Spamhaus, a leading UK anti-spam service, will continue to operate after a US court rejected an attempt to take it offline last week.
Spamhaus provides lists of known spammers to businesses, enabling them to block junk mail in their incoming email traffic. It was taken to Court by e360 Insight, an email marketing company, which Spamhaus had added to its spam blacklist.
e360 told an Illinois court earlier this month that the spamhaus.org domain should be suspended, after it won a claim for damages against Spamhaus.
But in the Illinois Court last Thursday, the judge rejected e360's request for suspension.
Judge Charles Kocoras said that the relief e360 sought was "too broad to be warranted in this case", and that unproportional effects could be caused by suspending Spamhaus' service.
In a Court statement, Kocoras said, "The suspension would cut off all lawful online activities of Spamhaus via its existing domain name, not just those that are in contravention of this Court's order."
"While we will not condone or tolerate noncompliance with a valid order of this court, neither will we impose a sanction that does not correspond to the gravity of the offending conduct," the judge continued.
Some businesses had been concerned that if the Spamhaus service was suspended, the quantity of spam on the internet could have increased dramatically. Spamhaus claims it is responsible for stopping 50 billion spam messages a day.
Spamhaus is also disputing the $11.7m (£6.25m) damages that the Illinois Court has ordered it to pay, saying that the Court has no jurisdiction over a UK-based company.
After the award, e360 chief David Linhardt branded Spamhaus as "a fanatical, vigilante organisation that operates in the United States with blatant disregard for US law".
Internet registrar ICANN said earlier this month that it would not suspend the Spamhaus domain.
Talkback
It sounds to me like e360 Insight are a bit annoyed because a system is blocking spam sent by them.
Now if there was anyone at e360 with a brain wouldn't they just change the headers they use and get round the spam filter?
If i was spamhaus i would ignore the american court too. It would be my software and my blocking engine, if i want to block mail from *@*.* for all my clients that i protect then i am within my right to do so. My clients might not like it and if they dont like it they will leave meaning i have less profits which will wake me up to do something about my blocking rules that my customers dont like.
Now along the same lines, if my customers were not happy about my blocking of the e360 emails surely they would contact me and tell me and i could allow those mails through? Or an even more drastic measure would be to leave my anti spam services and seek another option that allows the e360 spam through?
Lets get this straight, Spamhaus block the e360 mails, yet no one who is protected by spamhaus is complaining about it, spamhaus have not been asked to allow the blocked mails by any customer and spamhaus have not allowed the e360 mails through and customers are staying with Spamhaus. This says to me, correct me if i am wrong but i know i am not wrong. That no one actually wants the e360 spam arriving in their inbox? Call me colombo or something but hasn't the court in america basically just awarded a known spammer damages?
I fully support spamhaus in their blocking, i dont use them and i never will but i fully understand why they are doing what they are doing. Keep going guys.