Judgment Pending for Spamhaus’ Suspension

Spamhaus blacklisted the company e360insight for distributing unsolicited commercial e-mail. In response, e360insight sued Spamhaus. Initially Spamhaus filed a reply to the case but when it decided not to carry on any further, it led to the default judgment.

Losing the domain name would make it more difficult for service providers and others to obtain the lists.

According to Spamhaus, the largest spam blocker in the world, an order pending in a federal court could expose millions of junk e-mails everyday on users' computers. U.K.-based Spamhaus Project's executives are expecting a federal judge in Chicago to issue an order in the approaching days suspending the web domain www.spamhaus.org.

Spamhaus says more than 650 million workers on the Internet, including those at the White House, the U.S. Army and the European Parliament, benefit when Spamhaus blacklists spammers. The practice helps them to detect which messages to block reject or transfer to junk folder or store. Therefore, lose of the domain name would create problems for service providers and others to get the lists. Spamhaus' chief executive officer, Steve Linford believes the suspension of the domain would hit the Internet and result in an enormous amount of damage.

The Illinois ruling indicates that spammers can hoax U.S. courts without any difficulty and that no evidence is necessary to obtain judgments over purely foreign units, said Spamhaus on its website. It, however, expressed concern at the extent U.S. court will go before a jurisdiction. It is also worried about U.S. court's intention for appeal to the ruling to stop further efforts by spammers to misuse the U.S. court system.

Spamhaus officials did not care to defend themselves in the case. They contend that U.S. courts have no jurisdiction. They said that seeking defense would expose the organization to a rush of lawsuits filed by spammers who want to challenge those who block the e-mails.

Bart Loethen, e360insight's lawyer, insists that his client is not involved in any spamming activity and so he had to fight against Spamhaus' domain till it clears the company from the blacklist.

» SPAMfighter News - 10/16/2006