Judge Rules In Favor Of Spamhaus

Waylon writes "U.S. District Judge Charles Kocoras has ruled in favor of The Spamhaus Project. e360 Insight responded on its homepage, saying the judge's ruling was 'a devastating loss of personal freedom for all U.S. citizens'. As opposed to shutting down a voluntary service which tries to mitigate the millions of unsolicited emails that e360 Insight pumps out every single day." From the article: "In his order, Judge Kocoras wrote that the relief e360insight sought is 'too broad to be warranted in this case' and that suspending the domain name would 'cut off all lawful online activities of Spamhaus, not just those that are in contravention' of the default judgment. He also called e360insight's motion one that 'does not correspond to the gravity of the offending conduct.'"

"a devastating loss of personal freedom for..."

[The MAZZTer]

Way to go down kicking and screaming inanities...

More at stake than just SPAM...

[Chabil Ha']

I really think that the judge realized that more was at stake than just SPAM. It has set an important precedant regarding the Internet and jurisdiction. Even though the US controls most of it, it is important to realize that the Internet is an ethereal place without solid jurisdictional boundaries. If the judge had signed away on pulling the domain name, it would have casted a devastating taint on how Law treats 'where' the Interent exactly is.

Why

[1310nm]

Let's see, a bunch of guys puts together a database of known spammers, which people then use for RBLs. This is quite unfair to the spammers! Anyone with at least a peanut in the noggin should have called bullshit on the lawsuit before it even got legs.

Re:The straight dope

[mr_matticus]

Actually, if the judge had ordered ICANN (an American corporation) to pull the plug on the domain, it most definitely would have affected them, regardless of the physical jurisdiction of the court. The amount of power the US could potentially have over the Internet is rather frightening--which is why there is an Internet governance debate. The biggest sticking point is the lack of an international checking body--a sort of UN for the Internet--that could intervene and stop a US court order from overstepping its bounds, as a shutdown order here would be.

Re:Go to the source

[Gorshkov]

Please, for the sake of fairness, please go to the e360insight website Read for yourself what they have to say. Consider it carefully, go back later to gain additional insights. (Heh, I said insights.)

Un-bloody-real .... I went and visited the poor benighted spammers. I couldn't resist the urge - I clicked on the "contact us" link. ANd what's the first thing it did? They wanted my EMAIL address.

Well, they can contact me at [e-mail] - that's the one I gave when I posted the following comment to what they had on the link supplied:

First - if you think I'm going to give a spammer my email address, you're sadly mistaken.

Second - spamhaus, as you very well know, doesn't block a damned thing - individual mail admins - like ME - decide ON OUR OWN if we want to take their recommendations or not.

And before you get pissy about a UK organisation ignoring a USA court, just thank god that they have, and that they CAN - becuase otherwise you'd be hauled to court in every country that had decent anti-spam legislation.

And I'm pretty sure that you'd consider THAT to be an affront to the liberties of every red-blooded american as well, wouldn't you?

Re:Go to the source

[tomhudson]

Just a quick note ... their contact form script requires a valid email address. Why not use [e-mail] ... or [e-mail], etc.

Re:The straight dope

[JustNiz]

If the US started doing that, it wouldn't take long before the rest of the world stopped using ICANN's top-level domain, and effectively put the whole US on a subnet of some even higher level non-US domain.

Re:The straight dope

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if the judge had ordered ICANN (an American corporation) to pull the plug on the domain, it most definitely would have affected them, regardless of the physical jurisdiction of the court.

Actually, even if the judge ordered ICANN to suspend their domain, ICANN would not be able to comply, because it is not within ICANN's power to do so.

The judge could order the registrar to pull the domain though.

The amount of power the US could potentially have over the Internet is rather frightening

The US has minimal power over the internet. The internet is a set of standards for computer networks. The US has some power over some domain names because the companies that manage these domain names are located in the US.

And should the US abuse its position, I'm sure other countries will compensate. Why does ICANN have such power? Because internet users say that they do. Why are the DNS roots authoritative? Because internet users say that they are. Should a critical mass of internet users disagree, then they lose this power.

Despite all the bitching about ICANN, generally speaking, they do a decent job. Certainly far better than the UN/ITU proposals to bring it under the control of the dictator's debating club on the east river.

Re:Why

[kelk1]

But bull is all over the place. It seems to me that spam should be addressed just like the no phone call list. Make it worldwide and addressed by whatever institution that can.

But when we (and /. people are likely to filter out 90% of the crap) receive again and again, for years and years, messages targeted at get 'some brand of stay hard all night' pills or 'get bigger and longer' miracle solution, isn't there be an easier way to get rid of the pest at the source itself?

There are many scavenger occupations (and maybe all are) but the real cause is the source of the distributed product. Or am I missing anything? The same goes with all this ssh login attempts. They all originate from the same sources and there is a distinct lack of prosecution.

PS: what do you mean by plain *old* text?

