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Appeals Court Tosses $11M Spamhaus Judgement
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Sep 05, 2007 09:51 AM
from the still-say-you're-a-spammer dept.
from the still-say-you're-a-spammer dept.
Panaqqa writes "In a not unexpected move, the US 7th Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the $11 million awarded to e360 Insight and vacated a permanent injunction against Spamhaus requiring them to stop listing e360 Insight as a spammer. However, the ruling (PDF) does not set aside the default judgement, meaning that Spamhaus has still lost its opportunity to argue the case. The original judge could still impose a monetary judgement, after taking evidence from the spammer as to how much Spamhaus's block had cost them. This is unfortunate considering the legal leverage the recent ruling concerning spyware might have provided for Spamhaus."
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Oh yeah? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh yeah? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:Oh yeah? (Score:4, Insightful)
-matthew
Parent
Re:Oh yeah? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Oh yeah? (Score:5, Informative)
FWIR, Spamhause showed up in state court & said, 'you have no jurisdiction, the US court system has no jurisdiction & even if it did, it would have to be a Federal court'. The state judge threw it out properly judging that with no presense or assets in his district, he didn't have jurisdiction. 360 then went to a Federal Judge to redo the case & Spamhause's lawyers in the UK rightly asserted that "fuck the US court system, they have no jurisdiction, don't waste your money." or words to that effect. The problem is that the Federal Judge forgot that US law applies in the US not the world and ruled that being in another country doing things that are perfectly legal & not tortable (is that a word?) in that country is no reason that US law shouldn't be applied to them. In accordance with the new ruling on spyware, 360's case isn't actionable in the US anymore either, but that didn't seem to bother the appeals judge at all in denying the appeal of the ruling.
Parent
Sort of (Score:5, Informative)
If you don't answer at all, a default is entered. This is what happened.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
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Next up (Score:5, Funny)
Spam the Judge Haus? (Score:2)
Err....
Still don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Still don't get it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
-matthew
Re: (Score:2)
It's up to the people who
So is it OK with you if I put you on the list?
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Most places that do background check pay some third party to do it. If that third party relied in whole or in part on the list in question, perhaps to fill gaps in other records, then, no, the background check would not reveal the list would be wrong, it would return the results of relying on the list.
Now, what would happen in the real world today is that the first person to find out they were flagg
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Spamhaus could have list A, the spammer list. This is what the judge prevented them from putting e360 on.
So then they could have list B, the "list of people we wrongly suspected were spammers and have been ordered not to characterize as such, wink wink".
Then Spamhaus sends everyone lists A and B. Then everyone using Spamhaus's list to filter says, "Hey, why not just block A *and* B?" Spamhaus assists in this process by making the default when you sign up to be that you
Re: (Score:2)
at YOUR site you can choose to drop any IP datagram you want. any. you are NOT required by law (ianal) to HAVE to receive (let alone read) any or all data that hits your site.
freedom means you have the right to allow or disallow anyone into your 'home' unless they have a warrant and are an official gov rep (eg, police).
in this case, spamhaus makes 'recommendations' (not unlike MS in yesterday's article letting the religious nutjobs tell
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That said, they're providing a service that their customers ask for. They clearly outline their criteria and let their customers decide if and how to use it. It seems to me that the spammers only have a legitimate complaint against the ISPs that use the Spamhaus data. Even then, it would be a ha
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Re:Still don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see the problem with keeping a list. If it is a bad list with too many false positives, then nobody would use it. Sheesh.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh please, how many sites out there list "douchebag companies" and tell people not to buy from them? It is called free speech.
-matthew
Re:Still don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Carl Sagan once sued Apple for calling him a "butt-head astronomer." Sagan lost the suit, because according to the judge:
I'm sure "douchebag companies" would fall into the same category.
Spamhaus' Register Of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) is a list of "known professional spam operations that have been terminated by a minimum of 3 Internet Service Providers for spam offenses." That's a much more serious accusation than "butt-head" or "douchebag." If it's true, of course, then the plaintiffs can burn in hell... but they claim it's not true, and they've been falsely labeled by Spamhaus, which has damaged their reputation and cost them business.
