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."
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."
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
I thought that's exactly what Spamhaus did.
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.
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
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
Spamhaus doesn't do a whole ISP-level block unless something pretty egregious is happening.
The usual process goes: /32 block, more spam, complaint to ISP, no response /25 and /29 depending on identification of block size, more spam, complaint to ISP, no response /24, more spam, complaint to ISP, no response
1. Complaint to ISP, no response
2.
3. escalation to block somewhere between
4. escalation to
5. escalation to ISP's corporate mail servers - usually something happens at this point when suits notice their own mail getting blocked
6. escalation to ISPs entire allocation
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.
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!
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.
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.
Good thing you posted AC. You could get sued for libel!
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
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.
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!).