Slashdot Mirror
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."
So I mean, yeah, its scary that they lost a case where essentially they incorrectly identified spam (an easy mistake) ...
Who decided that they were incorrectly identified as spam? From the article:
e360 claimed that about 3 billion of the more than 6.6 billion emails it sent on behalf of clients
Please do tell me what kind of business (one that I've never heard of, mind you) sends out e-mails totaling the world's population and in what manner is that legitimate?
Curiously, nowhere does e360 have to defend this action. So, yeah, you can be on the fence if you think that any spammer should be able to sue Spamhaus (a free service) in any country on the globe and expect Spamhaus to front money for representation and whatnot in all those countries. Sounds like a pretty good strategy for spammers to take out Spamhaus since it's probably a growing thorn in their side.
As the submitter, that's where I stand on this issue.
My work here is dung.
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.
You can argue about them not showing up in court all you want but they did not show up in court because they knew the Illinois court had NO jurisdiction on their actions. Read their take on it here:
http://www.spamhaus.org/organization/statement.lasso?ref=3
Then read a breakdown from 2006 by Groklaw here:
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=2006102700261694
Spamhaus is a FOREIGN company doing business on FOREIGN land. They have no need to show up for a court appearance in what amounts to a provincial court in another country.
If e360 had been based in Upper Monrovia or some similarly remote place other than the US this would have never have flown. And even if it had flown due to judge-shopping they would still be right to ignore it due to jurisdiction. The only reason this has gotten this far is that the US court system is broken and arrogant enough to think it applies to the entire world.
Got a problem with a foreign company doing business on their own soil? Take it up with your government. _Your_ courts have no jurisdiction to prosecute.
"Bah!" - Dogbert
From what I remember, that's not what happened. They testified that Spamhaus was conducting business in Illinois. Which they were, since they were providing their service to people and businesses in Illinois. The judge did the right thing by applying the law and not what Skuld-Chan thinks is "common sense".
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
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!
They did not "originally show up". Get your facts straight.
They did to have the case moved to federal court, when the judge declined their request they walked out. Get *YOUR* facts straight. As an RBL operator I have been following the case closely since it inception, I think I know what happened as I have read all the documents!
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.