Appeals Court Tosses $11M Spamhaus Judgement

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."

Spamhaus?

[Enlarged to Show Tex]

I didn't realize you could make German haute cuisine using SPAM...I knew about all the uses in pan-Asian cuisine, but German food with SPAM could be interesting!

I can see it now: SPAMwurst, mit Kraut

and DoubleClick

[ILongForDarkness]

Sues MS, and others for blocking there popup, err, targetting purchasing opportunities. Seriously, the ISP or who ever the end user is, chose to use the service, so they implcitely said 'they don't want to hear from you'.

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 spammer. You can easily spam 1000 per second from a server, so your looking at a very small fraction of a cent per message. But the user has to take their time to remove you message, their bandwidth is tied up etc. I think the estimate was in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars if you factor in the cost to the company paying the employee while they determine if it is spam or not. Even more if the spam has viruses, and causes system exploits. Spam filters work, sort of, sometimes they block stuff you want, and if not, you have to check your junk box every once in a while just in case, so it isn't saving you all the time associated with spam.

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". Money applied to spam filtering, or as a discount to the end user that had to deal with the unfortunate garbage.

e360 Insight should sue an ISP...

[Kazoo the Clown]

The suit was mistargeted. Spamhaus doesn't force anyone to use it. It is the ISPs that impose it on email accounts, not Spamhaus, and consequently, THEY should be liable if they do not allow their users to disable such blocking. Use of Spamhaus contributes to email unreliability and should not be imposed by ISP services. An email account carries with it some expectation of usability, which IMHO cannot be simply TOS'ed away in the fine print. Email is unreliable enough without blacklist (or for that matter, even greylist) techniques being applied by lazy ISPs who are looking for a brainless way to reduce their email traffic load. Either ISPs are a common carrier or they are not, the imposition of blocking techniques should carry along with it some responsibilities for its failures.

Linhardt is in trouble now.

[www.sorehands.com]

Though the default judgment still stands, the trial court judge will have to look harder at any injunction and money damages -- not take Linhardt's word for it.

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.

Gotta love this judge

[Mathinker]

I skimmed the ruling, and he really goes through logical contortions to vacate the injunction, while having to accept that everything that e360 claimed was factual, because of the egregious legal errors that Spamhaus made.

He really had to work hard to "do the right thing".

One win for the good guys.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is no worst than having Megan Law websites showing sexual offenders in the community. I remember when the Megan law website first came and an sexual offender sue that this infringed upon his rights but the courts showed that greater protection of general public is more important and one person rights. I hate to say that most sexual offenders re-offended after they are released. I say this is correct judgment. Spammers are no worst, in my opinion, than these sexual offenders and these people should be "blacklisted" somewhere. I don't need to subscribe to spamhaus and I don't need to look at the Megan Law websites but this information is open to those who need it which I think is important. Spamhaus and other blacklisting services should be able to blacklist true spammers and also allow people that have incorrectly placed on there list to be removed within reason.
However now with botnets this point is getting mute since spammers are taking over legitimate systems to send out there junk in their stead so legitimate system are being caught in this trap of being blacklisted instead of the real spammers. The best way to stop this is get the spammers and put them in a non-networked prison and give back all of the money they stole so they are truly punished for what they have done to all of us.
While I'm dreaming would like to have visit the Playboy Mansion....

Re:Huh?!

[devilspgd]

There IS a US/UK agreement allowing collections cross border, although it's extremely complex and all but requires the plaintiff to fight it out in the UK courts.

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.