Speaking to OUT-LAW Radio, the weekly
technology law podcast, Linford said that more than 90% of the
world's 30 billion messages sent a day are spam. Email management
company Postini's estimates for 2006 were that spam constitutes
between 75% and 80% of spam.
"Spam is over 90% of all email traffic on the internet. The
sheer volume of spam is massive," he said. "Internet users don't
normally notice because the vast majority of internet service
providers and networks normally use our service so most users don't
notice that they're not receiving very much spam."
"If we were to turn our service off one day then the spam levels
on the internet would literally bring the internet email system
down," he said.
Spamhaus operates a list of domains from which it believes spam
is being sent. ISPs subscribe to that list and block email from
those addresses, severely curbing the numbers of unsolicited
commercial emails that reach users' inboxes.
One company this month received an $11.8 million judgment
against Spamhaus in an Illinois court. Linford told OUT-LAW Radio
that the company will never defend such lawsuits.
"Because we get this from all over the world we don't defend
ourselves in foreign courts," he said. "We tell them 'if you want
to sue us come to Britain'. None of them ever have because Britain
has 'loser pays'."
US company e360insight and its chief executive David Linhardt
had sued Spamhaus in Illinois and the judge there found in e360's
favour. The court judgment orders Spamhaus to stop taking any
action to block or delay email sent by e360 unless it can show that
the company has violated US law.
Linford said that an Illinois court has no jurisdiction over his
London-based company and that a default judgment does not decide
the case on its merits.
Linford founded Spamhaus when the ISP that he ran called Ultra
Design was inundated with spam. "In the mid '90s it got absolutely
flooded with spam and I decided to do something about it so for
many years I simply funded Spamhaus myself."
He said that the lists operated by Spamhaus have 650 million
users worldwide.
Hear the interview at
OUT-LAW Radio
