September 15th 2006

Yesterday the U.K. anti-spam non-profit organization Spamhause was slapped with an uncontested $11.7 million dollar judgment by the U.S. District Court of Illinois. e360 Insight LLC filed the suit against Spamhaus earlier this year after the anti-spam organization placed it on ROKSO, Spamhaus’s blacklist of the 200 worst spammers. The suit was filed in the state of Illinois in the U.S. Spamhaus was quick to state that the State of Illinois has no jurisdiction over the organization’s actions, since it’s based in the U.K. and does no business in Illinois. Spamhaus, the brainchild of Steve Linford, did not defend itself in court.

Apparently, the presiding judge saw things differently and ruled that not only must Spamhaus pay $11.7 million in damages, but they also must refrain from blocking, delaying, or interrupting email sent by e360 Insight and offer a public apology. Spamhaus responded with a statement calling the court’s ruling invalid and saying that “A Plaintiff seeking to have such an order enforced must re-file the case in a British court of law and prove jurisdiction, as well as the small matter of proving the rest of the case.”

Spamhaus said that the ruling shows how U.S. courts can be “bamboozled” by spammers, and that they would ignore the $11.7 million judgment and continue to blacklist emails sent by e360 Insight.

From: Adodas

Interesting news, maybe spammers should be driven to courts after all to make them pay for the time we spend to erase their spamming messages

(in reply to sp)