Accused Spammer Sues Spamhaus, Wins $11 Million
from the what's-wrong-with-making-a-list? dept
A few years ago, a group of spammers teamed up to sue a bunch of anti-spammers, with the main target being Spamhaus, who keeps what's considered the definitive list of spammers. After their lawyers realized they had little chance of getting anywhere with the case, the spammers withdrew the case. The accused anti-spammers took on the odd move of trying to get the case to continue in order to set a precedent that it's perfectly legal to put together a spam blacklist. However, that didn't work, and you knew it was only a matter of time until someone else sued Spamhaus. That's exactly that one company that's on Spamhaus' list did. What's surprising, though, is that they somehow convinced a judge to order Spamhaus to pay $11 million for listing the company as a spammer. As the article notes, the company, e360insight, is going to have a lot of trouble collecting since Spamhaus is based in the UK and outside the jurisdiction of the Illinois-based court. While part of the reason Spamhaus may have lost was Steve Linford's decision to basically ignore the case and not show up or defend Spamhaus at all, it's still not at all clear how the $11 million was picked as the number -- but the whole thing seems problematic. All Spamhaus does is put together a list of companies or individuals who Spamhaus has collected evidence on suggesting they're spammers. Linford insists that the company in question absolutely is a spammer and he won't remove them -- and he doesn't see why it should cost him millions of dollars for being honest and keeping his list accurate. While it is true that some anti-spam blacklists can be way too aggressive, it should hardly be illegal to put one together -- especially if you have evidence to back up the claims. Spamhaus has always been one of the more respected anti-spam lists out there, and it's difficult to believe it would continue to put a company on the list if it didn't truly believe the company was guilty of spamming.
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technophobe
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Directoy Services
sure, thats where I live, and thats my phone number.. but how dare they have a list! I demand 11 million dollars in compensation for being legally and correctly listed!
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Re: Directoy Services
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Re: Directoy Services
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Re: Re: Directoy Services
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Re:
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Re: Re:
Pick up telephone:
Hi, im so and so in the UK, I need to be represented in OHIO court. Here is the evidence, here is this, here is that.
This is my position, this is theirs, this is why I'm right and this is why they are wrong.
The court date is
Can you represent me?
yes?, great.
How much.
Hourly rate is 400 an hour, and you estimate this will be about 2 hours of work.
Ok, done deal.
Hang up phone.
YOU personally do NOT have to appear. YOU do NOT have to send a lawyer from the UK to the US.
The opposite of your arguement applies, who gives the right to UK lawyers to appear in US court? They may have passed the US bar, but unless they are licensed in to practice law in that state, they cant do jack anyway.
The company brought the issue to court for one reason, not to get money, but to have his case heard in a court of law and force the company to PROVIDE PROOF not just say they are "positive that the company is a spammer".
I say prove it.
But thats just me, I don't like blacklists, they remind me of the 50's Mccarthyism.
Fuck
That
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Re:
There is no evidence that spamhause advertises in any state in this country, let alone Illinois. In other words, this will never stand up in an appeals court.
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Re: UCC and jurisdiction
Second, the UCC governs only the sale of goods. This does not include service contracts or other issues of law, such as the tort of slander. I must admit, I have not read any of the pleadings, but this seems like it would be the strongest argument.
As for jurisdiction, that is actually quite complicated. State courts are considered courts of general jurisdiction, generally being able to hear almost anything. As for not advertising in this country, with a website, you can be expected to have advertised anywhere. It is not that simple, but most websites would now qualify.
If a party wants to argue that a court does not have jurisdiction, then they must make what is called a special appearance to contest that. If a party simply shows up and starts arguing the merits of the case, or wants a continuance as the article summary suggests, then the defendant has subjected themselves to the jurisdiction of the court, having waived any rights to bring this up as an error.
So the spammer has gotten a judgment. This is a big so what unless Spamhaus has some assets in Illinois. Not the plaintiff must go to a UK court and seek to enforce their judgment. I do not anything about enforcing international judgments, so what Spamhaus' rights in that proceeding are I cannot comment on. But for $11 million, I would be pursuing the judgment.
As for having to come to this country and defend yourself, well, you only need to find an Illinois lawyer to file. Yes, this would cost money, but it is probably cheaper than ignoring the problem.
