From el Reg

Quote :

"Anti-spam crusaders slapped with $11.7m judgement By John Leyden A US court has ordered anti-spam organisation Spamhaus to pay $11.7m in damages for "illegally" listing email marketing firm e360insight as an affiliate of a known spammer, an entry that meant users of Spamhaus's mail filtering advisory system would not have received email from e360insight. The Illinois court also imposed an injunction on Spamhaus against interfering with e360insight's email marketing activities without sufficient evidence in future. UK-based Spamhaus said the default ruling against it in the US court is unenforceable. It continues to maintain that its "blacklisting (http://www.spamhaus.org/ROKSO/evidence.lasso?rokso_id=ROK7008)" of e360insight is correct. In a statement, e360insight said the court's ruling vindicates its position that Spamhaus.org is a "fanatical, vigilante organization that operates in the United States with blatant disregard for US law". It added that the ruling clearly "establishes the validity of e360insight's legitimate business practices as a responsible, opt-in marketer". Spamhaus disputes this point and argues that David Linhardt, the principle driving force behind e360insight, should re-file his case in the proper venue, a British court. Linhardt ought to known that British courts "do not accept US-style 'SLAPP' suits and impose penalties for lying to the court," it added. "

This is absolutely fucking bizare.

Since spamhaus does DNSBLs its completely opt in on the reciever's end theres nothing that they do to stop e260insight from sending emails. So firstly, how did this get to court, and secondly how in the fuck did the court rule against spamhaus?

I mean I know our courts are made up of old dudes who dont know anything about technology, but what the fuck? Is the judge just a retard or are there actual case precedents from other retards that allowed this to happen?

Luckily as spamhaus has noted the ruling is unenforcable since they're a British based business with no offices in the US. It just drives me absolutely nuts that this is even possible. We can only hope that if they do re-file in Britain that their courts are not as technologically backwards as ours.

I have our mailservers at work using their DNSBLs and they are awesome.

9/15/2006 11:07:49 AM

yeah, i was just reading the same thing on slashdot

[Edited on September 15, 2006 at 11:41 AM. Reason : .]

9/15/2006 11:12:56 AM

what legal standpoint though?

Spamhaus offers its services as anti-spam free of charge (up to certain traffic volumes) and clearly states how it does its blocking. Using it is completely opt in. If they block bulk marketting email as well thats a bonus to me.

ehe they have a contact form too
http://www.e360insight.com/contact.php
As much as I hate the slashdot fags, this is one case where it would be nice to use their hive mind to flood them

9/15/2006 11:26:46 AM

Quote :

"As much as I hate the slashdot fags"

aha, they're just as bad as the digg assholes, just that they write in complete sentences most of the time.

slashdot = hate microsoft --> linux fanboys

digg = hate microsoft --> apple fanboys

i hate seeing that shit so much that i generally just check those sites for the articles and completely skip the comments

9/15/2006 11:30:15 AM

spamhaus never showed up in court

so the judge had no choice

[Edited on September 15, 2006 at 11:42 AM. Reason : (edited out previous post because it was stupid)]

9/15/2006 11:38:58 AM

ah. well that kind of makes sense.

Still, they're British. So why would they show up?

[Edited on September 15, 2006 at 11:53 AM. Reason : .]

9/15/2006 11:53:05 AM

yeah from what i've read, had they had showed up, it would have meant that they acknowledged the court's jurisdiction to rule in the matter

9/15/2006 12:04:43 PM