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:Where the action is aimed.

[flibuste]

Now if you are in Spam, hijack a system in Korea to send spam to China, where should you be liable?

You've answered your own question: See Calder v. Jones, 465 U.S. 783 (1984)..

Unless the code of law in USA takes precedence over the whole world (which a lot of people from the aforementioned country tend to think), jurisprudence in USA won't hitch the back of anyone in Korea, China, or UK for the matter...

Re:On the fence

[Moryath]

e360 sends campaigns on behalf of many, many scammers who hire them to do spam the fuck out of people using illegal harvested email lists.

There, fixed that for ya.

Re:Some justification to fining Spamhaus

[BitZtream]

Idiot.

Its easy as hell to get off most spam lists, been there, done that. You may have to wait an hour or two, big whoop. If your business dies because an hour or two of emails got rejected than you almost certainly ARE a spammer. Thats just a complete cop out.

People trust things like Spamhaus because they are far more useful than letting everything flow in.

Businesses you communicate with CAN allow you in regardless of your RBL status, if they want to.

My companies response is (and this includes responses too our customers) simply that we'll communicate with you again when you get off the list. We've told customers to go piss off when they don't come off the list. You know why?

BECAUSE THEY WERE SPAMMERS and I freaking hate spammers.

Its pretty easy in most cases to look at the rejection reason and confirm they are or aren't spammers in an instant, and if so we can just allow them in anyway.

Sites like Spamhaus are damaging because they get it right SO often that no one cares about the 3 times this year they'll get it wrong.

They are accountable. If they were wrong too often, admins wouldn't use them. They have a reputation to maintain and that reputation is why they get used.

Sorry you got caught up in the mess, next time, secure your mail servers, use SPF, and don't send spam, you'll quickly find that you'll never end up on a blacklist if you have half a clue. Hell, maybe even only a quarter of a clue.