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Re:
It seems like someone has misunderstood the situation, a court in Illinois has no jurisdiction in the UK so why should Spamhaus bother to respond. The court should have dismissed the case straight away as it totally clear they have no jurisdiction in this matter.
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Re: Correct, Legally
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suprised?
naturally spamhaus being a uk based operation, breaking no uk laws will be seen as irrelvent to this.
another brit who had better avoid visiting the states for a while as well.
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Re: suprised?
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If someone is not a spammer, and you "publish" that they are, well... it doesn't take a rocket scientist to make the case to a judge when the other party doesn't even show up.
If they have evidence, they should have no problem getting cases dropped, and counter suing. But hey, these "spam cowboys" want to play by their own rules. It's coming back around to bite them in the ass, and I couldn't be more pleased!
It's not the list, it's labeling them as spammers. None of you have ever happened to purchase hosting on a previous spammer's IP, that they refuse to delist... not because you are a spammer, but because they don't like the ISP, and think they're spam friendly, so YOU suffer. And what do they tell you, "Well, then switch ISPs." In other words, they are digitally blockading you to force YOU to boycott your ISP.
All spamhaus does is chase their own tails. They can't win, and innocent companies and people suffer from these totalitarian, wild-west style wackos.
A good filter keeps out most spam, and if you are that paranoid, use a whitelist. If you can't whitelist, like a sales email, you might as well use your own filters (spam assassin + built in, like Thunderbird), SPF verification, etc. etc. A few simple steps, and you won't get any spam anyways. With my filters off, I get between 200-1000 a day (from about 10 different emails and some all @domain.com several years old, and holidays usually spike) With the filters on, I get about 15, and would probably get about 10 less if I added a filter for Russian characters.
Services like spamhaus are about as outdated and useful as the blink tag, only think of it as a blink tag that has the power to cut off all your communications. Yeah, SLIGHTLY more annoying. [/sarcasm]
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That's your argument; personally I sse it as them trying to close down SPAMmer-friendly ISPs, and as such I think that's a laudible aim. If it makes you take a moment to check out whether an ISP is listed as SPAMmer-friendly *before* you buy hosting from them next time, and then not buy it if they are, that can only be a good thing. Just because you got it wrong this time doesn't make it everybody else's problem.
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Somebody should sue all lawyers and judges for fexking up the whole system. It needs to be rewritten from scratch, and that goes for the patent system as well.
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I don't understand why the Illinois judge didn't throw it out on those grounds anyway. Unless the judge was just pissey because someone offended him greatly by not even bothering to show. Judges and lawyers in the US are such prima dona bustards!
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jurisdiction
Jurisdiction is another reason why people accused of something shouldn't come to the US. Just recently we heard about the two executives who were arresed after being accused of running Internet gambling operations in another country where, presumably it was legal. Dimitry Skiyarov was arrested when he came to the US for a convention.
Why come here and deal with the potential hassle?
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USA, always making new friends
Face it, the USA is just full of stupidity. There is no logic in things. I live about as close to the US as you can without living in it, and I love it, but so many of the things they do make no sense at all.
It's just a shame, their current legal system is so screwed up, their political system is so corrupt with corporate money, they make laws that hurt innovation and technology, the pay billions (or more) to keep people who smoke pot locked up, yet they allow huge corporations to destroy hundreds, thousands, millions of lives and families and do nothing.
Capitalism is wonderful, but not at the expensive of the advancement of mankind and the good of the people.
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Re: USA, always making new friends
If you or anyone else dislikes the USA because our country isn't perfect, then I don't want you as an ally of our country.
There's not a single country on this planet that doesn't have issues with it's political system and/or legal system. To single out the USA on these issues is just moronic, but someone that posts comments like yours make it pretty evident that the author is a moron.
And by the way, the United States has become a country with the highest standard of living for its citizens in a shorter time than any other country in the world due to our embrace of capitalism. We dont' have perfect capitalism here due to our government and special interest groups, but as I mentioned previously, no country is perfect, but the majority of Americans strive to make this country better.
If you'd like we can discuss the shortcomings of all the surrounding countries to the United States, and countries in Europe, Asia, etc but why even go there?
How about not generalizing an entire country based upon the outcome of certain laws, court rulings, the political system's flaws, etc? For example, a lot of Americans talk about how they "hate the French". But not ALL French are bad people, and not ALL French hate the USA.
