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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.
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?
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!
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.
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/
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'.
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
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.
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!).