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."

Comments

Re:On the fence

[eldavojohn]

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.