I'm happy to be American, I love this country, but I may not love the government officials living off our hard work, and the ridiculous judges that are in the various states of which I have no control over.
So yes, you offended me with your comments, and most likely other Americans would be offended as well.
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A SAD day in Cyberspace for SPAMHAUS
Free Speech now requires deep pockets and an Insurance Company that will stand behind you. SAD :(
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strange
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Re: strange
I think they sell penis enlargers and keep their customers up to date on cheap stocks that will be increasing in value soon. Both are excellent endeavors!
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Sean has a good idea...
If they have the money to spare I think they should actually follow Sean's suggestion, if for no other reason simply to point out the absolute wtf-dom of what's going on. It's rifraggindiculous.
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And uh...
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Wait no
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Re: Wait no
THEIR
on a different continent.
you needed THEY'RE
which is THEY ARE on a different continent.
If you are worried you were HASTY in your FIRST post, at least try and get it right and TAKE YOUR TIME AND CHECK before your second and third posts. Maroon.
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So...
Please contact us with questions about this case or to inquire about our marketing services.
They don't realize how guilty it makes them look to replace nearly all the content on their site to talk about this one do they?
I want to know how they are gonna make them pay the $11mil.
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Spamhaus
This happened to my company. We had a huge opt-in list that had been built without the email verification process. Every email had a one-click unsubscribe and we had no problems for years.
We then had a disgruntled ex-employee who visited the site weekly and actually signed up for a newsletter under the email address "webmaster@spamhaus.org". We were instantly on their spam list.
Over the next few weeks we received hundreds of complaints from subscribers that our emails weren't getting to users who had signed up for them. We contacted Spamhaus directly, asked them to look at our site and our processes and were told that until we updated our subscription process we would remain on their list -- even though only one person had reported us out of list of 1.2 million names!
During the period we were on their spammers list, we lost tens-of-thousands in sales. We dropped development of other site features and immediatly updated our subscription process. Once the new process was in place, we again contanted Spamhaus and got off their list. We then went through the extraordinary step of requiring our entire mailing list to re-authorize themselves through the new process.
Sad story? Maybe, it took one person to get us labeled a spammer, and being labeled a spammer cost usa bunch of money.
I guess the moral is to make it impossible for your site to be considered a spammer and to agressively monitor spamlists to ensure your site isn't on one.
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Re: Spamhaus
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Admittedly, the spammer has a snowball's chance in hell of actually collecting on the judgment.
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Spamhaus Internet terrorists.
Becoming what you oppose
Editorial by Dave Hayes
Many folks have asked me why I stopped "contributing" to the everlasting debates in NANA (news.admin.net-abuse.*). I generally respond with something along the lines of "I don't wish to become that which I oppose". Indeed, recently I've "plonked" several entities (among them the terrorists known as "spamhaus" and "spews") simply because I no longer wish to beat my head against the stone wall of ignorance.
Terrorists? Yes that's right. One definition of "terrorism" is "attacking innocents in the name of your cause". Nowhere is this more ironic and extreme than in the deeds of my old nemesi, the anti-spammer zealotry collective, some of whom are now known as spamhaus and spews. The terrorism they practice is implemented in the form of "mail blacklists".
Blacklists are not a new notion. In the 1950's, the infamous McCarthy blacklists contained names of "possible communists", which ultimately led us to a more sterile culture.
The social costs of what came to be called McCarthyism have yet to be computed. By conferring its prestige on the red hunt, the state did more than bring misery to the lives of hundreds of thousands of Communists, former Communists, fellow travelers, and unlucky liberals. It weakened American culture and it weakened itself. ---Victor Navasky, Naming Names (New York: Viking Press, 1980)
Modern internet technology has created our own version(s) of social blacklists. Many anti-spam zealots have turned to this method for freeing their mailboxes from spam. Simply expressed, these organizations maintain databases which are supposed to contain the IP addresses of known spammers. They then provide these databases to various electronic mail servers, so that the servers can reject email based on what's in these databases.
The bottom line is, if the machine that sends your email is on this list, a number of mail servers will automatically reject all email from your server.
If (and only if) they restricted these blacklists to actual spammers, I doubt very seriously that I would have problem with this practice. If we could trust human beings to maintain a logical and calm viewpoint about life, I doubt that I would have a problem with these blacklists. Unfortunately we cannot trust these things in either case.
