Anti-spam company gets hit with $11.7 million damages
A popular anti-spam organization, SpamHaus, was ordered by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois to pay $11,715,000 in damages to e360insight and its CEO, David Linhardt. e360insight sued SpamHaus earlier this year over illegal blacklisting of their mailings.
Additionally, SpamHaus was barred from causing any email sent by e360insight or Linhardt to be “blocked, delayed, altered, or interrupted in anyway”. The court also ordered SpamHaus to publish a public apology for deeming the group a spammer.
SpamHaus, a British-based organization, did not accept the US jurisdiction and believes that the order is not enforceable. “As spamming is illegal in the United Kingdom, an Illinois court ordering a British organization to stop blocking incoming Illinois spam in Britain goes contrary to U.K. law which orders all spammers to cease sending spam in the first place” SpamHaus stated.
At GetResponse we use SpamHaus as one of the methods to filter inbound spam and prevent spammers from abusing legitimate email marketing and autoresponder campaigns. We regret that the US court system can be used as a weapon against a non-profit organization that strives to keep our mailboxes clean.
UPDATE
In a proposed court order dated 10/6/2007 Judge Charles Kocoras of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois calls on the organizations responsible for registering the Spamhaus.org Internet address to suspend the organization’s Internet service. Both ICANN and Tucows, the Spamhaus.org registrar, are named in the order.
A spam-savvy Illinois lawyer shares his perspective on the issue and believes that the outlook may be bleak for the anti-spam organization.
UPDATE #2
A federal judge presiding over a spam dispute rejected a marketing company’s request to suspend the domain name of an anti-spam group that ignored an $11.7 million judgment against it.
U.S. District Court Judge Charles P. Kocoras denied a proposed motion from e360 Insight, which sued the Spamhaus Project over its “black list” of spammers. Wheeling, Ill.-based e360 Insight contends it is improperly on the list because it is a direct marketer that does not send unsolicited e-mail.
Tags
email marketing, marketing, advertising, email, autoresponder, spam
September 19th, 2006 at 1:15 am
There’s been much debate on whether SpamHaus is a legitimate anti-spam organization or if they’re a company that blacklists businesses who do not spam their customers. SpamHaus may in fact be innocent, but they refused to testify. Unfortunately, we won’t know whether e360insight is an actual spammer, and now SpamHaus may end up having to pay $11 million.
September 21st, 2006 at 3:01 am
Mila,
I firmly believe that SpamHaus people are good guys.
It is not that easy to get a SBL (spamhaus blacklist entry)
with SpamHaus, and if you do it is a clear indication that
you are doing something wrong, and need to fix your
problems.
I sincerely hope that the $11M fine will not be enforceable
and even if it would, I doubt that 360insight would ever
get their money (SpamHaus is a non-profit organization).
Regards,
Simon Grabowski
September 23rd, 2006 at 10:47 am
I recently realized that my domain was actually blacklisted by SpamHaus, and I’m sure that I don’t send spam. The main issue I feel is that through hijacking of emails, a lot of problems can occur for the unsuspecting email marketer. Simon, perhaps you are in a position to educate new email marketers on spam filters and blacklisting and unlisting as well.
September 24th, 2006 at 12:58 am
Stuart,
SpamHaus doesn’t really block domain names, but IP addresses (although domain names are often mentioned in the SBL listing). You say that you “don’t send spam”. Spam is in the eye of beholder. The whitest of white hats in email marketing may still gather spam complaints because, for instance, someone forgot that they subscribed a year ago.
As for delisting with SpamHaus, unless there’s a bigger problem it should be relatively easy to do that via this page.
When email marketers use a service such as GetResponse all deliverability matters, spam filters etc. are handled behind the curtains. This is what we do, so that you guys can actually focus on your business.
October 10th, 2006 at 10:43 pm
I will love to state that this court judgement is highly controversial in the sence that for a proper judgement to be passed in the first place the legal suit itself ought to have be sitted in the uk. So maybe we should wait and see what happens next.
July 28th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
Glad to know Getresponse is on top of issues with SpamHaus.
October 3rd, 2007 at 12:46 pm
I must say that SpamHaus had to pay a large amount, it dose’nt matter now whether they are innocent or not. And one more thing that I would like to mention here is that if an Anti-Spam company has to pay so much amount, then what idea will the normal users will get from it? May be that there is no solution to the Spammers and their bulky annoying spam messages. But this is not right. There are certainly some useful websites available which may help us in terms of getting aware of the spams as well as Anti-Spamming Solutions. Such as this Anti-Spam, Anti-Spam Solutions, Spam, Spam-Filtering, Comment Spam, Website
February 15th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Simon, you say, “Spam is in the eye of beholder” and I disagree totally.
It is in the eye of the beholder whether they want to read your email that they have subscribed to but it is not a matter of opinion whether they subscribed and confirmed! I hope you are keeping records of I.P. numbers and times to defend your customers against wrong headed accusations!
Like a lot of people I used to have an AOL account even though I am in the UK and I used to quite happily press the “Spam” button instead of the “Delete” button! AOL customers have no clue what spam means-they are not making a spam complaint they are just clearing their inbox!
Spam is “unsolicited” and everything I have ever sent is from double optin accounts and simply cannot be spam.
I had a complaint at my help desk a few days ago about one of my newsletters being “spam”, the lady concerned had signed up for it the day previously!
It is in the eye of the beholder whether they want to read your email or unsubscribe and that is fine but Spamhaus and other self appointed “authorities” are contributing to an atmosphere of fear amongst legitimate Internet Marketers.
I am not a techie but I cannot understand why Microsoft, Cisco and others cannot find a technical solution to spam. Spam Assassin is a joke-it gives a Spam score to innocent emails and yet the spammers get through.
The spammers don’t seem to have email delivery problems; we do!
The absurdity of an illinois court making International judgements does not matter but frankly I would be glad to see Spamhaus fined.
Whatever happened to the right of free speech?
And whatever happened to simple logic; if you subscribed it simply ain’t spam!
Phew!
That feels better
Alex
February 27th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
wow, thats a huge amount, i wonder if spamhaus can bear the amount..
April 25th, 2008 at 12:54 am
I hope Gmail is not using Spamhaus ! They certainly do a good job at filtering Spams. So whats the outcome of this ? Is spamhaus still in business?