Slashdot Log In
Appeals Court Tosses $11M Spamhaus Judgement
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Sep 05, 2007 10:51 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."
Related Stories
[+]
Spamhaus to Ignore $11.7M Judgement 471 comments
6031769 writes, "As reported on CNet, Spamhaus is choosing to ignore a judgement of $11.7M against them in an uncontested trial in an Illinois court. According to Spamhaus, the judgement has no impact on them, since they are a British organization." From the Spamhaus reply to the judgment: "Default judgments obtained in US county, state or federal courts have no validity in the UK and can not be enforced under the British legal system... As spamming is illegal in the UK, an Illinois court ordering a British organization to stop blocking incoming Illinois spam in Britain goes contrary to UK law which orders all spammers to cease sending spam in the first place."
[+]
News: Kaspersky Wins Important Ruling for the Anti-Malware Industry 96 comments
ABC writes "Zango sued Kaspersky Lab to force the Company to reclassify Zango's programs as nonthreatening and to prevent Kaspersky Lab's security software from blocking Zango's potentially undesirable programs. In the important ruling for the anti-malware industry, Judge Coughenour of the Western District of Washington threw out Zango's lawsuit on the grounds that Kaspersky was immune from liability under the Communications Decency Act."
[+]
Judge In e360 Vs. Comcast Rules e360 a Spammer 156 comments
Brielle Bruns writes "Yesterday, Judge James B. Zagel dismissed claims against Comcast by e360. In the decision, the judge says: 'Plaintiff e360Insight, LLC is a marketer. It refers to itself as an Internet marketing company. Some, perhaps even a majority of people in this country, would call it a spammer.' This clears the path for Comcast's counter-suit." e360 is the spammer that got a default judgement against Spamhaus, as we have discussed on numerous occasions.
[+]
Idle: Secretarial Mistake Costs Pepsi $1.26 Billion 2 comments
9gezegen writes "Pepsi learned that if it wants to continue to 'Refresh Everything,' it needs an extra $1.26 billion. It looks like one of the secretaries forget to inform company lawyers about a trade secrets case in a Wisconsin state court. When nobody arrived to court, the judge gave $1.26 billion default judgement. According to Pepsi lawyers, they were not properly served because the secretary was 'so busy preparing for a board meeting.' One might imagine she was working on the refreshments. Perhaps Pepsi should learn more about the Spamhaus case."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Oh yeah? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh yeah? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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
Next up (Score:5, Funny)
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:3, Insightful)
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
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
So, the next logical step is (Score:3, Funny)
Woe be gone (Score:3, Insightful)
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
e360 Insight should sue an ISP... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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..."
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
Wouldn't work. (Score:3, Funny)
Spam, I suspect, would fall under the category of "cheese".