A US court may soon impose an order to suspend the Web site of UK-based anti-spam organisation Spamhaus.
Spamhaus was found to be in contempt of court by a US district court in Illinois last Friday, after it failed to pay $11.7m compensation to an email marketing company and remove the company's name from its blacklist.
The order, which is being considered by district judge Charles P Kocoras, proposed that ICANN — the body that controls key parts of the Internet including the .org domain — be ordered to suspend spamhaus.org as a domain name "until such time as [the] defendant [Spamhaus] demonstrates to this Court why [it] should not be held in contempt for its failure to comply".
Spamhaus operates a blacklist of IP addresses of people it says are spammers. e360 Insight LLC, a mass-mailing firm, won the $11.7m compensation in September after a court battle against Spamhaus.
However, there is legal speculation as to whether the district court has the jurisdiction to order ICANN to suspend the Spamhaus domain name, as ICANN is an independent regulator.
"It's a tricky question," said IT law expert David Woods, associate at Pinsent Masons solicitors. "In theory ICANN is an independent body to regulate the use of domain names — but it's subject to US law. If it is ordered to, it is likely to take the safer option [and comply]."
Spamhaus has claimed that the Internet could be flooded with spam if it loses the domain. Woods acknowledged that this is a concern, but suggested that Spamhaus may be engaged in "a bit of self promotion by saying the world will be a less safe place" if it no longer occupies that domain.
If the spamhaus.org domain name were suspended, there would be no legal issues with the organisation rebranding using a different domain name such as spamhaus.co.uk.
"I'd be surprised if they didn't already have a range of domain names already registered," said Woods.
The US district court proposed the suspension after Spamhaus refused to pay the multi-million dollar compensation and remove e360 Insight LLC from its blacklist. Spamhaus also refused to publish an apology to the company and its head, David Lindhart, saying to do so would be a lie.
"The default judgement awards Linhardt, a one-man bulk email marketing outfit based in Chicago, compensatory damages totaling $11,715,000.00, orders Spamhaus to permanently remove Linhardt's ROKSO and spam evidence records, orders Spamhaus to lie by posting a notice stating that Linhardt is 'not a spammer' and orders Spamhaus to cease blocking spam sent by Linhardt's company e360 Insight LLC to Spamhaus' users," said Spamhaus on its Web site.
Spamhaus did not comply with this ruling, which was made on 13 September.
However, Woods said he doubted the US judge had the jurisdiction to make the initial ruling against a UK company.
"I don't think the court had jurisdiction to begin with. There may be scope to seek to enforce a foreign judgement through treaties, but the simple answer is no, it doesn't," said Woods.
e360 Insight said it was forced to take the initial action against Spamhaus as all other attempts to communicate with the organisation had failed."Spamhaus didn't seem to care that we are an opt-in email marketing company. They didn't seem to care that the only way to get on to our mailing list was to sign up for it. They didn't seem to care about the thousands of customers [who] would not receive order confirmation messages or other email messages they requested. They didn't care about the lost dollars in legitimate commerce or about the employees [who] lost their jobs as a result," said the e360 Web site.
Talkback
Opt-in? That is a joke. Let us pay someone to opt-in for you. A scam to dodge first glance legal liability that any US judge should be well aware of if handling technology. So the judge is most likely intentiionally miscarrrying justice.
The positive interpretation is to get legislators or higher courts to make easier prosecution of both the spammer and its catspaws (the website scripters who get your machine to automatically opt-in when you visit that page).
Suggesting the judge may be corrupt or stupid is illegal even when true. However he could be Liberatarian which means he actively uses his position within government to legally reduce regulation or its effects. Repealing the law against murder is beyond his power - but this is not.
Don't misrepresent Libertarians. Spam is theft of computer resources and time, and no libertarian (including myself) condones theft, and no libertarian condones murder.
Your earlier comment was valid, but attempting to smear libertarians as some kind of crack-pot has just marked *you* out as such.
Spamhaus Internet terrorists.
Becoming what you oppose
Editorial by Dave Hayes
Many folks have asked me why I stopped "contributing" to the everlasting debates in NANA (news.admin.net-abuse.*). I generally respond with something along the lines of "I don't wish to become that which I oppose". Indeed, recently I've "plonked" several entities (among them the terrorists known as "spamhaus" and "spews") simply because I no longer wish to beat my head against the stone wall of ignorance.
Terrorists? Yes that's right. One definition of "terrorism" is "attacking innocents in the name of your cause". Nowhere is this more ironic and extreme than in the deeds of my old nemesi, the anti-spammer zealotry collective, some of whom are now known as spamhaus and spews. The terrorism they practice is implemented in the form of "mail blacklists".
Blacklists are not a new notion. In the 1950's, the infamous McCarthy blacklists contained names of "possible communists", which ultimately led us to a more sterile culture.
The social costs of what came to be called McCarthyism have yet to be computed. By conferring its prestige on the red hunt, the state did more than bring misery to the lives of hundreds of thousands of Communists, former Communists, fellow travelers, and unlucky liberals. It weakened American culture and it weakened itself. ---Victor Navasky, Naming Names (New York: Viking Press, 1980)
Modern internet technology has created our own version(s) of social blacklists. Many anti-spam zealots have turned to this method for freeing their mailboxes from spam. Simply expressed, these organizations maintain databases which are supposed to contain the IP addresses of known spammers. They then provide these databases to various electronic mail servers, so that the servers can reject email based on what's in these databases.
The bottom line is, if the machine that sends your email is on this list, a number of mail servers will automatically reject all email from your server.
If (and only if) they restricted these blacklists to actual spammers, I doubt very seriously that I would have problem with this practice. If we could trust human beings to maintain a logical and calm viewpoint about life, I doubt that I would have a problem with these blacklists. Unfortunately we cannot trust these things in either case.
Fact: Spamhaus and spews have added innocent IP blocks to their blacklists.
The anti-spammer idealotry goes like this: "Anyone who gets service from a network friendly to spammers is supporting the spammers and therefore our enemy." (The friend of my enemy is my enemy too?)
So here's how this goes. Once a network provider is branded "a communist"...er excuse me..."a spammer", ALL of their IP ranges are blocked. Typically a network provider is providing services for smaller service providers, many of whom would never and have never engaged in spamming of any kind. No notice is really given on these blacklisting events, rather you find out when mail starts bouncing to some destination. Usually an end customer is the first to notice, and that customers is directed by the bounce to complain to...their own ISP!
In essence, the customer is tricked into presenting the terrorist anti-spam agenda to the ISP. The ISP turns around and finds out that their provider (or provider's provider) is what the anti-spam zealots want "silenced". Until that target complies with their arbitrary agenda (usually of the form "stop spamming", but this is not always true...see below), everyone else has to suffer with electronic mail blocks.
What's wrong with this? Everything.
* First and foremost, the most often heard reason anti-spammers are so rabid about anti-spam is "it makes electronic mail unusable for average people". If this is true, then how does blocking innocent email help this situation? In fact, blacklisting innocents contributes to the problem. The hypocrisy here is so thick I doubt even a knife can cut it. * The