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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."
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
He didn't have any alternative; SpamHaus didn't show. The judge isn't allowed to take sides or consider evidence that wasn't presented. If this wasn't the case, you would never be able to successfully sue for redress; the other side could simply fail to show up.
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
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.
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.
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'.
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.