courts how you served them with notice.
How did E360 get around that?
So you have a high opinion of Obama, I take it?
Oho, so you two are tight, I get it. < nudge, nudge >
Ah. See, you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Tip of the Day:
The word president is pronounced préz - ih - dent. It means, "one who presides", i.e. "one who takes the lead", deriving from Latin pre- "in front" or "before", and Latin sidere "to sit".
The word you're looking for is precedent, pronounced préss - eh - dent -- "that which has happened previously", deriving from Latin pre- "in front" or "before", and Latin cedere "to go".
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Why should it make the least bit of difference that it's opt-in? It's only opt-in for the people who use the list, it's not opt-in for people targetted by the list.
Yeah, the targets of the list do seem to be spammers this time, but the guilty are given protections because that's the only way to protect the innocent as well. And I'd really hate to set a precedent of "the list owner isn't responsible because the list is opt-in" in order to catch spammers, and then discover that the same precedent applies when the person running the list is evil or thoughtless and starts spreading actual lies.
Wow. Your alternative to a mechanism crafted to improve our odds of having an independent judiciary that protects against the tyranny of the majority is *a vigilante mob*?
'Interesting' isn't exactly how I'd mod your comment. Barking mad, more like.
By all means support the judge for applying the law, but please don't undermine your argument by then suggesting that it was the 'right' thing, or the 'wrong' thing for that matter.
For those people who disagree with the law, in this case, or generally, it wouldn't have been the right thing. They might have preferred common sense instead.
There have been other RBLs who were very aggressive - SORBS comes to mind - but that's not Spamhaus's approach. They run a much cleaner operation, going for hard evidence of the few big spam-sources, with very very low false positives, and they don't go blacklisting whole ISPs unless they're really in the spam-support business. The tradeoff, of course, is that there's more spam that they miss, but that's a job for SpamAssassin with other RBLs as extra weight. It's very straightforward to get off their list, unless you belong there, which basically everybody on it does.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The problem was that they didn't just say "no thanks, not your jurisdiction, not our problem" - they did something much more complicated, along the lines of saying "These guys really are spammers, you should find for us" and *then* saying "wait, we're British, you don't have jurisdiction", and the court decided that their first actions gave it jurisdiction.
It's also somewhat ironic that a British company is getting into this kind of trouble, given the amazingly broad reach of British libel law.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It never ceases to amaze me how so many ostensibly intelligent people can be so effing bloody stupid when it comes to courts and the legal system. It's obvious that many /.ers learn most if not all of what they think they know about the court system from watching cop shows.
It's not a fine at all, it's an award of damages. Fines are imposed in criminal matters, this is a civil matter.
It isn't. It's precisely what happens when you don't defend yourself in a lawsuit: The plaintiff automatically wins. A defaulting defendant is deemed to have admitted the truth of all of the plaintiff's allegations and the court is bound to follow that. Spamhaus' attorney committed malpractice by advising them not to defend themselves. After all, if the lawsuit is as "frivolous" as they claim it is, then getting it dismissed shouldn't be a problem, no?
Wrong again. Countries often recognise judgments from other foreign countries. e360 could rather easily register this judgment in the UK and pursue Spamhaus' assets there.
See above re: registering foreign judgments in other countries.
And this gem from gun nut Firethorn (177587):
Extradition only applies in criminal matters. You fail. You're obviously a gundamentalist, the kind that puts the "gun" before "da mental."
rtb61 (674572) writes:
Those who file frivolous law suits should be made to pay the full costs
U.S. courts routinely impose sanctions on parties for advancing frivolous claims or defenses. Google "Civil Rule 11" and you'll see what I mean.
Not true. A claim or defense can look like a slam dunk early on, but over time can become less so. At that point, that party is obliged to have a "come to Jesus" talk with their client and hope the other side will agree to a reasonable settlement.
Repeat after me: Courts often allow foreign judgments to be registered and enforced.
Well, here you go: Spamhaus had assets to protect in the U.S. and defaulted anyway. Wow. Their lawyer should be given a medal.
Wrong. There is no such treaty between all of those countries. You're referring to the Brussels Convention which applies between certain EU members only.
Even the officers of foreign corporations can be held in contempt of court.
If contempt of a US court were enforceable outside the US then your entire legal system is going to collapse trying to prosecute the 5.7+ billion people outside the US most of whom probably hold the US court system in contempt if they care about it at all.
If they Spanhaus does not want to be subject to the laws of the United States they should remove all US companies from their database.
Spamhaus IS NOT subject to US law. It provides a European based service which US companies decide they want to use. Effectively those companies are coming to Europe and using a service provided by Europeans. You might want to think about this in reverse since it helps remove any nationalistic bias. Suppose you have a US company (based entirely in the US and nowhere else) offering search services to, oh lets say, Chinese nationals. Now by your logic that company would be subject to Chinese law unless it prevented all Chinese nationals from accessing it even though it has no physical presence in China.
Do you really think that is a sensible way for all our different legal systems to work? If so then you can forget about companies existing online since they will now have to comply with all countries' laws, no matter how insane or restrictive, because it is impossible to prove that you are not a national of a given country (a passport proves nationality but there are a lot of people with dual citizenship and you cannot prove that you do not have a passport!).
umm, maybe i'm just gullible and i've fallen for the lie, but i thought the servers you know, sent the packets to the requesting computer. So the list was delivered to Illinois, which seems to imply that part of the service took place in illinois.
