First published: 30th September 2007
The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has set aside an $11M judgement with an injunction that barred the anti-spam organisation Spamhaus from listing either e360 Insight or its principal David Linhardt as a source of spam. However, the original ruling still stands.
In the ruling made by an Illinois court in September 2006, Spamhaus was ordered to pay compensation to e360 Insight, remove the organisation's listing, and post a notice stating that it was wrong to say e360 Insight was involved in sending junk mail. UK-based Spamhaus did not defend the case and the ruling was made in its absence.
Spamhaus, considering itself outside of the American court's jurisdiction, initially ignored the ruling, prompting e360 to ask the court to get Spamhaus's domain suspended. The court denied the request.
The case has prompted some debate about blacklisting, spammers and spam prevention, with Morely Dotes reporting on his policy of blocking, "email from China, Japan, Thailand, Korea, UAE, Turkey, Israel, or numerous other nations which are hotbeds of malicious software, and the proximate sources of most of the spam aimed at us". Such indiscriminate blocking is undoubtably causing problems, and possibly lost business, for legitimate users around the world. Spamhaus has long offered a much more refined and accountable blacklisting resource.