Spamhaus should have said "no jusrisdiction"

[cbhacking]

at the start... but they didn't. FTA:

Had Spamhaus made the "no jurisdiction" argument at the onset, it may very well have gotten the case dismissed. Instead, it finds itself in the undesirable and difficult position of having to appeal a summary judgment.

I hope to hell they're able to avoid the default judgement in any case, but from what it looks like they successfully fought the Illinois filing (by arguing that they weren't in Illinois, and getting it moved up to the Federal level... not that they're in the USA either). However, they then changed tactics and ignored the federal proceedings entirely. Now they have a Contempt of Court, a huge default judgement, and the shield of "no jurisdiction" seems weaker since they didn't use it to begin with.

All that Spamhaus has "won" is not getting their domain registration pulled. That's great, but the current situation in the US courts basically says they need to pay up, and nothing so far except their location has said otherwise. They may have to fight it, in an appeals court, in the US (where they will have to pay their own legal fees even if they win) and that could be... bad.

Re:"a devastating loss of personal freedom for..."

[BlogPope]

Well Spamhaus said their demise would be the end of the internet, so its basically kids in the play ground.

Well, they are the ONLY Real Time Black list on the internet, which of course is the ONLY anti-spam measure available to mail admins, and I'm pretty sure email traffic volumes are orders of magnitude larger than other protocols, such as http & Bitorrent.

So yeah, I agree with Slashdot in agreein with Spamhaus on the horros to be unleashed if this order had gone through.

Re:Whew

[swd2]

Sure you could have handled it, To be honest Spamhaus is mostly using other peoples dnsrbl's anyway. I get alot more out of tqmcube.com or cbl.abuseat.org than the Spamhaus's.
Plus you should never be rejecting from these lists anyway, just scoring and allowing your users to decide what should be rejected.

 

This ruling is PRO freedom of speech

[merc]

The freedom of speech also means the freedom to NOT listen to speech.

This is a win for those who believe in property rights.

My servers. My rules.

Re:GMAIL FTW!

[ocelotbob]

Not really. A lot of spam these days comes from zombied/trojaned machines, which are already well covered by other blocklists, like CBL [abuseat.org]. Were spamhaus to go away, chances are spam levels would remain about the same for people not using the tools. Spammers just don't care if they're blocked or not, all things considered.

Re:"a devastating loss of personal freedom for..."

[jaygridley]

Anyone notice that the case is referred to as Spamhaus v e360Insight on their main page? Kinda implies that they're the victim.

Re:Go to the source

[Tim C]

I clicked on the "contact us" link. ANd what's the first thing it did? They wanted my EMAIL address.

Well, yeah; presumably they think you want to contact them so as to set up a dialogue with them, not a monologue. They may be stupid, no good lowlife spamming shits, but expecting an email address as part of a contact form is perfectly reasonable. (Not that I'd give them mine, of course, but that's beside the point)

Well, they can contact me at [e-mail]

This was one of my biggest pet hates a couple of years ago - people using syntactically-legal addresses on real domains that are nothing to do with them. Same goes for the guy who used an address at yeahright.com, which is also a registered domain.

What if that's an actual, valid email address and you've just condemned some poor schmuck to even more spam? If you wouldn't trust a site with your own email address, don't trust it with a potentially valid one either; use a "fake but possible" tld (such as .tld, .ab.cd, etc) instead.

Re:"Does not do business in Illinois" argument

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in Iowa, my employer pays Spamhaus multi thousands of dollars a year to be provided zone transfers of the xbl and sbl. I'm sure there is someone in Illinois doing the same. Would this not be considered doing business in Illinois?

Excellent question. The question of where does a transaction occur is an old one, and there is a great deal of legal precedent to determine the answer.

Did your transaction take place in Iowa or the UK? Is Spamhaus in Iowa? Is Spamhaus licensed/registered to do business in Iowa? Does Spamhaus collect Iowa sales tax? On the other hand, Spamhaus is registered to do business in the UK, and collects UK sales tax. There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that the transaction took place in the UK, and the goods were exported from the UK to Iowa.

Further, if you read the fine print on your agreement, Data Feed is a service supplied and maintained by an independent contractor licensed by The Spamhaus Project to sell and provide access by subscription to Spamhaus DNSBL data, so that further suggests that Spamhaus does not do business in Iowa. Even if the transaction did occur in Iowa, it would be the independent contractor who does business there.

Re:About Time

[Anonymous Coward]

As irritated as they may well be, in the context of the IT industry its not their trademark and _never_ has been. Their trademark on "SPAM" only applies to food.

Hormel Foods arent entitled to defraud or threaten anyone via invalid or false trademark claims. Please dont encourage them to do so, and please dont propagate the lie that their trademark applies to all industry segments.

Re:Whew

[Tweekster]

My users put that authority in my hands, they dont want to deal with it and they dont have the time.

I use the blacklists because it makes them happy, and they dont care if that single email is blocked, because only an idiot would rely 100% on email for something major.