Judgment fuels the Spamhaus rally cry

While the company e360insight emerged victorious Wednesday in its lawsuit against the Spamhaus organization, many bloggers still see the nonprofit behind the popular antispam blacklist as the real champion.

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ordered Wednesday that Spamhaus must pay $11,715,000 in damages to e360insight and its chief, David Linhardt, who sued the U.K.-based organization earlier this year over blacklisting. Among other things, the court also ordered Spamhaus to publish an apology stating that the company and Linhardt are not spammers.

Spamhaus, however, dismissed the ruling as invalid in the United Kingdom and unenforceable under the British legal system. Spamhaus didn't mount a defense in the case; the ruling was a default judgment in absence of counterarguments.

Blog community response:

"What a joke! A U.S. court ordering an independent company from maintaining a list of IP addresses and domains? I should point out that blacklists in themselves DO NOT BLOCK e-mail. Companies voluntarily SUBSCRIBE to these free blacklists in order to filter out the massive spam that is becoming an ever increasing problem...Fortunately, Spamhaus isn't taking this ridiculous U.S ruling lying down. In fact, they're ignoring it. You go Spamhaus!"
--VoIP & Gadgets Blog

"Whilst I'm not a fan of e-mail spam, I am happy about this paticular bit of news! My gripe with spamhunters, other than the fact that they're generally a minor pain in the arse, is that they often get their facts wrong and label people, companies and Web sites as spam when they??re not...It is about time something like this has happened! If spamhunters want to waste their time chasing people, then they better make sure they get their facts right!"
--Esrun

"This is just great, now spammers sue because you block their spam. What's next? Maybe cat burglars can sue those people with iron bars on their windows, recoup their loss of revenue."
--stocke2 on Slashdot