The court was NOT forced to rule against Spamhaus. The court could have ruled that it didn't have jurisdiction, as would have been proper in this case. This is how lawsuits against God and Satan get thrown out.
I'll bet the geeks who run Spamhaus and made the decision to abandon their defense of the suit are some of the shithouse lawyers who post here on a regular basis.
e360 sued them for another reason.
I have worked in email marketing and i know all the big fishes around here. i know the inner workings of all the cash flow, offers, marketers, advertisers, trackers, etc.
I can guarantee that some organizations have a special status at Spamhaus; they send all the spam they want ( YES, SPAM ), and they never get into Spamhaus Blocklists. My impression is that they block only "competition".
I have heard of many stories involving certain individuals "sponsoring" Spamhaus( they have and sponsorship page somewhere ) with tens of thousands of dollars, to get their ranges out of the blocklists. This has happened a number of times in the last years.
When we were blocked by them, we got no reason for the action. We have opt-in lists, we honor every unsubscribe, but they don't care. I'm willing to think that they would like some "sponsorship". All the email addresses i have used in contacting them are now recieving spam.
With great power, comes great responsability. All of that, with money and corruption.
You be the judge.
I think this ruling is great. Now we can start charging back the spammers for the work they cause us, and of course send 1% of what we receive to SpamHaus.
"Well, fair enough then. Point conceded." - by Kalriath (849904)on Thursday June 17, @06:14PM (#32607528)
Kalriath "goes down for the count" here, and @ the URL below as well:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1687452&cid=32609448
Here, just like @ the URL above?
Kalriath ran rather than disproving the points he was challenged to do so against (and, rather than admitting he likes ad hominem attacking others, & his first post there indicates that much with ease -> http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1687452&cid=32589360 ).
He "hit & run trolls" & then, when he is asked to disprove points in rebuttals others send back his way? Well, take a peek over there, and see Kalriath "run, Forrest, RUN..." (lol, TOO easy!).
APK
P.S.=> How do YOU like being "trolled", Kalriath? It's a "wee bit different" now that the "shoes on the other foot" (yours), isn't it?? That's also what you get for being an EASILY TRACKED FOR TROLLING "wannabe almighty 'registered user'" here on /., & especially since you like trolling others...
(In fact? Well - I'll be waiting over there for you to show up & disprove all of the points I put YOUR WAY, and "Your Master's" as well, here -> http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1687452&cid=32589278 )... apk
APK, fuck off. You're a pathetic trolling wanker. I'm happy to admit when I'm incorrect (which in this instance is due to me not checking historical information), whereas you simply insist that the opponent is an idiot, since you can't possibly be wrong. You're the sort of immature piece of shit that makes trolls look bad. I'm not replying to this thread again, because you aren't worth the fucking thirty seconds to compose an appropriate repertoire of insults.
TL;DR: go fuck yourself.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
"I'm not replying to this thread again, because you aren't worth the fucking thirty seconds to compose an appropriate repertoire of insults." - by Kalriath (849904)on Sunday June 20, @04:16AM (#32630604)
No one is asking you reply here: Do so, here -> http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1687452&cid=32589278 & disprove the points I made that were in response to yourself, and "Your Master"... that's all!
(Again/once more - GOOD LUCK (you, especially the "likes of you", NEED IT!))
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"TL;DR: go fuck yourself." - by Kalriath (849904)on Sunday June 20, @04:16AM (#32630604)
Again, for the 2nd time in regards to this sentiment from yourself -> http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1687452&cid=32607514 ? NO THANK YOU!
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"APK, fuck off." - by Kalriath (849904)on Sunday June 20, @04:16AM (#32630604)
No. I don't take your orders... get it, BOY?
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"You're a pathetic trolling wanker." - by Kalriath (849904)on Sunday June 20, @04:16AM (#32630604)
Awww: "Poor Baby"... seems you can "dish it out", but you cannot TAKE it!
Also, on the note of "trolling":
Didn't YOU come & troll me first, here? -> http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1687452&cid=32589360
Additionally, then you failed to disprove the points I challenged you to in regards to your trolling, here also?? -> http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1687452&cid=32589278
(Poor showing, & you're only compounding that now with your "foaming @ the mouth" raging profanity laden reply here now...)
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"I'm happy to admit when I'm incorrect (which in this instance is due to me not checking historical information)" - by Kalriath (849904)on Sunday June 20, @04:16AM (#32630604)
First of all, you don't sound "happy" here @ all, and SECONDLY? Yes, you are wrong here, as well as in the 2 URL's above in my reply here above also...
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"whereas you simply insist that the opponent is an idiot, since you can't possibly be wrong." - by Kalriath (849904)on Sunday June 20, @04:16AM (#32630604)
I don't insist anyone is an idiot, I only ask that IF you're going to troll & ad hominem attack me (as you did in the url's above along with "Your Master")? Prove I am the one who is incorrect is all... go for it (strange how you keep avoiding doing so in the URL's above though, eh? (NOT)).
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"You're the sort of immature piece of shit that makes trolls look bad." - by Kalriath (849904)on Sunday June 20, @04:16AM (#32630604)
Yea, "ok": So, it's "OK" for YOU to do that to others, but when others do the SAME TO YOU?? Gee... "suddenly that's a DIFFERENT STORY", eh? Not... so, how do YOU like it??
APK
P.S.=> Kalriath, you're a TYPICAL troll: You troll others, & when you have it done in return to YOU, so YOU know how it feels? You complain like a child... serves you right! apk