Fact: Spamhaus and spews have added innocent IP blocks to their blacklists.
The anti-spammer idealotry goes like this: "Anyone who gets service from a network friendly to spammers is supporting the spammers and therefore our enemy." (The friend of my enemy is my enemy too?)
So here's how this goes. Once a network provider is branded "a communist"...er excuse me..."a spammer", ALL of their IP ranges are blocked. Typically a network provider is providing services for smaller service providers, many of whom would never and have never engaged in spamming of any kind. No notice is really given on these blacklisting events, rather you find out when mail starts bouncing to some destination. Usually an end customer is the first to notice, and that customers is directed by the bounce to complain to...their own ISP!
In essence, the customer is tricked into presenting the terrorist anti-spam agenda to the ISP. The ISP turns around and finds out that their provider (or provider's provider) is what the anti-spam zealots want "silenced". Until that target complies with their arbitrary agenda (usually of the form "stop spamming", but this is not always true...see below), everyone else has to suffer with electronic mail blocks.
What's wrong with this? Everything.
* First and foremost, the most often heard reason anti-spammers are so rabid about anti-spam is "it makes electronic mail unusable for average people". If this is true, then how does blocking innocent email help this situation? In fact, blacklisting innocents contributes to the problem. The hypocrisy here is so thick I doubt even a knife can cut it. * The dishonor of the practice of blacklists is amazing. Many naive internet mail administrators add blacklists like spamhaus "because they work to reduce spam". Lots of these sites have no idea that they are being cut off from legitimate email because of these machinations. If their customers really knew that they were cutoff, I wonder how many would still buy service? Getting rid of spam is one thing, blocking that key business email that means $100K in sales is quite another. Lets take this one step further. Person A buys email service from ISP X who is using Spamhaus to block spam email. Person A's daughter, who's income is very low due to being a student in college, buys email service from ISP Y (because it's cheap) who uses IAP S as their connectivity. ISP Y buys network from IAP S because it's cheap. Due to real life constraints, the only contact Person A has with their daughter is email. IAP S suddenly gets put on the anti-spam master blacklist. The same day, Person A's daughter has a car accident. A roommate desperately tries to send email to Person A but it's blocked. Worse, it's blocked because these zealots have an idealogical cause which is set up to be more important than a person's life. This is the height of dishonor. * The practice is quite criminal by many definitions and with criminals on all sides: o Any ISP that is blocked is told to "comply with our demands or be blacklisted" (a.k.a. extortion). o Attacking innocents in the name of their cause (a.k.a. terrorism). o Since the control of the blacklist is out of the hands of the service provider who subscribes to it, by law you must clearly state "random people may be blocked to your email box by other people who are not under our control" before selling "email services". I've never seen this stated on any ISP ad. (a.k.a false advertising) o Blacklisting ISPs is a good way of knocking them out of business (a.k.a restraint of trade) o If spam ever goes away, these organizations will also. Thus they have a vested interest in keeping spam alive (a.k.a playing both sides of the street)
Do note that the anti-spammers claim these practices are not criminal and will "reduce economic support for the 'spam friendly' ISPs". This claim is quite erroneous:
Fact: Spammer companies have far more money than most innocents.
Yep, to the tune of millions of dollars per month. SPAM is big business. Do you think that the income of one little ISP with 1000 customers is going to make any difference against the large income of a spam company? No! All that does is clear more bandwidth for the spammers to use, should the little ISP cave in and switch to another provider.
While there's no proof (that I'm aware of), it's not so far fetched to open up questions of collusion between "the providers that are anti-spam" and the "anti-spam blacklists". Certain providers, to compete, may pay the blacklist groups lots of money to keep attacking innocents, which gets them more customers in the long run as ISPs fold because they cant afford the connectivity provided by the "anti-spam supporter" providers.
I've established some things here:
1. In my opinion, blacklists are bad. 2. The anti-spammers are resorting to clearly criminal activities to further their goals: extortion, restraint-of-trade, terrorism. 3. The effect the anti-spammers are trying to have by blocking innocents only works to destroy email connectivity, the cure is worse than the disease.
This brings me to my concluding point. The original complaint against spammers included accusations of being criminal. Most spammers are considered criminal. Yet look at the anti-spammers! In their undying eternal zeal to end spam, they have become just what they oppose! Criminals and email destroyers. Gee, isn't this what they call the spammers?
