Out-Law News 2 min. read

Spamhaus rejects $11 million US judgment


Anti-spam group Spamhaus has ignored a ruling from an Illinois court granting an $11 million claim against it. The London-based group says it will only answer to a UK court judgment.

Spamhaus is a not for profit organisation which maintains 'blacklists' of domain names and companies it suspects of sending spam. Those who choose to can have all emails from those companies or domains blocked.

US company e360insight and its chief executive David Linhardt 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.

"Spamhaus shall post, within five business days of the date of this order, on its website at both the main home page and at the ROKSO jump page, a message of 1 inch by 1 inch, the text of which is to be reasonably approved by Plaintiffs, and which, generally, indicates that Plaintiff  were erroneously listed on the website as spammers and that Plaintiffs are not spammers," said the judgment. "Defendant Spamhaus shall leave such message on its site for a period of six months."

"Spamhaus does not block anyone from sending email," said Spamhaus chief executive Steve Linford in a statement. "Spamhaus operates a mail filter advisory system which allows Spamhaus users (and ONLY Spamhaus users) to reject incoming email at the point of ingress into their private networks from email senders which Spamhaus advises do not fully comply with Spamhaus' policy for acceptance of inbound email. Mr. Linhardt can send as much email as he likes to anyone on the Internet, just not to Spamhaus users."

Spamhaus denied having any operations in Illinois and says that it will take no action until a judgment is given in a court which it believes has jurisdiction over it.

"Spamhaus does no business in the State of Illinois. Spamhaus has no office or agent in the State of Illinois nor any affiliation with any Illinois resident or entity," said Linford. "Spamhaus is a British organization and is not subject to Illinois County Court jurisdiction. Spamhaus advises Mr. Linhardt to re-file his case in the proper venue, a law court in the United Kingdom."

"After losing several customers and suppliers as a result of being on their SBL and ROKSO blacklists, we tried contacting them directly in an attempt to address their concerns," said a statement from e360. "The only way to contact them is through email, so we began our quest to understand their requirements to be removed from their lists. Unfortunately, these attempts failed. Spamhaus' only response was to threaten us and call us names. All of their replies can be paraphrased in one sentence – 'stop spamming spammer.'"

A default judgment was handed down in the case because Spamhaus mounted no defence. "Any ruling whatsoever issued by a United States County, State or Federal Court has no validity in the United Kingdom unless jurisdiction is proven to a British Court," said Linford.

"Therefore Spamhaus correctly ignored the TRO [temporary restraining order] and advises Mr. Linhardt to re-file his case in a British court when he can prove jurisdiction, but advises Mr. Linhardt that British courts do not accept US-style 'SLAPP' suits and impose penalties for lying to the court."

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