Spammer That Sued Spamhaus Now Sued for Spamming

Dave Q. Lintard writes with a link to The Register's coverage of a suit against the spammer that sued Spamhaus. e360 Insight, as the company is known, is accused of using a botnet and compromised headers to get their 'advertising' into the mailboxes of the claimant. These are also the folks that tried to get the Illinois courts to suspend SpamHaus's domain registration when they wouldn't play by e 360's rules. 'e360 Insight sued Spamhaus after the anti-spam organisation blacklisted its domains over alleged spamming. In a default ruling made by an Illinois court in September 2006, Spamhaus was ordered to pay $11.7m in compensation to e360 Insight, pull the organisation's listing, and post a notice stating that it was wrong to say e360 Insight was involved in sending junk mail. UK-based Spamhaus did not defend the case and the ruling was made in its absence.'

Re:The Ultimate .Forward

[klingens]

If a party doesn't show up to a court date and defend itself, the judge has to rule for the plaintiff. It's the law. Enforcing that decision is of course a different thing as spamhaus is still online.

Re:The Ultimate .Forward

[Bastard of Subhumani]

That might well be the law. It might be relevant to this case too, if Illinois courts had jurisdiction over the UK.

Re:The Ultimate .Forward

[asninn]

It was a *default ruling* - Spamhaus didn't have anyone show up for the trial, so they lost by default, and I'm pretty sure the judge didn't have much choice in that regard.

I can certainly *understand* Spamhaus, of course; if somebody sued me in another country, I wouldn't fly there just to attend a trial, either, and I'd certainly ignore the verdict (why do they think they'd have jurisdiction over me, anyway?), but the rules are still the rules, and the judge just did what the rules said, so don't blame him.

Re:How did Spamhaus lose?

[EveLibertine]

The fact that the judge was a total moron who was unable to see through a pathetic tissue of lies shows how dangerous it would have been to have allowed any person from Spamhaus to become a literal captive hostage in the US while this was being sorted out.

Look, don't call the judge a moron. He's not. I can't bring myself to call you a moron, though you are obviously ignorant of the facts here. The way the courts work here, and in most other countries, is that the courts assume that they have jurisdiction. I don't mean casually assume, but rather, bound by law to assume they have jurisdiction. It is up to the plaintiff to declare that the courts hold no jurisdiction over them. This is what happened, this is what is supposed to have happened. This is how the system works. So stop sullying the judges good name, will you? Not only is he just doing his job, but he's doing a good job of it too:

The judge, Charles Kocoras, is chief judge of the District Court in Northern Illinois and was last month awarded the Chicago Bar Association's highest honor, the Justice John Paul Stevens Award. This is not a guy who hands out his verdicts like candy.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060915-7757 .html/ [arstechnica.com]

Re:How did Spamhaus lose?

[EveLibertine]

Wrong, language is merely a mode of transporting meaning. You understood, thus my language was sufficient.

It may not have been perfectly accurate, but I admitted the mistake in my previous post, so your making a further fuss of it is rather unwarranted. Furthermore, if you didn't care what I meant, why did you bother to correct it? You certainly could have been more kind or civil about it, or at the very least been constructive and offered the correct terminology. You over-reacted, you got called - get over yourself.

Re: Pointless name calling - Evidence: "I'd certainly call that person a moron!" I didn't say that you meant _I_ was a moron, I just said that calling names is pointless, and asked if you were finished. It really isn't that difficult to understand what my question meant, but perhaps I have been misled regarding your intellectual capacity.

Re:The Ultimate .Forward

[Anonymous Coward]

And are literally outside of the jurisdiction of the US court

well, that's true to a point. Check the details of the "Natwest Three" [wikipedia.org](plenty of good links at the bottom of the wiki) who ended up extradited to the US to stand charges on a matter that was not only supposedly committed on UK soil, but already dismissed by the British legal system as not having nearly enough evidence to prosecute.

The US wants to be the world's police, but also the world's judge, jury and executioner. We should never have invented Judge Dredd.

Re:Spammers Move From Email to the Courts

[Anonymous Coward]

Our court systems have been jammed with bullshit since the day they allowed people to blame others for their own irresponsibility.

It's time to start holding people accountable for their own actions again. Stop the pandering. Stop the bullshit.

Re:Insanely arrogant USA judges

[Anonymous Coward]

well, if I had a choice, I'd choose to have it go to a court that I knew 100% didn't have juristiction over me as it would then be easier to tell them to shove off. Rather than risk it going to a court that might think that it did have a case for juristiction. Either way, what this case shows is that civil cases at the very least need a 'public sceptic' appointed by the court who's job it is simply to get the case thrown out for lack of juristiction, or oppose the plaintiff's evidence. If you're sued by someone who has absolutely no case, you shouldn't have to do anything yourself for it to be thrown out, nor should you have to ignore the court, but never visit the country that it's in for fear of being arrested.

Re:How did Spamhaus lose?

[innocent_white_lamb]

If Spamhaus were worried that any of their people might get served in the US, they could have spent the $10,000 or so to have the suit tossed out on jurisdictional grounds.
 
Why? I suspect that Spamhaus has better things to spend $10,000 on than a lawyer's bill in another country.
 
If you were suddenly served with a summons to appear in court in Mogadishu, would you immediately hire a Somali lawyer and send him $10,000 to defend you? Or would you, like most of us, simply say, "Ridiculous!" and toss the paperwork into the trash.

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