The aware person realizes that fighting something only makes it stronger. Indeed, when you see two people rabidly on one side or the other, it's very hard to distinguish the two. They almost appear to be the same person, willing to commit any atrocity for the sake of their ideology or economics. What more do I need to know?
So, in a roundabout way, that's why I don't participate. I've done my days of tilting at windmills. I've presented my pearls, but the swine didn't hear any of them. They've misrepresented my position countless times for their own agendas, failed to understand even the most basic of the concepts I've explained, and twisted what I've said to make me out to be something I am not. ("Spam supporter"...lol)
I have finally realized that it has less to do with the ability to understand, it's mostly that they are not willing to understand. So in that climate I should once again venture forth into that primal never-ending argumentia that is NANA?
No. I'm sorry. I have far better things to do.
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Re: Spamhaus Internet terrorists.
Then the spammers were terrorists FIRST. They attacked me in the name of their cause - their bottom line.
I *CHOOSE* to have my mail server query Spamhaus' database before it decides wether or not to accept mail from a given host. Spamhaus does not force me, pay me, or threaten me to do so. I am happily replying on their judgement to help keep me from spending HOURS PER DAY cleaning up the spam mess that I would have if I did not subscribe to blacklists and use other anti-spam technologies.
Just to give you some perspective:
I run a VERY small mail server - for myself, my immediate family, and a few select others. Why? Because my ISP email account was literally BURIED in spam.
Here are some statistics from yesterday:
44 messages checked and passed.
Messages rejected using Anti-Spam site 339 Time(s)
bl.spamcop.net identified 23 spam messages.
cbl.abuseat.org identified 1 spam messages.
dnsbl.njabl.org identified 5 spam messages.
dul.dnsbl.sorbs.net identified 66 spam messages.
list.dsbl.org identified 25 spam messages.
sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org identified 219 spam messages.
Connections lost:
Connection lost while CONNECT : 77 Time(s)
Connection lost while DATA : 209 Time(s)
Connection lost while EHLO : 18 Time(s)
Connection lost while HELO : 1 Time(s)
Connection lost while MAIL : 1 Time(s)
Connection lost while RCPT : 156 Time(s)
Errors in HELO/EHLO conversation:
Helo command rejected: Invalid name: from 3 Host(s), 5 Time(s)
Helo command rejected: need fully-qualified hostname: from 131 Host(s), 195 Time(s)
Do the quick math, and you'll see that 44 emails made it through the blacklists and intelligent server checks, and 1001 were blocked. Of those 44, 19 additional emails were marked as bank/paypal type scams by my AV scanner. Of those 1001, around 1/4 of them were blocked by Spamhaus.
At work, the numbers are even more dramatic, where 7851 spams were blocked for a company of around 100 people. Spamhaus blocked 2325 of them.
I regularly do random audits of blocked mail to see if it is legitimate, and am partially responsible for the "I didn't get an email from someone" complaints. I have seen perhaps 5 examples of legitimate mail being blocked in the last 2 years. I am completely comfortable with those numbers, which in many cases was solved with a domain-based whitelist for the entity involved.
Quite frankly, if someone DID shut down Spamhaus, THEY should be sued. I don't know under what legal basis, but "there oughta be a law".
For those who hate Spamhaus, I have nothing but contempt for you. They are helping ME to solve a large problem. As many commenters have said, if you are NOT a spammer, it's not terrible to get off their list. If you ARE a spammer, or have spam-like list building techniques, you get what you deserve, and I have chosen NOT to accept your email. Too bad - that's MY choice to make.
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Re: Spamhaus Internet terrorists.
Comparing antispam lists to the Mcarthy Lists is maybe just a little harsh?
Frankly Spamhaus get my vote - I realise blacklists are not a perfect system but what is?