Parent
Spamhaus? (Score:2, Interesting)
I can see it now: SPAMwurst, mit Kraut
Re: (Score:2)
Also, I hear that doesn't have much Spamwurst in it.
Wouldn't work. (Score:3, Funny)
Spam, I suspect, would fall under the category of "cheese".
So, the next logical step is (Score:3, Funny)
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Woe be gone (Score:3, Insightful)
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Lets assume that these spammers actually have some kind of product (whether it works/does what is claimed or not is irrelevant, what matters is that they have a product) and are actually sending it out to people who buy from their crappy
If the place where the pills are coming from is located outside of the US, the drugs can be stopped in the mail (I believe mailing drugs into the US from outside of the US is illegal). If the place where the
I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
In reverse, is the do-not-call list something that will be targeted next?
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
Because Spamhaus didn't show up in court to explain it. From Wikipedia:
Parent
and DoubleClick (Score:2, Interesting)
I can't remember the original source but it was a few years ago I read an article about spam. Very interesting, most of the cost of advertising went to the advertiser (as it should) with paper media. Not so with spam, almost all the cost of spam goes to the recipient and hardly any to the
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think corporations that get spammed, including ISP's should be able to go to companys like DoubleClick and e360 and bill them for the aggregiate costs. "You sent 2 million emails through our network last month, here is your bill for 200k for bandwidth + costs for the end users"
unfortunately that same logic could be applied to other sites that the ISPs want to extort
"Hello Google, you sent x Gigabytes of data through our network to our customers, here's the bill for the bandwidth used..."
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Yet, I'm not.
Try using Firefox with heavy blockers. Even a tailored hosts file on your router would help, assuming you are running bind or something similar on your router.
e360 Insight should sue an ISP... (Score:3, Interesting)
They can't. (Score:2)
If an ISP was sued, both CAN-SPAM and the CDA gives immunity to the ISP for filtering and blocking. See White Buffalo Ventu
Huge gift (Score:2)
This is a HUGE gift from the appeals court.
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Linhardt is in trouble now. (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason for this is my case against him, at http://www.barbieslapp.com/spam/e360/timeline.htm [barbieslapp.com] , because in my case, I argued (and lost) personal juridiction of Linhardt, in part because he said (and the court believed it) that he had no business in California. I pointed out in his affadavit in the Spamhaus where he said "e360 and I lost contracts..." and "e60 and I lost business opportunities.." and that of the 7 companies listed, 4 are in California, he explained it away by saying that he really meant that when he said, e360 and I he meant e360 and I in my role as president. If you don't suffer harm personally, you have no standing to bring a lawsuit. I filed a motion for reconsideration, on Linhardt's personal jurisdiction, in part based on this.
Spamhaus's lawyers are aware of this.
Would this be evil/wrong? (Score:2, Funny)
1) Send a massive spam campaign selling pharmaceuticals (viagra, weight loss, zoloft, hair regrowth, you name it)
2) When the orders come in, send out authentic-looking prescription medication, but instead of medicine the pills are made of fast-acting poison.
3) Thousands of people who are stupid enough to actually respond to spam, buy medication from spammers, and ingest said medication, are killed.
4) Massive media coverage of the event makes spamming seem "dangerous" to t
Gotta love this judge (Score:2, Interesting)
He really had to work hard to "do the right thing".
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Spamhaus are not in any trouble because of what name they used, or even what they listed. They're in "trouble" on a technicality, they messed up their claim that this court has no jurisdiction over them (which it doesn't; they are not a US company and have no holdings or business in the US, so a US court can't do a damn th
Re:Satisfied customer (Score:4, Informative)
As a donation-funded non-profit organisation based in the UK and Switzerland, they don't do business in the US at present, never have, and are not particularly likely to do so in the future. They don't even have a tax-exempt status in the US. A US court cannot prohibit US citizens from donating to them, nor can they confiscate those donations. There really isn't anything that a US court can do to them.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The UK courts are a lot more fun though, as it's a loser-pays system, so you can't just go randomly suing people unless you're prepared to pay both sides of the battle -- If you want to sue, you either have to be rich, or right.