Michael Gracie

After getting sued and not bothering to show up in court, the blacklist to beat all blacklists was slapped with a default judgement.

Spamhaus said they weren’t going to pay the $11+ million judgement, so their opponent asked ICANN to delete their domain. No dice.

Spamhaus runs a little interference, and then decides to head to court.

Now, a judge has said the court won’t try to force the issue on Spamhaus’s domain registrar, Tucows.

When is e360 going to get the hint? After their lawyers own their company?

Rather than ignore a court ruling that requires they lay down, Spamhaus has decided to fight back in court.

They are appealing the $11.7 million judgement by an Illinois court against them, threat of domain name seizure notwithstanding.

I hope they just raised some money - it is going to cost them at least $11.7 million to fight this with whatever U.S. lawyers they just hired.

Or maybe that’s bring email to a screaching halt, depending on your perspective. A Slashdotter notes the sheer enormity of the spam that Spamhaus blacklists block, and even if the estimates are overblown this will make an interesting case study.

My personal email address targets roughly a dozen lists, and many others are probably in the same boat. But imagine a big one like Spamhaus’s falling - that would certainly shift the burden to others.

The spammers may wind up getting what they don’t want, no email at all. Unfortunately, consumers get the worst deal - either no email whatsoever, or a flood of biblical proportions.

ICANN will not, I repeat, will not suspend Spamhaus.org.

Spamhaus gets a reprieve - e360Insight gets another legal bill.

I love lawyers.

An Illinois court order Spamhaus to pay $11.7 million for improperly blacklisting local e360 Insight LLC. e360 is the proprietor of BargainDepot.net, a small ecommerce site with an email subscription front end that allows people to get notice of upcoming sales.

Sign up for The Bargain Alert to find out about secret sales and special savings before anyone else.

A case of improper blacklisting, or a court that didn’t get the internet? Maybe just some really slick attorneys?

No matter. Spamhaus told them all to piss off - according to Steve Linford the Illinois court has no jurisdiction over the UK-based anti-spam outfit.

***UPDATE***

Slashdotter’s take on the situation here.

The FTC has recently come out with a very long report detailing how CAN-SPAM is working. Brian McWilliams pointed out that while they interviewed numerous people for the work, including folks at the Direct Marketing Association, they forgot to talk to Steve Linford over at Spamhaus.

While this is not a particularly strange omission (as Brian notes Steve was not very happy with CAN-SPAM), I am more curious as to the cause of the sudden shift of gears. The FTC was just saying CAN-SPAM wasn’t working too well a few months ago. Meanwhile, they have been out and about, cracking heads, and getting some decent PR as a result. Cripes, they even even shut down a splog ring!

Then a turf war started between the FTC and Congress, and now it looks like someone has caved. All that comes out of Congress is noise, so they couldn’t have anyone lingering around doing something about the issue. The FTC seems to be backing off (and spewing some sound of their own), and there is no doubt a few politicians will be waving this “report” around and taking the credit. I wonder who is getting the next appointment.