Simple facts - you can remove yourself from their lists (yes this can be problematic if its actually your ISP but the fact is that someone has to do something)
I work for a global company and we do get complaints from users that they can't receive emails from contacts in other companies from time to time as their ISP has been blacklisted. When this happens we add the individual email address to a whitelist and the problem is solved from our side, we usually also do the courtesy of directing the person who's been blocked in the direction of whichever blacklist blocked them (we use several) so they can find out what to do, and yes sometimes the advice is change ISPs
Many of these ISPs allow spammers to create new addresses with impunity and do nothing to stop the mail leaving their IP address or cut back on it, frankly if my ISP were that irresponsible i'd be worried and want to change
It is annoying from time to time - we get maybe 15 of these requests a year for a segment covering over 20,000 users (not bad odds I think) but its managable
On the otherhand our email filtering systems failed badly a year or so ago and stopped blocking anything - the email system was completely useless all day due to the amount of crap in it. Connections to them were so slow as to be unusable and even if users could get to them their inboxes were overwhelmed by the sheer number of SPAM mails. Lots of our users then failed to receive legitimate mails as they had run out of inbox space and real business impact was experienced
If your business plan involves sending SPAM to people in my view it should also allow for serious jail-time, screw lawsuits you should be locked up
The other comment I have here is please, pretty please, could the US stop trying to be the worlds policeman, judge, jury and torturer - with the exception of the last one you're not really that hot at it anyhow and it just annoys others. Personally I wouldn't waste my companies time and money turning up to some show trial in a court on another continent that has no jurisdiction over me either
On the other hand can I sue e360insight for the mental anguish their emails have caused me over the years? I could claim a fear of the word viagra and sue them in the offical court of the peoples banana republic of my bathroom
......................
Wait - i've done it, the court finds that e360insight should pay damages of $500million and one rubber duck
Now I just need to alter my website and put the official court transcript on there (its actually quite short since they didn't show and my daughter wanted the toilet which shortened proceedings)
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Bullshit
2, if he was so absolutely positive that he was right, I would have show up for court.
The fact that he's in th UK blah blah blah is ok and all, but you have two people you dont know.
Because one side (spamhause) is on the side of the 'right and just' (what bullshit THAT comment is) and the other is already labled a spammer, he's automatically in the wrong.
Cool, if you were in kindergarten.....
I personally dont know either of them, and regardless of who's "side" one or the other is on, prove to me you didnt fuck up ...dont tell me "Linford insists that the company in question absolutely is a spammer and he won't remove them -- and he doesn't see why it should cost him millions of dollars for being honest and keeping his list accurate."
I say im the pope. Who here believes me? ....you will either scoff at the obvious bullshit and /or demand what?
PROOF!.
How many of you guys have found errors on your credit reports? How many times were you pissed off at not only the dumbass who messed up, but how difficult it is to fix it. Now compound that fact that it now affects your business.....people see your credit, they don't know/think/ or even CARE that it's a mistake.
If you are going to do something that affects someones livelyhood (not spam, but legitimate business) then you had best be fucking accurate and PROVE your actions when asked as well as correcting mistakes.
NOT to sit back and refuse.
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Stay in the UK
As long as he stays out of the US, he should be fine though. I've owed nearly $1000 in taxes to Fife, Scotland for several years now and they can't legally collect from me because I'm a US citazen in the US. I just need to stay out of the UK.
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Re Re Re & Re Bullshit
Er OK I'll pretend to buy that for a moment
My company have been on the SpamHaus Blacklist before - we were attacked by a mail worm and ended up flooding the internet with crap SMTP mail, yeah this was a little embarassing since we buy their list
If you contact them they willingly tell you why you are blacklisted and steps you can take to remove the listing - its actually quite an easy process even my manager could follow it
So why the big deal? (unless it really is a multiple cock-up in which case if you were serious about things, you would raise an action in a country which DID have jurisdiction over the lister)
Here's a thought as to why I would not turn up at court... (and by turn up I mean involve myself or my company in such a bullshit legal action in any way - I KNOW you don't have to physically go in person)
1) I DO have genuine contempt of US courts - they are corrupt as hell and the sue first, think later culture they promote is undermining the bedrock of your society (lots of happy lawyers though)
2) Kevin seems to think this would be 2x hours at $400 an hour (personally I think hes underestimating the cost but hell)
And since when was involving a lawyer as simple as a quick conversation and no further involvement - obviously not someone whos had too much time dealing with them (lucky man)
That's 800$ minimum assuming that they show up, you show your evidence and the judge throws out the case with no counters, no one asks for an ajournment etc etc...
