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."