Now take a look at the number of Spammers Vs the Number of listing agencies
You were talking about a precedent - yeah, well now there is one but fortunatly for the rest of the world its only in the states - maybe you guys will be banned from using blacklists as an eventual result which would be unfortunate
The other precedent here is that if I as a lister constantly 'go' to other courts in other countries to defend every action I will shortly have no time or money to do my main business...
I too wish there was a better way of proceeding but I've always found the listers to be quite accurate and actually quite helpful (they know that a SERIOUS company would raise an action in a way which WOULD mean heavy penalties - not in just a theoretical, cancel your holiday plans to the US sort of way...)
We've established people on this thread don't like blacklists and that I don't like US courts taking on actions they have no jurisdiction over...
The big question to all the brainiacs - SUGGEST SOMETHING BETTER
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two cents worth
I have a EUlA on my computer, stating that anyone, company, software action, that installs software on my computer agrees to pay usage fees of $1200.00 a day. I guess I need to add the email spammer clause to it as well.
Go on and Spam me....(cha-ching!)
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Spamhaus
Has anyone had any other problems with this company?!!!
Alan Roberts (London)
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idiots
If you are running the filter yourself, you choose which list to use. If you disagree with enough of the list, change sources or make your own.
If you are a legitimate mailing list, you can specify on your signup page that you may be blocked as spam by some blacklists, so the user knows they may need to whitelist you.
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SpamHaus has lost everyone's respect
They have the nerve to place newly listed domains on their spam blacklist, without any investigation. What a bunch of crooks! And trust me, I am no spammer.
I know I'm not the only non spammer complaining about these idiots (SpamHaus)
I assume, a competitor or Steve Linford wanted their hands on certain domains, and were frustrated or jealous...
They might have been good in the past, but I see them going downhill...its all downhill for them now.
They definitely should get shutdown for all these "oversights" that they commit, seems they have their own agenda.
If you (SpamHaus) cannot do your job properly, DON'T do it. Dont self appoint yourself as the moral spam guardian of the world.
Enough said.
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CBL / Spamhaus
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What IS spam?
We have, for example, a business for which there are around 4,500 customers in the world.
> We meet them at a party, and ascertain that we're potential business partners, and follow up with an e-mail - is that spam?
> We get recommendations from friends, that other friends might be interested in our services, and mail them - is that spam?
> We rigorously comb the net and identify people who would genuinely be pleased to receive mails from us, and are interested in our service, and sent them an email - is that spam?
I suggest that none of these are spam.
Spamming (I suggest) is not sending one or two emails which happen to be poorly targeted, if the wider list has been carefully and well selected.
Spamming is sending a whole lot of emails to a largely un-targeted audience, in the vague hope that one or two in a million may reply.
In other words whether something is spamming or not, is about the relative care with which the list has been selected, not about the fact that the person has pre-indicated that they wish to receive mail from me.
I send mail to friends, but none of them explicitly sign consent forms to receive mail from me. Am I spamming them? No, because I know that they are likely to welcome mail from me (though sometimes they don't).
There's your criterion - whether someone is likely to welcome mail. Having explicitly given consent is NOT the issue.
It would be wholly impractical to require emails not to be sent unless consent had been given.
Just as it would be wholly impractical to forbid all advertising unless all potential viewers of the ad had consented.
It would also be impractical to forbid all letters, unless potential recipients had consented.
Spam is not about explicit consent. It is about the care and concern with which the recipient has been selected.
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Spamhaus
Firstly companies who subscribe to Spamhaus's services do so on the understanding that their filter will block spam. It can and does. But it also blocks domains and ISPs related to what they "deem spam". I can tell you now that if subscribers knew they weren't getting certain (non-spam) emails because of Spamhaus software, they'd stop using it pdq. Spamhaus would go out of business because we buy software because we don't want to write it ourselves. Not only is Spamhaus very arrogant in its dealings with wrongly affected parties but it also trumpets "you can't sue us nah nah nah". Quite wrong in fact.
What spamhaus has been comparied with are "internet terrorists" and I for one would rather know I'm receiving everything I'm expecting and a few "proper" span emails than no spam and no email from the person I was epecting an email from.
Spamhaus apparently hasn't even heard of innocent mailservers being hijacked (relaying). If you've been affected by relaying there's a very good chance your server domain has been blacklisted FOREVER by spamhaus.
I equate them with speed cameras: indiscriminate. And isn't that what spam's supposed to be?
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fuck Spamhaus
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